Page 64 of Claimed By her Alien Prince

She stopped to take a drink. My eyes never left her as she gracefully moved around the room, admiring the way she was able to weave her tale and have all of us sitting at the edges of our seats.

She placed the crystal glass back on a table and continued, "There should have been great rejoicing among the Daemons for their victory, but they had too many losses for that. Not one life on the planet was untouched by the death toll. Furthermore, with the Nayphyllym gone, they could not have anymore children, as the Tainted became infertile once their blood became too diluted. They got their planet back, but barely enough people to keep their race going."

She sighed deeply. "That's where Behlial came into play. He was one of the last original Daemons standing. A mere farmer before the Nayphyllym came, he rose in ranks during the war and especially at the end. He led the last battle against the Nayphyllym, the one that drove them away for good.

"As a reward, he was made king. And they called himKing of Darknessas a reminder that he rose out of the darkest times and won."

That, I had not seen coming. When they saidKing of Darknessbefore, I always thought about the devil, but then I reminded myself that the story of the devil had most assuredly arisen from Behlial's visits to Earth. To the early humans, he must have seemed like a devil, so the titleKing of Darknessbecame a glum tale, rather than a heroic one, which he most certainly was to his people.

"How did Earth get involved in all this?" Phoebe, of all people, asked so quietly that at first, it seemed as if nobody heard her, but a soft smile played around Ishtar's mouth as she approached the young girl. Gently, she stroked Phoebe's light red hair back. "Ah, sweet one. Utter misfortune. That's what it was."

She took another drink. "You see, Behlial decided to go in search of the Nayphyllym. Thinking that he had them beat, he thought he could enslave them and use them to breed with the Daemons on Elysian.

"I don't know how, out of all the planets in the universe, he managed to find them, but find them he did."

Her eyes looked forlorn for a moment before she continued. "He didn't find them on Tartarus though, but on a remote planet the Nayphyllym discovered called Adama, which, according to legend, looked very much like Tartarus. Almost a complete copy. Oceans, forests, animals in abundance, even the local intelligent species, Adamas, reminded them of themselves."

"When was that?" I asked, holding my breath for an answer, the historian inside me coiled for an answer. I had to know, I simply had to.

Ishtar stopped and looked me in the eyes. "About forty thousand years ago, your time."

Even though I had been somewhat prepared for her answer, a bout of dizziness enveloped me, the room spun around me, and only when Seth put his hand on my arm to ground me, did it stop, and I was able to refocus.

Ishtar held out a new goblet for me and after taking a quick sniff, figuring it for some kind of alcohol, I downed the entire contents.

Seth looked worriedly at me, and I gave him a brave smile. I wouldn't fold now, I wouldn't. This was too important, and the drink was already reviving me. But one thought played on repeat in my mind: was this Darwin's missing link?

"Do you need to lay down for a while?" she asked me, concerned.

I shook my head rapidly. "No, please continue."

Ishtar gave me a doubtful look, but continued her tale. "After Behlial discovered the Nayphyllym, another all-out war broke out, and neither fraction won. TheAsphodelwas the only ship left of the mighty Daemon fleet, while the Nayphyllym fleet was completely destroyed. Terms of the peace agreement were that Behlial would take the majority of surviving Nayphyllym back to Tartarus, but leave a handful on Adama to breed, for Behlial's reaping whenever the time would be right."

"But if their fleet was destroyed, what incentive could they have held for Behlial to follow through?" Seth asked.

Ishtar shrugged. "The Nayphyllym promised that as long as Behlial stuck to his end of the bargain they would never attack Elysian again ."

It still didn't make sense to me though. "But… Behlial could have just dropped the surviving Nayphyllym off on the moon for all they knew. They wouldn't have survived, and the Nayphyllym on Adama wouldn't have been any the wiser."

"Like I said, the story is tens of thousands of years old, and I only heard Behlial's side. It could be that the Nayphyllym won and wrangled this concession from him." Ishtar allowed.

"So the Nayphyllym, our ancestors, just gave us up?" Azubah asked. "They sacrificed our ancestors to return to their planet?"

I wondered the same, among another thousand other questions.

"This doesn't make any sense," Dina added.

Ishtar's eyes were apologetic as she dropped one more bomb. "Behlial's concession was that he would only be allowed to spend one year on Elysian every seven hundred years. During the seven hundred years, he had to journey from Elysian to Adama and then to Tartarus, while raising seven sons.

"The journey would be called a styx, because it was a journey of death. During this journey, the sons were to battle each other until only the strongest survived." Her voice broke here, and Azazel reached out and took her hand, realizing how much the only person he had ever known as mother was hurting. Seth's hand on my waist tensed, and I laid mine on top of his thigh to give him comfort.

"What happens once we reach Tartarus?" Marduk asked the question that moved to the forefront of everybody's mind.

Ishtar's voice was strong but filled with regret. "We don't know."

"What?" Grigori barked out, echoing my thoughts.

"We don't know. Tartarus is covered in complete darkness. Only a few spaceships orbit the planet; we haven't had any contact with the Nayphyllym in thousands of years," Ishtar explained. "Tartarus has a very high mountain, higher than any mountain on Adama. That's where we're allowed to land a small spaceship and where we're supposed to leave the surviving son."

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