Free Claiming His Human Wife by Sue Lyndon Page A

night, but they look like they’ve been tended by a healer.”
    Edwin laughed. “No healer. I’m immortal, remember?”
    “Yes, but, I thought you were mortal as long as you were outside the walls of Strellia.”
    “I am mortal at the moment, but it takes a lot more to kill me than it would a mortal man.  I heal rapidly, even from most life threatening injuries.”
    Rhiannon looked thoughtful for a moment. “You’re a Crigon, yet you look very much like a man from the Land of Zertrin, albeit much larger than most men. Did Crigons and those from the Land of Zertrin once live peacefully together?”
    Edwin smiled. “I’m surprised you never asked me this question before. Yes, Crigons once coexisted peacefully with those from the Land of Zertrin, long before the Land of Holon existed.”
    “So, what happened then?” Rhiannon felt foolish for not having asked this question sooner. She loved to read, but had yet to open all the history books from her birthday. Most of her reading time had been spent furthering her studies as a healer.
    “Once, there was no Land of Zertrin or any division at all between the peoples of Earth. There were two races upon the lands, Crigon and man. Crigons were mostly hunters and preferred to live as nomads across the vast lands. Man preferred the comfort of settlements and farming. But Crigons and man traded and sometimes intermarried. It was this way for thousands of years, long before the Land of Holon was established by terrible manlike creatures from the southernmost regions of the planet.
    “Stetta and Retta were our sister goddesses, worshipped equally among all peoples. There came a time when the Crigons wished to leave mortal life behind, and journey to the gates of the Land of After, which is what Strellia and Ettonelli were once called as one. There was a nasty plague upon the Crigons, one which had caused men to shun them and led to the great war. Stretta and Retta decided to split their duties between Crigons and man but leave windows between the two afterlifes. All Crigons entered Strellia where they live as immortals, a chosen few leaving in pairs every hundred years to conceive children in the mortal world, though these children may be born and grow to the median age within the walls of Strellia.”
    Rhiannon laced her fingers beneath Edwin’s dark hair. “I wish there was a way for all in the Land of Zertrin to know these things. All those poor people living in the woods as outcasts…”
    “Ah, but most of those people are murderers, Rhiannon. Very few of the outcasts are innocents touched by Crigons. Most who are touched by a roaming Crigon never report the incident and live among men in the Land of Zertrin, just as your grandmother did.”
    “Those from the Land of Holon, I know they are men, but they are evil, aren’t they?” asked Rhiannon.
    “Yes. Those from the Land of Holon are souls damned for eternity in the Caves of Terr. Every ten years, the tormented spirits in the Caves of Terr fly free through the forests in the Land of Zertrin.”
    “The Week of Solitude!” Rhiannon exclaimed. “I remember this, when I was eight and then again when I was eighteen. We observed the Week of Solitude. Everyone in the village was forbidden to leave their homes. We remained silent for an entire week, and then on the seventh day there was a huge party that lasted for two days.”
    “Very good,” Edwin mused. “Yes, this occurs during the Week of Solitude. The damned souls from the Caves of Terr fly through the forests and inhabit the bodies of the living, usually finding only outcasts—criminals who are damned to the Caves of Terr upon death anyway.”
    “So those from the Land of Holon, they are the outcasts inhabited by the evil spirits from the Caves of Terr?”
    “Precisely. The five that I killed were riding horses toward a village in the Land of Zertrin. I vowed that while I searched for your grandmother’s descendants, I would kill any of them I came