“My orders are to secure the head,” she said.
There would be violence. The air was ripe with it.
“You’ll have to go through me,” I told her.
“So be it.”
“Walk away,” I told her. “My father isn’t worth your life.”
“If you kill me, I’ll be slain by Sharrim in battle. If I kill you, I’ll be slain by Sharrum in his grief. My entire life culminates here. My passage to the afterlife is assured. I’m at peace.”
“How about door number three? Turn around and go live a nice life somewhere else.”
“You do me a great honor, Sharrim. Defend yourself.”
She opened her mouth. A torrent of magic smashed into me. My ears recognized the fact that there must’ve been a sound, but I didn’t hear it, I felt it. It crashed into me, instantly freezing every muscle in my body. It was as if my very cells turned solid. The world slowed to a crawl. I couldn’t move.
She’d used a power word against me.
I saw her lunge at a glacial speed, her katana swinging in a glittering beautiful arc, slow, but impossible to stop. Classic attack, two hands, devastating power, born from strength, speed, and precise movement perfected over countless generations.
The sword was coming toward me and I was standing there like an idiot.
I reached deep inside myself and pulled on my magic. Straining was agony. Summoning the power was like grasping my own veins and pulling them out of my body.
The sword reached the highest point and began its inevitable descent.
I pulled. Move or die. There was no third choice.
The sword carved its path through the air.
I forced my lips to open a mere crack. The power word was a whisper, a faint breath that escaped my mouth almost on its own.
“Dair.” Release.
The magic’s hold shattered. I shied back. The point of the katana slashed across my face, right to left, drawing a hair-thin line of pain. She struck again, overhead, left to right, too fast to see. I batted her blade aside. Steel rang. She cut at me a third time and I caught her sword on Sarrat. Our blades locked. She threw her entire weight at me, pushing.
My arms shook from the strain. The blades vibrated. Strong.
She grunted, squeezing more pressure. Very strong.
Not strong enough.
I jerked my arms up, throwing her blade and her arms upward. She brought it down, aiming for another devastating cut, but I sliced across her torso, left to right. Sarrat bit deep, cutting across her stomach and coming free, blood flying from its blade.
She fell to her knees and sank down, curling on the ground. So much skill. So much training wasted. Years of practice and study for three seconds of battle and for what? Because my father told her to fetch the head at any cost. She hadn’t questioned it. She obeyed.
“Was it worth it?”
She was gulping air in shallow breaths.
I crouched by her.
“Was your life worth this? Can you see the afterlife? Is it everything my father told you it would be? Or is it darkness and nothing?”
She was staring at me, her eyes wide with fear.
I should kill her and send her head to my father on a fucking pike. Her presence in my land was an insult.
Drops of blood slid from my wounded face, falling into the gash on her stomach. They landed in the pool of her blood, drops of pure fire falling into cooling water, and then something within her blood answered. Her body clutched onto my blood, receptive and eager. Her magic recognized mine. My father had done something to her. The imprint of his power burned within her. He owned her and he had sealed his ownership with magic. I’d felt something similar before on people who were cursed. She was a slave.
No. She’s in my domain. You don’t get to keep this one. This one is now mine.
I dragged my hand over my wound and let my blood fall into her. Commanding her to be released wouldn’t do it. I had to supplant his ownership.
“Hesaad.” Mine.
Her body shook. My father’s seal held. I gritted my teeth, pouring magic into her. It pulled her from the brink of death, but she was still his.
“I swore an oath, Sharrim . . .” she whispered. “He’s Sharrum . . .”
“He isn’t here. This is my domain. Here I’m Sharratum. Here I rule. My word is the only word that matters.”
The pressure of my power had ground the seal to almost nothing, but couldn’t pierce it. It needed to be broken from within. I needed movement or words, some sort of indication, some specific action I could make her do. If she acknowledged and obeyed, it would shatter the seal like the strike of a dagger.
“Rise.”
She screamed.
“Rise.”
Convulsions gripped her. She needed help. She’d lost too much blood.
I put my hand above her chest, the surface of my palm a prism through which I focused on the blood inside her. It felt . . . right. I sensed her heart beating and my blood spreading through her like fire. It pumped and each pulse set the intricate net of her capillaries aglow.
Magic bubbled up from somewhere deep within me and flowed out into her. Her body straightened, pulled by my power.
“Rise.”
The seal shattered in an explosion of power. She rolled to her feet and stood.
Her voice came out strained, in tortured gasps. “My life . . . for you, Sharratum.”
She swayed, but stayed upright. Blood soaked the entire front of her coat. I could seal her and she would be completely mine. The groundwork was already there.
No. Curran wouldn’t like that.
“Your life is your own. I don’t want it. You’re no longer a slave.”
I let go. She collapsed on the bridge.
I turned around. Derek stood completely motionless four feet away from me. I’d been concentrating on her so hard, I hadn’t heard him walk over. Behind him Ascanio stared at me, his face shocked even in half-form. Holland gripped his sword, watching me like I was rabid.
