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  Heart of the Oracle

  Lara's life has been all about the future of strangers, so when a man enters her life who is interested in her, he may claim the heart of the oracle.

  As a rare survivor of a devastating illness, Lara has fought to live only to end up in a coma on a strange world. Trapped in stasis, she is used as an Oracle by those seeking views of the future.

  When a man comes to her and asks her name, she is smitten and for the first time in decades, she begins to hope that someone somewhere wants her as she is. He proves his dedication and soon he will win the Heart of the Oracle.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Heart of the Oracle

  Copyright © 2012 Viola Grace

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  Heart of the Oracle

  A Trapezium Exclusive

  By

  Viola Grace

  The incessant beep of life support was both a comfort and a torment for Lara. She had been slowly dying for five years and she was done with listening to that sound. Today was the day that they would put her in cold sleep and from then on, she would hear nothing.

  Doctor Hegish smiled at her. "How are you doing today, Lara?"

  He was not an Edinar and that meant that the virus that was taking her life by inches would not affect him.

  She inclined her head. Her voice had been the first thing to go. They had wired her to a communicator, but she was not comfortable with it. She thought it made her voice sound funny.

  "We have your stasis gear ready. Today, we will put in the implants. Tomorrow, you will be on your way to the Coalition research facility where they can work to find a cure for this virus."

  Lara sighed. She worked the communicator, wincing at the voice. "Are there any other infected survivors?"

  He shook his head. "Your natural immunity has helped to keep you alive, but nothing that we tried for the others could even slow the virus down. It is contained to this ward now. You are the last patient. Once you are gone, they will close down the ward for an acid cleaning."

  Lara rolled her eyes. She didn't need to know that. Her family was dead, her friends were dead, everyone she had known in her life had passed on while she was lying here with that damned beeping.

  She used her com, "Good luck with the surgery then. This is the last time we shall speak."

  He patted her hand and then went to scrub his skin clean.

  Lara lay back and waited. She would wake up in a research facility and everything would be fine. Everyone she knew was dead, but everything would be fine. She had seen it, for her own future, everything would be fine…eventually.

  One hundred years later…

  Lara could see her body in the shiny reflections of the couch that she was on and its surrounding metal works. Using her spectral form, she idly went over the circumstances of her existence for the thousandth time.

  When her ship was attacked and her travel pod dropped through the skies of Miska, the locals had believed her dead and were going to bury her when she roused enough to use the hated speakers. From that point on, the locals had come to her for wisdom and forecasts of their futures.

  As travellers from the stars discovered her accurate predictions, the people of Miska began to turn a profit by allowing strangers access to their Oracle.

  Her ability to leave her body was recent, but she enjoyed it when she could get away and walk the fields and cities of Miska. Life as a living ghost was difficult, but it was better than being trapped in a cold body while forced to answer query after query about the lives and fortunes of those who visited the temple of the Oracle.

  The moment a supplicant came to the temple, she snapped back into her body. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked.

  As the doorway of the inner sanctum swung slowly open, she watched the supplicant approach her. As many did, he knelt next to the long couch where she laid, the couch that held the circuitry of her stasis unit. He was wearing a cloak that slid partially back to display a richly embroidered tunic and dark hair.

  When he reached for her hand, she quickly slid back into her body and waited for the rush of power that normally preceded a prediction.

  Trapped inside her body, her emotions ran from shock to arousal as his hand spread a wave of heat through her. She hadn't felt heat in over a century.

  "Ah, my dearest. What is your name?" He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand and she felt the touch.

  She wasn't sure, but she thought her audio output sounded breathy. "I am Lara Weaving. What is it that you wish to know?"

  "I am wondering about my future and love." He kept hold of her hand.

  She waited for the rush of knowledge, but there was only a wave of certainty. "Your future and that of the Oracle are linked. Love will come when pain is released."

  "Really?" His tone was sceptical.

  Her precognition took hold and her voice rang with the ice in her veins, "When the Oracle is freed from her duty, pleasure and pain will fight for supremacy and only an Edinar Saber will decide the battle."

  He jerked when she spoke and he pulled his hand from hers. He didn't speak but pulled the cloak tightly around him and left the inner sanctum.

  Lara sighed as her attendants rushed in and cleaned her arm and anywhere he could have reached. Her elegant gown was adjusted as were the soft boots on her feet.

  Lara left her body and watched them work. Her body looked like a lady had just reclined for an afternoon nap if you didn't note the wires that ran along her limbs and were buried in her skin. Her blood had been exchanged for the stasis fluid and it re-circulated through her equipment dozens of times a week.

