Raas Vassim gave her a small bow. “It is good to see you again, Ferria.”
Chapter Nine
Vassim
It had been many rotations since I’d seen the seer, and even more since I’d seen her take the form of a Bederian winged troll. She blinked her luminous, green eyes at me, motioning for me to take a seat on the tufted red bench across the table from her.
“I would say you are looking well, Raas, but I would be lying.” She steepled her fingers and looked over them at me, her gaze shrewd. “You have found no respite from your torment.”
Even though she didn’t ask it as a question, I answered. “No. My only escape is avoiding sleep.”
She nodded. “Which is slowly driving you mad.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she flicked a finger at me. “Even here, the rumors of the Lunori Raas reach my ears. But I wonder if you are as deranged as they claim?”
I bristled at the boldness of her statements. I’d grown used to the whispers, but there were few who would dare question the sanity of a Raas to his face. Ferria was different. Her power humbled even me.
“There is still nothing you can do for me?” I asked. “No spell that can take away the nightmares?”
She leaned back and loosed a sigh. “As I have told you before, the curse that has been placed on you is not one that can be unraveled by a mere spell.”
I growled in frustration. I had heard this claim from her lips many times, and each time it provoked an impatient rage. How had I become the first Vandar raider to be cursed during a battle?
“You might not have known the alien you slayed in battle was a powerful warlock,” she said, as if reading my mind, which it was entirely possible she’d done, “but it’s clear he managed to cast a curse on you with his dying breath.”
I thought back to the alien I’d dispatched before hearing the cry of my Raas. He’d been lying on the ground, blood and unintelligible words burbling up through his mouth. Words that had been a curse he’d cast on me that forced me to relive the battle and my Raas’ death—complete with the smells and sounds and pain—every time I attempted to sleep. If I could go back in time, would I have spared him? No, I thought, balling my hands into fists. I would have killed him quicker.
“But we aren’t here to talk about why you were cursed, are we?” Ferria’s gaze slid to the human. “You’ve come to me to ask me a question.”
I glanced at Juliette, and my pulse quickened. Even in the candlelit room, her gold curls created a halo around her head, making her appear almost as otherworldly as the alien shifter witch. In this world, a being as innocent as her was as foreign as any magic.
I hadn’t released her hand, and now that I wasn’t focused on Ferria and my own bad recollections, I felt it trembling in mine. The human female who’d never set foot off her backwards planet was clearly petrified of the seer and the strange pleasure house. As much as I wished her to be the solution to my curse, a part of me thought it impossible that such a fragile, timid human could help me.
It was common knowledge that humans were smaller and weaker than Vandar, although like us, they were a species who’d left their home world millennia ago. Scattered throughout the galaxy, they were not known for exceptional battle skills or technological advances. How could one of them be the answer to anything?
A low rumble escaped my lips as I thought about the human female who’d snuck onto my ship. She might be slight and scared, but I could also not deny my desire to claim her. Perhaps it was because she was so unlike any females I’d encountered before that she stoked my need and fired my instinct to possess.
“Ask me.” Ferria stared only at me and spoke now in my native Vandar tongue.
“Hoon vak denini?” I replied in Vandar. Is she the one?
The seer cut her gaze to Juliette again, narrowing her eyes. The human sucked in a breath, as if she was attempting to snatch it away from Ferria. Then Ferria reached out a hand and touched her cheek, a spark flashing between the two females’ flesh.
The seer’s lips curled into a smile. “How did a Raas of the Vandar manage to find such an unspoiled female?”
“She came to me.”
Her arched eyebrows quirked. “Even better.”
“So? I asked, hearing the snap in my voice. “Is she the one you foretold?”
Ferria gave me a curt nod, and relief coursed through me. I released Juliette’s hand and scraped my fingers through my hair. “After all this time, it was a human.”
“Yes.” Ferria drummed her fingers together. “It’s an unexpected turn of events.”
I straightened, feeling a surge of power I hadn’t experienced in a long time. “How long until I can expect the cure to break?”
Ferria smiled at me again, but this one was not kind. “Did you really think it would be that easy, Raas? That you would find the female from the prophecy and the curse would be gone?”
Her mocking tone made my hopeful heart grow cold and my anger flare. “You are playing with me, witch.”
She made a soft tsk-ing noise in the back of her throat as she shook her head. “The only drawback to you big, gorgeous Vandar is your nasty tempers. I never told you that finding the female was the way to break the curse, only that you needed to find her in order to break it.”
I tempered my anger, drawing in a breath to steady myself. “So what now?” I avoided looking at Juliette, whose head was toggling back and forth between us as we spoke