Damn it. I did it again. I let the magic drag me under. How the hell did it even happen . . . ?
“Sharrim,” the woman on the ground whispered. “Let me serve you, Sharrim. My life is yours. My will is yours. Kill me.”
Oh crap. Crap.
“Everything I am is yours. All I ask is a good death.”
“Why do you keep doing this?” Derek snarled.
“I haven’t done anything.”
His eyes glowed bright yellow. He bared his teeth, his muzzle wrinkling in an ugly snarl. The fur on his back rose. “Do you think it’s fucking easy for Julie? She never forgets that you can override her will with one word. She feels you. Always! Every fucking second of every day.”
Julie knew. She knew.
“She already loves you as much as she can. I would die fighting for you.” He stabbed his clawed hand at Ascanio. “He would die for you. Isn’t it fucking enough, Kate? How much love and devotion do you need that you keep making slaves?”
It felt like he had stabbed me.
“I didn’t make her into a slave.”
“She’s bleeding out and all she wants is for you to love her and kill her. What the hell do you call that?”
“I didn’t enslave her! My father did. I broke their bond. She’s free now.”
“I’m so sorry, Sharrim,” the woman on the ground whispered. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult.”
“Will you obey any order she gives?” Derek snarled.
“Yes.”
Derek pointed to her. “Don’t lie to me, Kate. I’ll do almost anything for you, but don’t lie to me!”
He didn’t believe me. He was right there when it happened and he didn’t believe me. Curran wouldn’t believe me either. Julie knew she couldn’t refuse my orders. Everything I
built was collapsing around me.
The magic tore out of me and I screamed into it. The land screamed with me. Water shot up from the river, the trees jerked up as if pulled straight by an invisible hand, and every weed stood perfectly straight. Derek clamped his hands onto the bridge rail. Holland flew back. Ascanio caught him and spun him around, grabbing the rail and shielding the deputy with his back.
I screamed, the frustration boiling out of me until it was finally gone.
Water collapsed back into the river, drenching us with spray.
I had to fix this. I had no idea how and I was suddenly so tired.
I exhaled and turned to Derek. “Have I ever lied to you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Have I ever lied to you, Derek?”
“No.”
“I’m telling you right now I didn’t turn her into a slave. I could’ve, but I didn’t. I don’t know what she is. I don’t understand why she is acting this way. But we’re going to find out. Pick her up. We’ll take her to a medmage and when she’s better, we can ask her questions.”
He stared at me.
“If you won’t carry her, then I will,” I told him. “But she would be more comfortable with you because you’re stronger. Or you can walk away. That will be fine, too.”
Derek scooped the woman off the bridge. Ascanio picked up the old woman’s head.
We started down the path back to civilization.
I’d fucked up. I didn’t cross the line but I came close enough to see the abyss at the bottom. Explaining this to Curran would be really difficult. Derek was right there and he didn’t believe me.
“What’s your name?” I asked the woman.
“Adora.”
“We’re going to take you to the emergency room, where a medmage will work on you. Please don’t tell the medmage anything about my father or me. If he asks how you got this wound, tell him to ask me.”
“Yes, Sharrim.”
Derek’s eyes shone.
“Also, please don’t call me Sharrim. Call me Kate.”
“Yes, Kate.”
I needed to figure out exactly what she was before I saw Curran, because I didn’t understand it myself and I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings. I knew what I did and what I didn’t do. If I made it into a “believe me because I am me and you know me” argument, he would give me the benefit of the doubt, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to prove to him with absolute certainty that I hadn’t enslaved this woman. I hadn’t crossed the line. I’d ridden an elephant up to it and run back and forth along its edge while a mariachi band played in the background, but I hadn’t crossed it.
“What kind of language was that?” Holland asked.
“What?”
“When you were talking to her on the bridge, asking questions, what kind of language was it?”
What was he on about? I spoke English.
“I’m going to have to write a report,” Holland said.
I looked at Derek. “Did I speak another language?”
“Yes.” He didn’t look at me.
“What did it sound like?”
“It hurt,” Ascanio said.
“But do you remember any actual words?”
“Estene kari la amt-am. That was the last thing you said,” Derek said.
You’re no longer a slave. Oh fuck. I understood it. I’ve been speaking it. All this time I thought my magic was saturating my words. Fuck.
“Put ‘language of power’ into your report,” I said.
“Okay,” Holland told me.
The Milton ER was our first stop. We left Adora there. I paid for the first twenty-four hours of treatment and told Adora to stay there until I came and got her. The medmage spelled the cut on my face closed and told me to not expect miracles in regard to whether it would scar.
We walked into Beau’s office headfirst. It barely fit through the double door. The sheriff of Milton County looked at the head, looked at us, assessed the sorry state of his deputy, reached into his desk, and extracted a feather.
“This was found where the horses were. The two brothers identified it as belonging to the winged devil.”
