Laura Jo Phillips Read Online Free PDF

sticks and some yarn.  It’s like magic.”
    Berta laughed and shook her head.  “Get on with you now,” she said, waving them toward the door.  “You don’t want to keep those good looking Gryphons waiting on you for too long.”
    Aisling wasn’t so sure about that, but she gave Berta one last hug and left the room, holding her new sweater close to her. 

 
     
    Chapter 2
     
    Xaqana-Ti was feeling tense.
    The Supreme Queen Mother had ordered her to attend Xitura-Re’s trial in person.  As the trial would take place in only a few hours, there was not nearly enough time for her to come up with a reasonable excuse for failing to obey.  There was barely enough time for her to get groomed and reach the Palace Hive on time.
    She wasn’t worried about hiding her glee at Xitura-Re’s predicament.  They were sisters, true, but they were also rivals.  It was perfectly natural for her to be pleased at Xitura-Re’s disgrace. 
    She was, however, worried that she would be unable to hide her deep sense of self-satisfaction at having successfully orchestrated Xitura-Re’s downfall.  Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have mattered either.  But these were not normal circumstances.  Xitura-Re was charged with allowing a Xanti makina to fall into the hands of the Jasani.  A makina that had not, for some inexplicable reason, self-destructed upon the death of it’s occupant.  That was an unforgivable lapse of security that Xitura-Re must personally answer for.  If there was any hint that she, Xaqana-Ti, was really responsible for such a violation of Xanti law, or that her own broodling, Za-Linq, had been operating/ that makina at the time of it’s capture, then she would be tried alongside her sister.
    As Xaqana-Ti widened her mandibles to make it easier for her body males to polish them, she went over every detail of her plan, and her execution of it.  There were weaknesses, she knew.  Weaknesses she had recognized, and deemed to be acceptable risks.  There was no use in regrets at this stage.  All she could do was attend the trial as ordered, and hope that her hard work paid off.  If things went badly, at least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had played the game with intelligence and courage, which was more than she could say for any of her sisters.
    “Enough,” she ordered the body workers.  The small males that had been crawling all over her, cleaning and polishing her large body, instantly ceased what they were doing and scrambled to the floor and away from her.  She studied herself in the mirror and decided her appearance was adequate.  Not perfect, but then, she was supposed to have been despondent for the past several weeks, which made her not quite polished appearance exactly right.
    She turned away from the mirror and left her personal quarters, wondering if there was anything she’d forgotten.  As she made her way through the narrow tunnels of her hive, following the complicated network of twists and turns toward the surface without conscious thought, she decided that she was glad to be attending the hearing after all.  It would most likely take days, as these things often did, but in the end, Xitura-Re would be finished, and Xaqana-Ti would be the victor.

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
    Aisling and Karma sat quietly in the back seat of the ground-car, Rudy and Olaf in the front, and Rand flying overhead in his gryphon form.  Watching the large, stocky man go from the form of a human male to a gigantic beast neither of them had ever seen had been startling.  Once they’d gotten over their shock, Karma had found the process interesting to watch, but Aisling wasn’t altogether sure what she thought of it.  She couldn’t deny that it had been exciting.  But it had also been alarming, mostly because she had never seen a gryphon before and had not known what to expect. 
    During the few weeks she had spent on Jasan with the Bearens, she had seen them in their bearenca form, and