"toff, have we ever told you how lucky you were that sissy made that and was able to rekey it to you?" tory grinned at toff.

"i'd be dead now," toff nodded solemnly, tucking the jewel back inside his shirt.

"worth the price," ry sighed.

"so, melida of belancour," tory whispered as they walked down the lengthy, marble-floored corridors to reach the dining hall.

"the records don't give much," ry hissed while toff and tory listened. "grey house forced a writ of detachment, when they found out melida was pregnant with somebody else's whelp when she got to grey house. melida's lying about the cloudsong stuff didn't do her any good, either."

"don't say any of this around mom," tory whispered to toff as they made a turn into the dining hall. toff nodded. he knew how the information might be hurtful.

"ry?" toff, already dressed in pajamas, slipped inside ry's bedroom.

"what, bro?" ry looked up from a game he was playing on his handheld.

"while ago, you said that grey house got a writ of detachment for that woman. i didn't know what that meant, so i looked it up on my comp-vid."

"yeah? did you find what you wanted?"

"yes." toff sat on the edge of ry's bed. "but i'm confused. you only need a writ of detachment if you are already married." ry's fingers stilled on his game keys.

"holy crap," ry muttered and sent a shouted mental message to his brother.

"i have no use for him." marid of belancour paced in front of the magistrate. "he's, well, he's not right. we've not even bothered to teach him, because of this. now that he's orphaned after his mother's accident. i want to turn him over to the state."

"i don't like this-the state can't arbitrarily accept children just because a family doesn't want them. what about his father?"

"melida wouldn't say who the father was. never gave that information."

"she was never married?"

"twice. her first mate was killed; the second one forced a writ of detachment."

"who was the second one? was she pregnant while married to either of her mates?"

"she was pregnant while married to both, although her second mate wasn't the child's father."

the magistrate stared at marid of belancour. he remembered all too well the legal debacle on cloudsong. he huffed out a sigh and pulled up the legal records for their home planet of shaaliveer.

lissa's journal

"a letter from the judicial system on shaaliveer," my assistant, grant, dropped the envelope on my desk. "how are you feeling?" he added. with a worried frown and an eyebrow lifted, he asked the logical question. likely it was because my face was turning a pale shade of green.

"queasy," i muttered, holding a hand against my belly.

"do i need to get someone?" grant was backing up. he was vampire, just as heathe, my other assistant was. his nose, like any vampire's, was quite sensitive. "lissa, are you going to hurl?" he asked in alarm.

i didn't answer; i was too busy losing my breakfast in the wastebasket. grant was out the door and shouting for a healer in less time than it took to blink.

"nissa?" shadow stood in the doorway of nissa's tiny workshop-calebert had given it to her to learn alongside frimus, a second-tier wizard who taught some of calebert's more promising students.

"daddy?" nissa looked up from her work-she'd been imprinting a spelled design into a gold-washed sword pommel.

"nissa, come with me, baby, your great-grampa wants to see us." shadow held out his hand. nissa finished off the spell she'd just done on a whorl design before setting the heavy sword aside. nissa felt her stomach tighten. was great-grampa going to send her down to her former level? she was working as quickly as she could.

"baby, this doesn't have anything to do with your work. calebert says you're doing fine-he just has to make sure you understand exactly what he wants from you, otherwise you tend to do too much. he has to reel in your talent so it's suitable for the job at hand." shadow actually smiled at nissa.

"good," nissa sighed with relief. "do you know what great-grampa wants?"

"not much of it. we need to hear it from him, i think."

nissa walked beside her father as they traversed the endless halls and corridors of grey house. protected by wizardry and enlarged too many times to count, grey house filled nearly the whole side of a huge mountain. grey planet was small-as small as a planet might be and still be considered a planet. surrounded by spells and wizardry of greys uncounted, it appeared to anyone without talent as a burned-out asteroid circling its sun. nissa had seen the beauty of the mountain range surrounding them since she'd first been taken outside grey house as a small child. nissa reached over and slipped her hand inside her father's much larger one as they walked along. shadow grey squeezed her fingers lightly and held on.

lissa's journal

"lissa, are you well?" gavin was there in moments, but karzac had already arrived and removed the offending smell (along with the wastebasket) from my study with power. i leaned back in my chair, a cool cloth draped over my forehead. karzac was kneeling next to the chair and stroking my belly while light formed around his fingers.

