Keeper of the Flame

by Stephanie Burke

  “You were a damned butler!” Kendall groused causing a startled yet quickly smothered laugh from Flame as he took in the meaning of her words.

  “That is a perfect example of my role within the House of Ice, Mistress. A butler indeed!” But the smile quickly left his handsome face as he told her of the rest of the “blessed” event.

  “Later I was forced to stand behind Catla at out mating feast, as she told me to fetch her food and refresh her drink. I can remember her sitting on her family’s throne, tossing her blinding white hair that matched her blinding white gown. To her I was nothing more than fancy street laborer.” Once she even threw her drink into his face as she declared to the humor of her excited friends that her drink was not hot enough for the cold conditions of the ice continent. She also added that she was helping her new life-mate to adjust quicker by giving him an example of what true heat was. Flame said nothing as the near scalding liquid burned his face and chest. He eyed the shocked expressions on his mother and sire’s faces with silent accepting eyes before turning to fulfill the orders of the beautiful monster they had sold him to.

  “I remember after that my mother approached me for the first time since my infancy and halted me in the performance of my duties to Catla. I remember that she grasped my chin and tilted my face to observe the burns there. Testrios women are as tall as most of the men, but she had to reach up to touch my face. Everyone in the room quieted as they awaited what she, the great leader of the House of Fire would do. She reacted because she probably wanted to save face, for it was a direct member of her bloodline being driven like an animal before her peers.”

  “What did she say, Flame?” Kendall was entranced by his skill in telling an obviously painful story. How could a person go through so much and still keep his pride and self esteem intact?

  “She said ‘Treat your life-mate with respect, Catla. People judge you on not how obedient a man is, but on how well he receives his bondage.’ She then returned to her seat and raised her right hand so that my sire, Alonzid, could gently clasp it in his. That is the traditional pose for a mated couple and my parents, with grace and dignity, sought to correct Catla’s behavior. Catla herself glared at me and I knew I would suffer for her slight public humiliation.”

  “Didn’t your mother know that a spoiled child like that would place the blame solely on any convenient scapegoat around, mainly you?”

  “I like to think that she was honestly trying to help. I would also like to believe that she did not know how vicious Catla would be in retribution.”

  “What did she do to you, Flame?” Kendall leaned forward, eyes filled full of compassion as she awaited his answer. Automatically she knew that she would not like what he had to say.

  He would have preferred not to have to answer her question but his Mistress questioned him directly and no matter how personal, he had no choice but to answer.

  “Twenty lashes with the whip and a light flogging with a staff. Catla enjoyed delivering each blow.”

  He spoke of it as if it had happened to someone else, cool and detached, but Kendall knew he was leaving out some important facts and decided not to pressure him into revealing more than he wanted to.

  “On the final day of the two day ceremony, I again took my place behind my mate and carried out her orders.”

  Only his sire noticed that pain in his eyes and that he moved without his characteristic grace. No one noticed that he declined to eat for he knew that if he opened his mouth, the screams would escape. He soon found it hard to concentrate and flushed with embarrassment when Catla repeated a request for the third time. Only the strength of his sire’s eyes held him upright.

  It would be a day talked about for years to come, Flame totally lost his tenacious grip on consciousness, standing upright in his proper place behind his Mistress. His eyes just rolled to the back of his head and his head slumped forward.

  “They didn’t give you time to recover?” Kendall asked softly.

  “Catla did not want her actions made known to my mother. The rest of the story, I cannot recall for my memories of it are scrambled.”

  What he did not see was his sire break away from his proper place behind his mother and race to catch his son. He didn’t hear Catla’s cry of shock or his mother’s bellow of anger. He didn’t feel his life’s blood seeping through the back of his elaborate red tunic to pool at his feet, the result of several raw open wounds on his back. He did remember opening his eyes to see tiny splatters of his blood on the hem of Catla’s white gown and thinking that how he would never be able to remove the stains.

  He lost consciousness again soon after and didn’t see his sister fighting to keep her meal down when his father tore open his tunic to discover the source of the bleeding.

  At first accusations of assassins bandied about the room causing the guards to seal off all entrances and exits, until the bloody wounds that covered back and shoulders were exposed.

  “I remember when I awoke my outraged father demanding to know how long ago I was impregnated. When I told him the night of my manhood ceremony, he told me that if I survived, my son would be proud to know that his sire was being spoken of as the strongest man on all of the continents.”

  “That is all? They didn’t take you home? What kind of parents are they? What kind of love is that?”

  At the same time she demanded answers from him, her heart was aching for him. She seemed to feel an awareness of how he had become the man she had come to know.

  It took courage and strength to go through what he did and not blame his parents for his suffering. It also took a lot of self-control and pride not to shout to all the worlds what had befallen him. Pride was all that he had left and he had refused to lose that.

  “My sibling visited me to inform me that Catla was to be severely reprimanded for her actions.” His sister stood at the foot of his bed with regret shining in her gray eyes that so much resembled his own. “For a moment, I think she felt the time lost between the two of us and regretted it. She said that she was sorry for what had happened to me and that she had felt my pain.”

