Page 39 of Dark Rover's Luck

"No. She was quiet and introspective." Jasmine finished plucking the grapes from the bunch and placed them on the plates.

"I hope it works out for them." Kyra speared a piece of mango with her fork. "After everything she has been through, Fenella deserves her happy ending."

"We all do," Jasmine said, settling onto the stool beside Kyra with her own plate. "But we already got ours."

Kyra smiled at her daughter. "So true. I have Max, I have you, I have my sisters and their children safe in the village. I've never imagined having even a fraction of such good fortune."

Jasmine nodded solemnly while chewing on a piece of fruit.

"Max traded some highly coveted concert tickets he had for a dinner reservation at Callie's, so Din could take Fenella somewhere nice," Kyra said. "Secretly, I hoped they would decline so Max and I could go."

Jasmine lifted an eyebrow. "That was very nice of him. Getting a reservation at Callie's is almost as difficult as getting one atBy Invitation Only, which is another exclusive restaurant that is not located in the village but belongs to a clan member. I've only eaten at Callie's once, and that was with Brandon pulling strings." She popped a grape into her mouth. "There is no menu, and you get what you get, but the food is divine. If you get a chance to go, don't pass it up."

"Max promised to take me there sometime," Kyra said. "After all the excitement dies down."

"So, never?" Jasmine teased. "According to Kian, we only enjoy small breaks between one emergency and the next, and his advice is to take full advantage of them while they last."

Kyra laughed, the ease of it still sounding unfamiliar to her own ears. Laughter had been a rarity during her years with the resistance. "Well, at least we have a respite now."

"Not for long." Jasmine leveled a pair of eyes on Kyra that were an exact replica of hers. "We need to find the Clan Mother's husband."

That was the actual purpose of their meeting this morning, but Kyra couldn't let the opportunity to have breakfast with her daughter slip by. These quiet moments with Jasmine were precious beyond measure. Twenty-three years of her daughter's life had been stolen from her, and Kyra treasured even the simplest interaction.

"I've been thinking about what the Clan Mother said about my pendant." Kyra set down her fork. "That she thinks it's a key to finding her husband." She touched the amber stone at her throat. "I don't trust it as I used to. It failed me during the mission."

"You keep saying that, but I don't think it's fair. It has guided you well far more times than it failed you, which makes me think that maybe it wasn't wrong. Maybe there was a good reason for it not warning you against contacting Soraya first. Who knows what would have been the unintended consequences of that choice?"

"Or maybe it's just a piece of amber with some symbols etched on it, and I've been ascribing it powers it doesn't have."

Jasmine shook her head, pushed her plate aside, and leaned forward. "It's a conduit for your natural intuitive abilities. It's like a prism, a focus point that helps you tap into something that's already inside you."

Kyra nodded. "The Clan Mother said something similar."

Jasmine stood up and walked to a bookshelf. "It's similar to how I use this." She lifted what looked like a polished wooden stick about eight inches long. "This is my scrying stick, and it's just a piece of a fallen branch, but it helps me focus my energy when I'm trying to locate something or someone." Jasmine returned to her seat, holding the stick out in front of her. "It doesn't always work, but maybe it will cooperate now that I want to demonstrate how I use it."

She closed her eyes, her fingers wrapped loosely around the wooden implement. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Kyra noticed that the stick in Jasmine's hand began to vibrate, gently at first, then with increasing intensity until it looked like it would leap from her grasp.

It was pointing straight at Kyra, or rather, her pendant.

"Your pendant," Jasmine said. Then the stick abruptly stopped vibrating, and Jasmine blinked. "It confirmed that it's crucial to finding Khiann."

"What just happened?" Kyra asked. "How did you do that?"

"I asked my stick to point me in the direction of Khiann, and I held his image in my mind. It pointed at you and your pendant."

Kyra suppressed a shiver. The same thing had happened to Syssi when she'd asked for guidance to find Khiann. The vision had shown her Kyra.

What if Khiann had died after all, and she was his reincarnation?

That thought was beyond disturbing, and not just because Kyra couldn't imagine herself as a male. The Clan Mother would be devastated.

"What does Khiann look like?" she asked, afraid of hearing that she shared some physical characteristics with the god.

"Gorgeous like you'd expect a god to be. The Clan Mother has a portrait of him that she commissioned from a forensic artist who drew it from her descriptions."

"I would like to see it." Kyra's hand closed around the pendant. "If this thing has any mystical powers, it would help if I could do what you just did and hold Khiann's image in my head when I'm asking it to find him."

She could also see whether the image evoked any sense of familiarity.

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