  When the Miska began getting visitors, they used the funds to acquire the fluids that they needed to keep their Oracle alive. At the point where the Edinar were considered an extinct species, they expunged the data recordings attached to her system. No one could prove what she was without a DNA sample and since the Miska declared her body a holy relic, anyone found trying to take a sample of anything would be bound by law and held on Miska indefinitely.

  Lara let her astral self go for a walk while her body was groomed for the next day of queries. She moved in the least-occupied paths of the market places. Walking through living beings just felt wrong.

  Lara could feel the tug of the man who had so recently held her hand. She rarely stalked her visitors back to their accommodations, but in this case, she couldn't stop herself.

  Out of all the thousands of men who had knelt at her side to get a vision of their future via her words, he was the only one whose touch had warmed her. She had felt him and with a body that was basically dead for all intents and purposes, it was something she wanted to experience again.

  The e
agerness that coursed through her thoughts was unfamiliar, but she locked onto the touch of his mind. She had memorized that feeling in those few seconds and she followed him as quickly as she could. She didn't want to lose him, he was her only hope.

  Why that kept running through her thoughts, she couldn't say, but when she saw his cloaked form sitting at one of the street cafes, she immediately stood behind him, moving her invisible form as close to him as she could manage.

  He was giving off waves of power and from what she knew, that was not a common thing. When the hostess at the café came to him and flirted, Lara wanted to slap the woman on her made-up face. She moved closer to her territory and bristled at the woman.

  The server rubbed her arms. "Did it just get cold?"

  The deep voice of Lara's obsession said, "I was noticing a slight chill. Perhaps it is not a good day to stay outside after all."

  He paid his bill and left the table. Lara stayed right behind him, using his body to block the foot traffic on the street.

  She followed him right into the small hotel room he was staying in.

  The moment he closed the door, he looked around him. "Is that you, Lara? Or should I address you as Oracle?"

  Shocked, she almost returned to her body, but getting control of herself, she managed to stay in place near his bed, staring at him as he flipped the hood he was wearing back so that she could see him completely.

  He had thick black wavy hair with a solid shock of white running from a spot over his left eye. His eyes were a brilliant green, his skin a golden tan and he had a jaw that spoke of a stubborn demeanour.

  She watched him remove his cloak and move around the room, getting a drink and sitting on one of the chairs in the corner. "Well, I have never been followed home by a woman before and certainly not one without a body. How are you doing that, Lara?"

  She jolted. He was staring directly at her. She waved and tried to speak, but in this form, she had no voice.

  He smiled as if feeling her frustration. "I can't see you, I can feel you."

  She walked to him and without thinking about it, swept a hand through his chest.

  He hissed and arched toward her touch. "You just touched me, Lara." He shuddered. "Your touch is cold, but I think I could warm you up."

  She smiled. It was the best offer she had heard in a century. Too bad she was far older than he was. She just wanted to know why she felt warmth whenever he was in contact.

  Focussing on his question, she ran her hand through his forehead. He stiffened and arched toward her, but as she withdrew her spectral hand, he groaned.

  "I didn't know you could communicate like that."

  She was impatient. She could feel a tug back to her body, but she wanted the answer to her question. What are you? She wanted to yell it, scream it, but she had to wait. Another sharp tug to her body lessened her presence in his room. She didn't want to leave until she had her answer.

  Begging him for the information, she pressed her fingers to his temples a moment before she faded away. She heard his shout but was back in her body in the temple.

  One of the attendants was tapping her arm, whispering harshly. "Oracle!"

  Groaning internally at how close she had been to an answer to the one question that she had, Lara opened her mind to the young woman. "What do you wish to ask?"

  The woman sobbed and whispered, "My lover is married and I have just found out that I am with child. What shall I do?"

  Lara's heart went out to her and she quickly examined the possibilities before her talent kicked in. "Go on a pilgrimage to Archilal. Walk the entire way. Your child will prove its own will to live during the trek and you will find a future you could never have imagined, but you must leave now or the path will be unclear to you and you will lose your way. Take what you need from the coffers near my head and run. I swear that no one will pursue you."

  The woman sobbed and Lara left her body to watch the young woman kiss her hands frantically and then do as she was told. Lara wasn't sure if it was her talent as an Oracle or just being told what to do, but most who came to visit the Oracle of Miska took the information to heart.

  Lacking the energy to venture any distance from her body again, she waited out the night and then ran through those seeking the wisdom of the Oracle until the sun set.

  Looking for the male from the previous day yielded her nothing. He was nowhere to be found.

  Three days after he had first knelt at her side, he returned, but it was not during normal Oracle hours. In the fading light of sunset, he slipped into the inner sanctuary and to her side.