  “What did they do to that bitch, Catla?” Kendall demanded. Her blood screamed out at the injustice that was served upon him that he seemed to feel was normal. She wanted to hear that that spoiled brat got what she deserved. Catla was the one who delivered the near fatal blows to Flame and she deserved the same treatment.

  “I do not remember, Mistress. I remember drifting in a deep sleep and resurfacing to hear that Catla was not happy with her choice of life-mate or with the son I carried. I do remember waking once and finding myself in an examining room with a scope on my stomach. I was happy to see my fellow Brother, Devo, standing beside me and smiling.”

  “Devo was from a lower ranked house and was sent to the Brotherhood when the woman who wanted to breed with him died. He had the most unusual eyes, more unusual than your beautiful eyes, Mistress. His held a rainbow and changed with his every mood. He had to fight to keep his feelings hidden as much as I had to fight to keep my emotions from showing. Being the two most unusual men in the Brotherhood, we became good friends. He was the perfect man to tell me that my son was healthy and was already doing his duty by protecting his sibling.”

  “They didn’t know that you carried twins?” How could such advanced medical technology miss a little thing like that? “How far along were you into your pregnancy?”

  “I was about a month into my gestation period when I found out about the twins. The original tests were performed at my mother’s insistence when she suspected what Catla had done.”

  “They can tell the sex of a child that quickly?” Kendall eyes almost glazed at the thought. Imagine never having to return baby clothes because you bought the wrong color or having to argue over baby names, only to find out you picked the name for the wrong sex.

  “Usually, but Spark hid his sister well. I believe he was able to cloak her with the energies that he possesses. But Catla never knew what her egg had produced
for soon after a servant came to inform me of the death of my life-mate. Because there was no female heir, I was to return to the house of my mother until the time my son had reached maturity and a proper Ice Continent bride was found. My mother was to seize control of the House of Ice until such a time.”

  “But you carried a female; Ember, and by all rights, she should be the next leader.”

  “My life-mate was murdered, Mistress. I would not let my child face the same fate without doing all that I could to save her.”

  “You hid Ember’s existence from them.” Kendall’s eyes filled with understanding. This man truly loved his children and would do anything to protect them. This was proven time and time again.

  “Indeed, Mistress. I was planning on returning to the Brotherhood then traveling to some distant part of the Wind continent with my children. I was as much an outsider in my mother’s house as I was when I was a child. I held the same rank as my father, but it differed because my power belonged only to the House of Ice. I was again a problem to be dealt with and I did not want my daughter caught in a power struggle. It was better for all concerned if I disappeared with my children.”

  “So why did you come here to Earth. Wouldn’t it have been safer for you to go to a lost sector on your planet than to a strange New World?”

  “Someone, a spy sent by my mother no doubt, overheard the plans I was making with Devo. He was willing to travel with me because he found himself pregnant. With the woman who ordered him impregnated dead, his child would have no house to claim it and that is a serious dishonor among the women of my world. His child would never be anything but the lowest of servants.”

  “On the night before we were to start our journey, my father came to my room and explained that an Execution Squad had been dispatched to hunt me down. My sire knows all that happens in his domain and knew of the female child that I carried. He had made plans for me that I knew nothing about.”

  “You must hide, Flame.” His sire told him as he led them through a complex labyrinth that ran beneath his mother’s great house. “Go to this planet, Earth. I have programmed the coordinates in the flight computer. They are a primitive planet deemed unworthy to know of our existence, but in most places men are deemed equal to women.” His sire winked at him. “Such a barbarous place is beneath our planet’s notice. Go and protect your children, my son. Protect them better than I was able to protect you. I will aid Devo with his plans and you both will have a chance to live a peaceful existence.”

  “That was the last time that I saw my sire, Mistress. I am not even sure that he is still alive for protecting me and aiding in my escape. Now I am not a man to my people, Mistress. I can serve no purpose beyond training and protecting my children. I can understand your pain, Mistress, but I also know that you cannot blame yourself for the actions of others. Am I responsible for Catla’s death or the whole system of government on Testrios? Maybe this Doctor Dick was not the right man for you. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own happiness.”

  When put into that perspective, Kendall could not help but help agree with Flame. Maybe Richard wasn’t man enough to accept her the way she was. The ability to bear children was not what being a woman was all about. Little girls became women then they accepted themselves for what they were and faced their responsibilities willingly. Kendall had always excelled at taking care of business as well as she could and she had long ago accepted not being able to have children.

  It had been hard for her, who wanted a large family, to accept. After her parent’s death, the victims of a drunk driver on a cold rainy night, she and her sister became a family of two. But having an older sister to share her sadness and triumphs with didn’t lessen the pain of knowing that she would never be able to create a large family of her own. She could have adopted, but then she still would never know the joy of having a new life flutter inside her stomach for the first time. She would never know how it felt to carry and nourish a tiny life growing inside of her body, or feel herself swell with new life. She would never be able to swap first-hand tales of the horrors of labor and how it felt to see your creation, your child, take it’s very first breath and make it’s presence known to the world. But she had come to grips with that pain and she would survive Richard too.