I took the feather. It was long and glossy, a pure black that seemed to swallow the light, except for the very tip where a thin orange-red flared as if someone had dipped the feather into liquid fire. Only one being had feathers like that—Thanatos, the angel of death, with black wings and a flaming sword.
As soon as I got to a working phone, I’d need to call Teddy Jo.
“You need to tell Curran,” Derek told me as we walked back to our cars.
“Stay out of my relationship.”
“I don’t want you to turn into someone else,” he said quietly.
“I won’t.” Back in the woods when he was screaming in my face, I’d wanted to crush every bone in his body. I’d stomped on that urge before it went anywhere, but it was there. There were few things that terrified me. That did.
• • •
I HAD TO do a dozen things. I needed to call Teddy Jo. I needed to speak to Sienna. I needed to look through my notes on my father to see if I could find any reference to what Adora might be. Instead I dropped Ascanio off near his mother’s house, dropped Derek off at Cutting Edge, and turned around. I drove through the city as the sun slowly rolled toward the horizon. By the time I got to the Keep, the heat of the day had begun to ease. Evening was coming.
I walked into the Keep, identified myself to the sentries, and one of the guards walked me to the medward. New rules. Jim had decided I shouldn’t be walking around the Keep unescorted. It didn’t even bother me. I’d gone numb.
They’d put Andrea in a corner room, the one with large windows. I walked in. She was eating fried chicken and Raphael was holding Baby B.
Andrea saw my face and stopped eating.
“I’ve come to hold the baby,” I told her.
She nodded to Raphael. He got up and gave his daughter to me. I took Baby B. She stirred a little in her sleep and snuggled against me.
“The other room has the rocking chair in it,” Andrea said, pointing through the open double door. “There’s a nice window there.”
I went into the other room and sat in the rocking chair by the window, Baby B in my arms.
“Is everything okay?” Raphael asked quietly in the other room.
“Things are kind of fucked up right now,” Andrea said. “I’ll tell you later.”
I rocked Baby B. It was just me, the baby, and the slowly dying evening.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed.
Someone walked in. I listened to the steps. Julie.
“Hi,” she said behind my back.
“Hi.”
She came over and sat on the floor by me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Derek talked to me.” Julie sighed and hugged her knees. “Derek is a dummy. Why is it that guys can’t keep a secret?”
“It was a pretty big secret.”
“Well, it wasn’t his to tell.”
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“Roland told me when you went to the Black Sea.”
“Is that how long you’ve been talking to him?”
She nodded.
“He’s poison.”
“I know.”
I looked at her. “Why, Julie? Is it power? Is it knowledge?”
“It’s because I love you,” she said in a small voice.
“What?”
“You’re twenty-eight,” she said. “Voron left Roland’s service almost thirty years ago. The last up-to-date information you have on him is thirty years old. When Voron died thirteen years ago, you lost even that. Roland has done a lot in thirty years.”
“I don’t need you to spy on Roland for me. It
’s too dangerous. You’re sixteen years old. He is over five thousand years old, possibly older. You can’t trust anything he says. You can’t even trust anything you see there. He’s manipulating you and grooming you.”
“Yes,” she said. “He is. He would be manipulating me and grooming me anyway. He wasn’t going to leave me alone, Kate, so at first I wanted to learn as much as I could to shut him out. Then . . .”
“Then?”
“You’re right. I’m sixteen years old. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to be sixteen. He doesn’t understand it. To him everyone is a child. His own childhood was long and happy. He was a pampered prince. But I starved on the street. I learned how to read people and manipulate adults when I was ten.” She bit her lip. “I kind of thought he would be more subtle about it. Maybe if I didn’t have you and Curran, or if he had gotten me really young like he did Hugh . . .”
“You keep thinking that you’ve got this, but you don’t, Julie.”
“He manages what he shows me,” Julie said. “But I’m not you, so he doesn’t manage quite as much. You’re his daughter, his precious jewel. He’s so proud of you. I’m an expendable tool. He wants to sharpen me, use me, and then throw me away when I’ve served my purpose, just like he threw away Hugh. He’s less careful with what he lets me see.”
“All the more reason not to interact with him.”
“You could order me not to do it,” she said.
“I won’t. It’s your life, Julie. You’re a person. As much as it makes me freak out, you have to be free to make your decisions, even the wrong ones. But I think it’s dangerous and stupid, and I will tell you so.”
“In great detail. With a scary look on your face.” Julie sighed.
“Yes. But in the end, they are your decisions. You’re not a baby.”
“Sometimes you treat me like one.”
“I’ll treat you like a baby when you’re fifty. Get used to it.” I looked at Baby B. “I didn’t do it to own you. I did it to save your life. I had no choice.”
“I know. You knew I would hate it, but you did it anyway, because you love me.” Julie swallowed. “So did I. I talked to Roland even though I knew you would hate it. It’s your fault. You were my role model.”
“Great.”