Heart Dance Read Free Page A

reclaim everything he had . . . or struggle for power with a descendent of his. It was lowering to understand that he’d prefer that. Let someone else deal with her.
    “You aren’t the only one who had a relative who looked at you with disgust,” Ruis said.
    That was true. Saille’s MotherDam hadn’t tortured him, at least not physically, like Ruis’s uncle had. She hadn’t sought to kill him, merely banished him to a Willow estate far outside Druida City. But both Ruis’s uncle and GreatLady D’Willow had wanted power; the land, title, riches that came with being of the highest status.
    “Want to pull the plug?” Ruis whispered.
    The phrase meant nothing to Saille. “What?”
    Ruis bent down and opened a panel in the stand on which the tube rested, pointed at a thin, sparkling filament. “This is her life support.” Leaving the door open he stood and looked at the large woman. “I can’t think this will ever work. I know it doesn’t seem right to me.”
    Saille stared at the filament. Temptation beckoned. Yes, he yearned to “pull the plug.” But he couldn’t. “She contracted with you.” Paid the Captain an extortionate amount of gilt to refurbish the tube and be placed in it, kept alive before the last, fatal stage of her disease began.
    Ruis tapped a forefinger on the clear material of the tube. “Sometimes rules—and contracts—must be bent to ensure justice.She’d die in, what? Two weeks, if she wasn’t inside here?”
    “That’s the amount of time the Healers gave her.” Saille found the laugh coming from himself sounding far too harsh. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she proved them wrong.” She was ever contrary.
    “Arrogant,” Ruis said. “I’ve never cared for arrogant people. She didn’t negotiate with me, you know.” His mouth twisted. “She knew better than that. She was one of the people who voted for my execution. Instead she caught my wife in a soft moment.” He shrugged. “Or my wife’s telempathy assured her that D’Willow should be spared.” He looked around the gleamingmetal walls of the ship. “Still, it’s a drain upon Ship’s power and systems, even though Ship considers this an interesting experiment.”
    “Spare me interesting experiments,” Saille said.
    “My feelings exactly.” Ruis scratched his chin. “I was an outcast in our culture, but even I believe in accepting death, in the soul’s circling the wheel of stars into reincarnation.” He waved at the tube. “This is unnatural. Our ancestors used these cylinders while they traveled from one planet to a new one, not simply for life extension. Unnatural.”
    Saille could only agree. But he couldn’t say so. “This is what she wants, and I will obey her instructions.”
    Ruis slanted a look at him, lifted and dropped a shoulder. “I hear your Family has welcomed you as the new head.”
    Now Saille could smile with real feeling. “Yes, the ladies are an affectionate bunch.” He spared one last look at the mound of his MotherDam. “She was a difficult woman to live with as the disease took its toll.” And for about a hundred years before that, too.
    “Well, then, you have some blessings in your life.”
    “Many.” That was the truth.
    A high, giggling shriek echoed down the hallway outside the room, and Ruis laughed as the metal door slid open and his daughter toddled into the chamber.
    Saille’s smile faded. The little girl only reminded him that he had no beloved HeartMate. Yet.
    Once more he glanced at his predecessor. She’d deliberately hidden his HeartMate from him. That had been his greatest shock when he’d ascended to head of the Family.
    It had taken extraordinary measures—sending his barely spellshielded HeartGift out into the world—to find his HeartMate.
    Now he knew who she was, and it was time to plan another casual meeting. For tomorrow.
    He turned away from the woman who had ruled his life in the past and toward his own future and the woman he hoped to share it