  “What happened to your sister? Was she made to answer for her crimes against you?” Flame asked. “Has she come to understand that she also had the right to refuse the use of your property?”

  Kendall was just starting to coming to terms with her womanhood, when he brought up her sister. She thought back to all the time that she had stood beside the woman and watched her finesse and flirt her way out of trouble. Her sister got whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it and knew how to use her ultra feminine charm to help her get ahead in life.

  After her parent’s death, it was Kendall who made all the arrangements while her sister simpered at the family’s attorney who fell all over himself to offer her condolences.

  It was her sister who could, with a flash of her tear-filled eyes. Get them the best tables at restaurants or get out of speeding tickets.

  No man had ever turned her sister down when she was after him, and amazingly enough, jilted women took her side when their boyfriends were caught in compromising positions with the beautiful gentlewoman with the heart-wrenching eyes.

  Her sister had never taken responsibility for anything in her life and never regretted a decision she had made. Why would she break a streak now?

  “No. I just threw my ring at Richard, ran out of the apartment and called the caterer from a pay phone on the way home to cancel everything. Maybe I should have faced them after that horrible scene and made my sister answer to me, but I felt too ashamed. In a matter of weeks, my sister managed to get the man I spent months chasing! You should have seen them, Flame. Richard was walking towards me, buck-naked and my sister started crying fake tears. She looked so ridiculous with that veil covering her face and trying to hide her bare butt behind the train of my gown! Now that I look back, it does seem a little funny.” Kendall smiled at the memory of the staid and proper Dr. Richard Tanner naked and stammering as he chased after her and her sister doing shock and confusion with the talent and skill of an Oscar contender. Then she sobered.

  “I’m such a coward. I should have shut the door and had it out right then and there.” She shook her head at her own cowardice and hid her face in her hands.

  The babies gurgling brought her back to the present. Flame gracefully rose to his feet and extended a hand to assist her.

  Just then as she raised her head to look at him, the afternoon sun broke through the fiery cover of leaves above them and bathed golden light upon his face. She was struck by how absolutely beautiful his face was to her as he gave her a rare smile and patiently waited for her to accept his help. The sun transformed his hair into a fiery nimbus that highlighted his whole being as it flowed gently around him with the light summer breeze.

  “He was not the man for you.” But I am his expression seemed to say. “You are no coward, Mistress.”

  “But I ran away!” she began only to stop as she realized that her pulse was racing and her voice sounded breathless.

  “It is never too late to right a wrong, My Mistress. Even my sire sought to right a wrong that was not his. You can face what you have to.”

  While she basked in the reassurance he was giving, he added, “You are more woman then I have ever known in my lifetime, Kendall.”

  Kendall flushed with pleasure at the sound of her name on his lips. She felt a tingling that flowed down her body and caused her nipples to tighten.

  Here was a man who would not judge her or make her feel inferior because of what she lacked. He even thought her plain brown eyes beautiful. She felt a lightness that even the after-glow of sex with Richard, the man she thought she loved, could not make her achieve.

  She took his hands and jumped at the electricity that seemed to flare up every time they touched. Her whole body quivered as he
helped her to his feet.

  As he turned to lead the way back to the cabin, she realized that she felt something for the big guy that she thought never to feel again, pure unadulterated lust. The beauty of the day was magically restored.

  Chapter Seven

  As he hiked through the lush green grass of this planet towards their shared cabin, Flame reflected on what had taken place in the clearing. The discussion did not turn out the way it should have.

  Flame didn't notice the setting sun or the hues of pink and gold painted across the evening sky. Each step he took reverberated with the sound of Kendall's name. With each breath he recalled her emotions running the gauntlet from astonishment to outright anger as she took in his story. He found it...stimulating to think she expressed such emotions for him.

  He had told her the story of his life in an attempt to infuse her with some of the courage and self-confidence that she had displayed since they’d met. Her tale of woe seemed to expose the spots of vulnerably, and he could not stand to see her weakened by this Doctor Dick who was no real man, in his opinion.

  He saw her confidence return, but with it came that speculative look in her eye. Devo had warned him about that special look a woman was wont to bestow on a man. The enticing smile, the smooth conversation, and the coy looks.

  “They get you into their beds and take what they wanted.” Flame could still hear the pain in Devo's voice. “Women never even check to see how you fared after the act. They just give you a pat on the head and then send you back to your room until they again had a need of you. They promise delights that turn your body into fire and your mind into mush. They always make sure that you want to be used again and again.”

  The worst part of the betrayal came later. “Women almost always say that they want to see what a child of yours would look like. Then it's off to the alteration room for you. Then during the next twelve months while your stomach swells big with the child you created together the woman starts eyeing the next man with a bigger chest, until you come to the realization that you have been used and discarded. The woman always moves on to her next conquest, forgetting your existence until the birth.” Devo's voice had turned bitter. “Then if your child is female, she’ll be taken away from you immediately to receive “proper” training. If you bear a male, the woman will not even give him the benefit of her House’s name.”