Текст книги "Blood Warrior"

Автор книги: Lindsey Piper

Соавторы: Lindsey Piper
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

Tallis’s blood seized, frozen like a river during an Arctic winter.

Chandrani?

“She should’ve been back with her family,” he said. “You made sure of it. That’s what brought Pashkah down on us in Bhuntar.”

“I did.” Kavya’s voice was stripped. She vibrated beneath his hands, ready to hit him or run—either seemed likely. “But . . . I saw her beaten. She was stripped almost bare. Black Guardsmen had her.”

“Where? Back in the Panjal?”

For the first time since screaming them both to wakefulness, Kavya calmed somewhat. She turned. Her beautiful face was haunted by shadows, with sunken cheeks. Her focus was divided between Castle Clannarah and a distant place. She blinked, looked down at where he gripped her arms. “Tallis?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Where she is . . . I don’t know. But there was no snow. There was a—” She shook her head. “There was a tall . . . rock? It was covered in gray moss. I smelled salt.”

“We need more than that, goddess. Think hard. Go deeper. I know you can.” He pushed the hair back from her temples and held her head in his hands, cradling the place where she stored so many amazing gifts, the least of which was that bestowed by the Dragon. “Remember.”

“It was a dream. They go. It’s not real.”

Tallis made a frustrated noise. “They’re not real—most times. But they leave clues. Images and real things that follow you to waking. Follow those clues. The boulder, moss, and salt.”

She angled her neck so that her crown pressed against his chest. He continued to smooth her long, passion-tangled hair until she shuddered, then sucked in a fast breath.

“Sacred,” she whispered. “Sacred place. The land and sea. The . . . the Mother.”

“The Mother? You can’t be sure.”

“Tallis, it’s breathtaking. The blend of woman and the Dragon.” She stared up at him, her certainty increasing with each blink. “Yes. She’s here.”

Powered by an instant flush of adrenaline, Tallis jumped clear of the bed and began to suit himself in sturdy clothes and his leather jacket. It would serve as waterproof outerwear. His seaxes were the last. He strapped them around his waist using the cheap scabbards they’d used for trade.

“If they’re here in Scotland, Pashkah will be with them, too,” Kavya said. “I won’t let you face him alone.”

“What?” Tallis spun as he snapped out the word. “You’d rather go? I can kill the bastard and be done with it. He won’t ever threaten you again. What could you do but make yourself vulnerable for him to do his worst? I won’t let that happen.”

“You could just as easily be killed. Make me a widow on the same day we married? I’m going with you to see this through. He’s my brother and I despise what he’s done to my life. I’ll be there to see him fall so I can sleep—finally, Dragon be—finally sleep.” She was out of bed now, dressing with the same efficiency. “And Chandrani. I’m not leaving her to be used and butchered. I will not.”

Tallis was a mass of anger and confusion, especially when he realized that she’d donned the ceremonial garment he’d leveraged her into buying in the Johari Bazar. “Forget it,” he said with a crude curse. “You’ll freeze to death before we get there.”

“This isn’t an idle choice, and it’s not for dancing girls or playing dress up. It’s what Indranan women wear when they call out a sibling. The only time my clan doesn’t wear white while in mourning is when we commit the murder ourselves.”

“That’s why you resisted.”

“Yes. And why I ultimately gave in. I knew I’d need it someday.” She lifted her chin. “I’m going, I’m wearing this, and you’ll stop arguing with me if you want to help. Tallis, please. Show me where that madman has Chandrani. Bring me your family’s Dragon-forged sword. I’m done running, hiding, hoping. I want my people back, and I want a life—a life with me and you, where I’ll never fear anything but the day when the Dragon takes you from me.”

Tallis stood there for a trio of heartbeats, but in that time, he took in an incomprehensible amount of detail. She’d braided her hair, although streamers curled out from the hasty plait. The midriff-baring outfit took on ominous beauty now that he knew its purpose. Her breasts were crisscrossed by the heavier purple fabric, and covered with flowing layers that would catch the wind off the North Sea. The purple and orange skirt was muted by the single nightstand lamp, but the bronze medallions gleamed, catching light at every angle.

“The medallions. What do they say?”

“By the gift of the Dragon, I earn my Self.”

His chest was heavy, burning, too tight for breath. He would slaughter Pashkah without thought—no matter who’d been responsible for his dreams. It didn’t matter at that moment, when Kavya meant to take on her brother. “If you want that sword, you let me wield it.”

“It’s my responsibility!”

“To take his insanity into yourself? No.If you believed in what we shared last night, you’ll let me do this. Killing him will be my pleasure, and doing so won’t drive me mad. Tell me the same could be said if you did the deed.”

Her hands were clasped so hard that her knuckles were uneven and bone white. “Hold the sword. Take his head. But you’re not leaving me here.” She lifted her head and revealed eyes as blatantly vengeful and powerful as he’d ever seen. In that moment, he would have sworn he was standing before a Pendray woman on the verge of letting loose the full strength of her fury.

