Lori Wilde - Destiny's Hand

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

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To Betty Werner, a fabulous artist.

Thank you for your talent and the gifts from your heart.

Egmath knew he was dying.

His vision was gone, his limbs numb and useless, his blood seeping away from him, soaking into the hot desert sand. But the wicked sword that had mortally pierced his heart in the heat of fierce battle had not destroyed his soul.

One thought. One single precious thought dominated his essence.

Batu.

His beloved.

He thought of her sweet voice, her delicate scent, the feel of her soft lips upon his. How silky was her hair. How creamy her skin. But those were not the reasons he loved her. He loved her sharp mind and her tender laugh and the way she made him feel special. He loved her courage and her determination. He loved the way she had respected his code of honor and had not asked him to violate it. Not even so they could be together.

Batu.

He thought of the way they’d played in the cypress grove as children, laughing and teasing each other. He recalled how their love had grown as they’d grown older. The first kiss they’d shared. The love they’d made. He remembered the pain of learning that he must marry her sister, that in this life Batu could never be his. For that reason alone he was glad this incarnation was over.

Egmath had known her and loved her from a time beyond time. She was his soul mate. They were fused. One. It did not matter that duty demanded he marry her sister, Anan. Batu was forever his and he was hers. They were two halves of a whole. Nothing could tear them asunder.

Not even death.

He felt no pain, for his love for Batu sustained him as he left the world, his spirit flying far above the battlefield. Taking him to a place of quiet peace, a place where he knew the truth.

Only love was real.

The one eternal constant.

Finally he let go, completely severing the thin silver thread anchoring his soul to his body. Knowing everything was all right. Knowing that one day, he and his beloved would be together again.

For she was his destiny.

Arik, Egmath’s second in command, was wounded, but not mortally so. Bleeding and in pain, he staggered through the horror of the battlefield. He examined the bodies, searching for his leader and praying to the gods that Egmath, the greatest warrior who’d ever lived, had somehow managed to survive the carnage.

“Egmath,” he shouted over and over, but the only sounds that met his call were the sounds of men dying.

After a long search, his heart tightened in his chest when he caught sight of Egmath’s familiar tunic fluttering in the wind. He dropped onto his knees in the sand beside Egmath’s body, grief twisting tears from his eyes. Egmath stared sightlessly at the sky, but he had a beatific smile on his face, as if he’d seen something glorious calling to him from the other side.

Egmath had been not only Arik’s leader, but his best friend, confiding things to him that he confided to no one else. Arik knew about Batu. He knew about the White Star amulet.

The amulet. Where was the amulet? Egmath would want him to take it back to Batu. But the amulet was no longer around his neck where he normally wore it. Arik checked Egmath’s tunic to see if the White Star had been torn from the leather strap and fallen into his clothing but he could not find it. Feeling almost frantic, as if he were letting down his friend in the one time he needed him most, Arik rolled Egmath’s body over and searched the ground beneath him.

No amulet.

He gently rolled him back over. “I’m sorry, my old friend. I let you down.”

And then something caught his eye.

Egmath was clutching something tightly in his hands.

Arik slowly pried Egmath’s fingers open. What he saw there was not the White Star amulet.

But something far more valuable to Egmath’s beloved Batu.

Arik knew what he must do. He would take this to Batu and protect it with his life.

The Legend Concludes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Author

Coming Next Month

“ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY certain this is the way to get the magic back?” Morgan Shaw whispered urgently into her slim black flip phone.

On the sidewalk outside the Grand Duchess, a fashionable boutique hotel located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Morgan paced in the gentle breeze of an early September evening. In her estimation, she was dressed, to put it quite succinctly, like a hooker. Tight black leather miniskirt, stretchy red Lycra top with a plunging neckline and Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman thigh-high boots. She wore too much makeup, not nearly enough lingerie and an auburn wig that made her scalp itch.

And every time she stalked past the discreet front entrance of the Grand Duchess, the top-hat-wearing doorman shot her a one-wrong-move-doxy-and-I’ll-sic-the-cops-on-you glower.

Morgan tugged at the hem of her miniskirt in a desperate attempt to make it look longer, to make herself feel less mortified.

“Stoking sexual desire is the first step in recapturing the magic,” lectured her younger sister, Cass, who was on the other end of the cell phone conversation. “Ultimately it’s all about the hot sex.”

“There’s hot sex and then there’s—” Morgan peered down at her skimpy attire and shook her head “—just plain hot to trot.”

“Hey, hey.” Cass read her thoughts. “Those were my best going-out clothes before I met Sam.”

“Exactly. That’s what terrifies me.”

“Need I remind you, sister dearest, that you were the one who came to me for advice?”

“No, you’re right. I can do this,” Morgan said, feeling as jittery as if someone had forcibly injected her with pure Colombian coffee-bean extract.

“Sure you can. Be bold, be brave, be bewitching.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re already all those things.”

“You can be, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Morgan mumbled. She stepped back against the wall of a nearby residential building to get out of the way of foot traffic. “Decking out like a Victoria’s Secret model seems so overstated.”

“You’ve tried understated and it really hasn’t had the desired effect you were going for now, has it? Do you want the magic back or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then for crying out loud, if you want to snag Adam’s attention, you’re going to have to do something big and dramatic.”

The concept sounded so sensible when Cass vocalized it, but to Morgan it seemed the emotional equivalent of using a flamethrower to light a votive candle. Serious overkill.