Emaris’s office looked exactly as it did the day that he almost killed me. When Ahzeen threw the door open
and yanked me inside, for one split second I could have sworn I saw Esmaris’s unmistakable form in front of the window, shoulders square, hands clasped behind his back.
“I hesitate to say that you and I have anything in common, but it seems that we do both love putting on a performance.” He sent me hurling against the desk. I stopped myself from falling with my palms.
Gods, I was so dizzy. I thought it would stop, but it was like my consciousness just kept draining and draining. I turned and straightened, even though it took all of my strength.
At least we were alone. I had killed one Mikov in this room. I could kill another.
“What is it that you want?” I asked. Time. I just needed time. “The Orders can give you funding, if you wish.”
“I don’t need your money.”
I don’t need your money. Crack!
There it was again: a faint, faint lurch at the back of my thoughts. This time, it was pronounced enough that I understood what it was, and my heart leapt.
Reshaye, I whispered, but received no response.
But if it was still there — I could draw it out. I could
force it out.
“Influence,” I said, to Ahzeen. “You said you had requested the assistance of the Orders. They will give it to you in exchange for our release.”
“Your release? I have the Second to the Arch Commandant locked up. I already have influence. Besides, slaves do not get to drive bargains.” He grabbed my chin, fingers pinching my face as he turned it, examining me. “I do remember you. You were his favorite. I didn’t understand why, even then. You look like a piebald cow. And yet— he protected you over me.”
He released my face, only to grab my shoulder and spin me around. My skin crawled as his hands raked down my back, lingering over my scars. “But he rendered you useless with these ugly things.”
A plan unfurled in my mind.
“But in the end, he couldn’t kill me.”
Ahzeen was so, so easy to bait. He struck me again, sending my face slamming against the desk.
As I pushed myself up, I imagined what his life would feel like withering beneath my hands, just like his father’s had. My eyes bore into the desk. That white desk. And I threw myself into my fear, into my anger, until it consumed me.
Reshaye, I whispered, again.
I felt it move, prodded by my anger and pain.
“You aren’t the only one with a penchant for the poetic,” he spat. For one moment, my eyes lifted out to the window, looking out over the stepped marble of the Mikov’s beautiful city, blocks of silver and shadow bathed in moonlight.
I listened to Ahzeen’s footfalls cross the room. Open a closet that I knew very well. I wondered if my old clothes still hung there.
Do it, I dared him, as his steps returned to me.
As the whip sliced through the air with a lethal whistle, and lit agony across my back.
Crack!
I forced my eyes open. I forced them to stare at that gleaming desk, filling my vision with white.
Nothing but white and white, for so many days, Reshaye had wept. I forced my face into everything that terrified it.
Crack!
Nothing but white and pain.
I thought of Esmaris, of his cold hatred, at the way it had struck betrayal into my chest. I flooded my thoughts with the agony of it.
Reshaye!
{Stop.} Its pain twined with my own. Distant. Faint.
The magic inherent in my blood was rendered useless, perhaps. But Reshaye was magic. Maybe it pulled from something deeper.
And I would not — would not — allow Ahzeen Mikov to destroy me or the people I cared for. I didn’t have time to be afraid of the monster I’d have to summon to do it.
Crack!
Warmth spilled down my back.
{Stop!}
If you want it to stop, then MAKE it stop.
Heat flooded my veins.
I began to taste Ahzeen’s rapid fury, putrid and metallic.
A frenzied smile spread across my lips.
Crack!
I felt Reshaye roar to the front of my thoughts, lighting up the threads of my mind with power that stole the air from my lungs.
The world snapped back into focus.
I felt Ahzeen’s aura solidify. The moment I did, I grabbed onto it with razored claws.
I spun around just in time to see him with his arm frozen. The anger that pinched his face shifted to confusion, then fear.
The last time I stood here in this room, with a man’s life in the palm of my hand, I had been terrified of what I had done.
Not this time.
I drew the fingers of my magic around his mind and squeezed. He dropped to his knees.
A wave crested inside of me. Blood rushed through my ears as I bent over and grasped his face with one hand. His flesh withered around my fingers, spiders of black decay crawling over his cheeks.
I brought my face so close to his that the smells of his wine-sweetened breath and putrid rot mingled in my nostrils.
“Tell Esmaris I sent you,” I whispered, and drew the fingers of my magic and of my hand together until both his mind and his rotting jaw were crushed to jelly in my hands.
The wave broke, and Reshaye screamed a terrible, wordless screech as it drowned me.