“My family is coming with us. No way are we walking into some nest of Guardsmen with three swords and your skirt flapping in the wind.” He touched her chin, kissed the bridge of her nose. “You’ll distract me that way, my Kavya.”

But then it was all business. He stormed through the castle, banging on every door. He didn’t know which were occupied, so he made a hell of a racket.

“Wake the dead,” he called, using a centuries-old call to arms. “Gather the ancients. Pull sword from scabbard and bathe blades in red. Trouble has come to one of our own.”

Kavya was his wife now. She had joined his clan by blood and love. If his family cared for him at all—no, if they maintained years of honor that extended beyond their affection or bitterness—they’d close ranks, too. There was little the Pendray did better.

Within fifteen minutes, his groggy siblings had assembled. Dawn’s palest light gave extra contrast to the shadows in that rummage sale of a kitchen, but his family stood ready for war. Modern clothes were layered with armor, from chain mail to modern Kevlar. Rill stepped forward and extended her hand toward Kavya. “For you.”

Kavya took the metal collar. Although he hid his shiver, Tallis was reminded of the collars Cage warriors were forced to wear during their captivity. The damping properties nullified their gifts until the collars were deactivated for bouts. It had been a relief to rival few in his life when he’d seen Nynn and her lover freed of those shackles. No Dragon King should ever be restrained, made human in abilities if not in biology.

“It’s to protect you,” Rill said. “Dragon-forged swords can cleave most metal with a single stroke. Not this. You get one chance. After that, his blade will slice through the collar and your neck.”

“Why have we never heard of these?” Kavya asked. “They would be nearly as prized as the swords.”

“Every clan has secrets.” Smiling, Rill’s voice held a malicious edge of pride. “It’s made from the smelted remains of Dragon-forged swords mixed with lesser metals. We’ve made do with what more powerful armies left behind.”

Tallis could practically see protests forming on Kavya’s tongue. She’d find some stubborn reason to put the collar on someone else, keep a different person from harm. On some level she must realize the importance of her own safety—how vital it was that she not be part of creating a thrice-cursed murderer—but her naive optimism was still so strong.

Tallis made the decision for her. He snatched the collar from her hands and tossed her loose braid out of the way. After a swift kiss on her nape where his teeth marks were bright and sensual, he snapped the lock. Her elegant throat was concealed by the shine of unearthly metal, which bore a resemblance to the pale glow of a Dragon-forged sword.

He kissed her on the temple and gave her bare arms a squeeze. “Consider it a wedding present from my family.”

“And this, big brother,” said Serre, “is our present to you.”

With both hands on the hilt and the tip point toward the floor, Serre held the family’s millennia-old Dragon-forged sword like the tribute of a peasant to his liege.

Tallis took the weapon and tested its weight. Power unlike any in the universe surged through into his skin, his bones, his cells. The Dragon lived in him when he held that amazing weapon—the realDragon, not a vision co-opted by a nighttime demon. Their Creator would spin in fury right alongside Tallis’s berserker, which was more than ready to protect its woman.

“Is all forgiven then, Serre?”

“We’re still family.” His little brother offered a lopsided smile that made Tallis’s heart pinch. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing a younger, less jaded version of himself. “And family is a benediction for all manner of sins. Unless you’re Indranan,” he said tightly, glancing at Kavya.

“Then it means a death sentence.” Her words should’ve been listless and resigned, but edgy violence pulsed from Kavya. She was ready. Tallis was proud, and relieved that she would have no regrets. “And I’m not dying today.”

–

So that was the color of his eyes.

Kavya knew it was an absurd realization, just as she knew she should be frozen through and through as Tallis had warned. Yet the fire in her belly kept her warm, and the sight of the North Sea crashing onto the craggy rocks of the northern Scottish coast filled her with peace. She would never know the deep secrets buried in her husband’s soul. Now, however, she knew that his eyes matched the waters of this sacred place. She’d been right. They were the color of an ocean she’d never seen. Frothy, white-topped waves reminded her of the silver flecks adorning each strand of his wind-tossed hair.

The family followed her and Tallis as they climbed the jutting shores and followed a path to the west. An hour passed. Then two. She kept her attention focused on Tallis, lest she telepathically give away her approach. Pashkah’s pet monkeys would obviously be able to sense an oncoming party of Pendray, all dressed to the hilt in armor and mean intentions, but perhaps her presence could be hidden until the last moment.

So she banked the temptation to reach out to Chandrani. To see if her friend still drew breath would be the equivalent of a scream in Pashkah’s ear.

She watched Tallis as he walked with unrelenting strides, each the same distance and intensity no matter the terrain. She had to hop and pick her way across craggy shoals just to keep up. His family was equally fleet of foot as they protected her back. This was their territory, just as the Pir Panjal had been hers.