  There was something peculiar in the way he moved. He didn't deliberately touch her but moved around the couch on which she was positioned, touching and flicking at the sides.

  She had no idea what he was doing, but with the way he was moving, there was a deadly intent in his manner. Despite her ability to ask him what he was doing, she remained silent.

  As if reading her thoughts, he touched her arm and smiled. "Lara, I need you to remain silent. The security here is keyed to your voice. If you speak, alarms will sound."

  She watched him as he removed small hooks from a pouch at his waist. She didn't have time to wonder what they were for. He lay on top of her as the ceiling exploded in a fine dusting of minute rocks and powder.

  As the night sky became visible to her astral form, she also looked up into his eyes. He winked and took the strands lowered from the open hole above them, hooking her couch to the ship above.

  He must have given a signal, because they rose swiftly into the belly of a small shuttle while guards were reacting to the blowing of the roof.

  "We are off Miska, Lara. Soon, you will wake and then we will be able to discuss what I am and why I am here." He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  Heat flared out of that one touch and she watched everything in the ship the whole night through.

  The pilot and co-pilot were a different race from her hooded man. They respected him and stuck to the business of making their getaway.

  With her body paralyzed and locked, she had never considered an escape. It had seemed like an unachievable dream that she would be free of her duty as an Oracle. Even back at home, her precognition had drawn the attention of those around her, but when the virus hit, all possibilities of using her talent to benefit her own people had gone out the window.

  The city of Akaheel had been a thriving metropolis until the plague broke out and slowly killed their entire population. The city fathers had locked the virus inside with the population and as far as Lara knew, she was the sole survivor of the city that she had called home.

  The Edinar purge had occurred more than a hundred years after her landing on Miska. Her soul had wept when the reports came to her through the petitioners that the Edinar were now considered an extinct species.

  Whoever had stolen the Oracle of Miska, at least he was breaking up a mind-numbing routine. She only hoped that her systems were able to keep her alive long enough to enjoy the novelty of being in a cargo hold and flying through the eternal midnight of space.

  There was a crew waiting for them on the station and the moment that they docked, the medical and engineering staff swarmed the shuttle.

  Her companion was ordering the staff around as they rolled the entire support structure she was wired to into a medical bay.

  He barked commands and she watched from beside her body as they lifted the wires and began to replace the fluid that sustained her with blood.

  She knew enough about physiology to know that they had to use the correct blood type or she would die, but as her body slowly shifted from chalk white to pink, she realized that they knew exactly who and what they were dealing with.

  "Did you put the anti-viral in the blood?"

  "Yes, my lord." The physician nodded rapidly. "She is warming."

  The engineer stepped forward. "Are you ready, Doctor?"

  "I am."

  The physician had a glowing rod in his hand and Lara couldn
't figure out what it was for until the engineer removed the first wires attached to her arm. The physician moved quickly and the searing pain that went through Lara's astral body was enough to make her try to cry out.

  Her arm was on fire and she sobbed.

  Over a century of no feeling and her first real touch to the physical was pain. Desperate to tell someone what was going on, she ran forward and passed through the male who had started all of this, falling and settling back in her body. She was unable to keep her mind separate from her body any longer. The pain was going to be the first thing she felt when she woke, if she woke.

  * * * *

  Prince Saber Enders reeled at the pain that Lara was feeling. She had passed through him but now was nowhere in the room. As he focussed on her body, the faint glow that was her astral self mixed with her physical features.

  "Sedate her."

  The engineer and the physician paused.

  The doctor stated, "She is asleep, my lord."

  "She is anesthetised, not asleep. Her body still feels and her mind is screaming as you proceed."

  The doctor blinked and quickly administered a gas to the still woman. As she relaxed, her aura melded to her body and the tiniest smile came to her face.

  The doctor looked down at her and blinked in surprise. "She's smiling."

  Saber nodded. "The pain is gone. Her aura is changing from hot purple to blue."

  The surgery to his future bride continued, separating her from the wire and metalwork that had kept her alive. He had searched hard and long for another woman of his species and he was not about to let a little thing like her being clinically dead stop him. She was coming back to life in front of his eyes.

  * * * *

  Lara's first deep breath on her own ended in a coughing fit. Without electronics propelling her breathing, her body had forgotten what to do.

  Her hands flailed and clutched weakly at the bedding. Her mystery man was at her side in an instant.

  "Lara, how are you feeling?"

  She moved her hands, her feet, felt her heart beat in her chest and smiled before she tried to speak. It took her more than five tries to speak the word, "Better."