"better now," i mumbled.

"sometimes we just have to deal with this," karzac said softly, making slow circles over my skin.

"gavin?"

"cara mia?"

"open that envelope on my desk-the one from the courts on shaaliveer."

gavin lifted the envelope-it was heavy and bore the crest of the shaaliveeran judicial system on the front. forming a vampire claw on a single finger, he slit it open carefully and drew out the contents.

"daddy, we already found out about it-tory and ry had to do an assignment over the economic impact that trell's destruction had on the alliance. one thing led to another." nissa toed a carved leg of great-grampa glendes' desk. the leg resembled the head of a sea serpent. she wasn't looking at her father, her grandfather raffian, who'd also come, or her great-grandfather. she was worried she'd be in trouble for the information she held.

"nissa, they are offering melida's child to us. and to your mother, since she was shadow's other mate at the time. melida was married to your father for a short period of time, although they were never close." glendes looked across his desk at his great-granddaughter. he should be holding her in his lap or next to him to deliver this news. why had he held back all this time? the poor child looked completely lost. nissa held so much of her mother in her. glendes sighed.

"are you going to take him? or her?" nissa amended her first supposition.

"nissa, this child will be turned over to the courts on shaaliveer if someone doesn't come forward."

"does he have talent? why won't his other family keep him?" nissa didn't understand this. the mindspeech she'd gotten from tory indicated that the belancours were doing fine.

"we don't know what he has-they haven't bothered to send him through the rite." glendes slid a photograph across the desk toward his granddaughter. nissa glanced briefly at glendes before lifting the photo. she gasped at the image.

lissa's journal

"lissa, do not hyperventilate-i only got your stomach calmed down," karzac was attempting to get my head pointed toward my knees.

"what," i wheezed, "did those idiots," another wheeze, "think they were doing?" i was breathing with difficulty and trying to straighten up at the same time. karzac shoved me down again.

"lissa, you should have waited to go looking," karzac scolded gently.

"she," i huffed, "took," another wheeze this time, "drugs." i started coughing.

"love, do not distress yourself," connegar appeared, causing gavin and karzac to step aside. connegar knelt beside my chair and placed one hand on my forehead, the other on my abdomen. "there, that's right," connegar soothed as a calming light formed around me. "take this one as yours, lissa, and reemagar and i may be able to set some things right."

"but he's fifteen," i wailed in distress.

"does that mean he needs love less?"

"no." i reached up to wipe away the tear that insisted on falling. "connegar, what are we to do?"

"hush, now, the wizards of grey house are here. with your daughter."

chapter 11

trikleer belancour stared at his shoes. one was larger than the other. it didn't matter-he couldn't walk anyway-the smaller foot was attached to a shorter, withered leg. one of his hands, too, looked the same-withered and nearly useless. trik had learned to feed and dress himself one-handed over the years. he ghosted about the belancour manor-the lower level of it anyway, in a motorized chair.

since his mother's death, none of the family bothered to speak to him. even melida had gone for days without speaking to her only child. marid, trik's grandfather, refused outright to test trik for talent. trik had overheard too many conversations during his fifteen years. conversations that always began with "he's useless without both his hands."

trik had come to hate those words. his right hand wasn't completely useless. he used it to brace things, or he could grasp lightly, if it were clothing to be slipped on. trik used every bit of what he had to the best of his ability. he'd taught himself, too-thankfully, someone had shown him his letters early and he'd picked up reading quickly. they wouldn't have bothered, otherwise. now, he often sneaked into his grandfather's library at night, pulling down books that wouldn't be missed with a pole he'd devised himself, with a little help from two younger cousins. it would reach up and grasp things that were too high for him to get any other way. family members usually grumbled if he asked them to do it for him.