When Tallis stopped and held up a hand, Kavya’s lungs seized. Didn’t work. For a panicked span of seconds, her mind was trapped in a vessel that wouldn’t move, couldn’tmove.

Then it was gone. She was clad in either the last garment she would ever wear, or the last garment she would ever wear with family yet in the world. That responsibility and grim reality renewed her strength. She was growing more powerful with each passing moment, as if the overnight gift of Tallis’s fight and strength had seeped from his gracefully muscled body into hers.

“Beyond this rise,” he said. “It should be the boulder you saw. I need you to climb up. Stay low. Signal me if I’ve got it right.”

Kavya nodded and moved to go.

Tallis took her hand. Rather than kiss it or bid her good luck—sentimental things a husband might offer his wife—he unsheathed one of his seaxes and pressed it into her palm. They shared a tight smile. That was more fitting. Equal sentiment, but with deadly purpose.

“I’m beginning to like how you Pendray think,” she said.

The climb up the rise was arduous. She wasn’t cold, but her knees felt the sharp pinch of rock. A fingernail sheared away. Her stomach closed into a tighter ball until her guts were made of stone. She was calcifying, becoming part of that sacred place. It wouldn’t have been a bad place to spend eternity, with a view of the ocean the color of Tallis’s eyes. Only, she wanted the real thing even more. She wanted his eyes every day, gazing down on her when she awoke, burning her with their intensity when they made love. On some evening yet to be, she’d position a mirror in front of their faces when he took her from behind. She wanted to see the sharp blue glow of his eyes when he bit her nape.

A shudder worked across her shoulders. She clasped the hilt of his seax with even more assurance. Pendray territory. A Pendray weapon. A Pendray husband. She was ready to crawl out of her skin with the need to do violence.

His family. She was drawing from his family. Not their gift, as the Sath did—known derisively as Thieves, temporarily stealing the powers of other Dragon Kings. No, Pendray had unlimited stores of confidence in battle. They were disrespected as a backward clan, but they knew how to fight. Hand to hand, weapon against weapon—nothing and no one equaled them in sheer ferocity. She relished its beat in her blood.

At the top of the rise, she lay low across the ridge, belly to rock. As Tallis had described, the distant boulder was shaped like an ancient Neanderthal goddess, all rounds hips and curvy stomach and heavy, ripe breasts. Yet touches of the Dragon were everywhere, in the lick of a serpentine tongue, the potential carnage of hooked claws, and the slanted eyes that would protect or threaten, depending on who looked upon that mystical formation.

It was the rock formation from her dream.

The Mother of Clan Pendray. Their symbol of the Dragon.

Down in its shadow waited the villains she sought. The eight Guardsmen surrounded Chandrani. Pashkah paced in a wide circle around the ensemble. He’d reach the twelve-o’clock position and turn back the other way. Clockwise. Counterclockwise. She’d forgotten that particular quirk of his, a similar means of sorting thoughts and maintaining calm that Kavya used when clasping her hands. His brown hair was covered by a heavy brocade headscarf, the tail of which whipped in the salty sea wind.

He wore purple and orange and winking medallions that promised he intended her death just as much as she needed his.

Without looking away, she signaled the others to join her. Tallis was by her side in a matter of seconds. The pulse of his fury had tickled her back and arced down her thighs, even while he waited at the base of the rise. When he lay on his stomach beside her, he was like a wood stove left unattended, burning, pulsing, until it flamed with heat enough to melt the metal trying to contain the fire.

She grabbed the hair at the back of his neck. It had been shorter there when they’d first met, but weeks of travel meant she could find a passable grip. “I need you, Tallis. Tell me you’re in there.” She yanked his hair again, then shot him a wicked smile. “I’m not Pendray, so I’m not playing by all of your clan’s rules. Forget a one-way claiming. I’m biting your nape one day. This will be mine. Do you hear me?”

A growl pushed out of his throat, his chest, his soul. “You think that’ll calm my fury, goddess?” he asked, rasping, as if invisible hands pressed on his larynx.

“No, but you’re replying with more than single words. I need you, Tallis. Thinking as well as culling. You’ve seen what he can do and what pain he can inflict. Your family has no idea.” She kissed the back of his neck, before smoothing his wild hair into place. “Tell me who you are and why you’re here.”

“Protect my family, rescue Chandrani, keep my wife safe, and rid the world of a Dragon-damned piece of shit.”

“Tall order.”

“Big sword.” He matched her tight smile before adjusting his grip on the weapon that hummed with as much power as he did. His eyes glowed mean and vital. “Now let’s go.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Tallis’s surge down the crest toward the foot of the Mother followed a pattern woven into the fabric of his people’s memories. The high ground. Swooping in like raging locusts intent on feasting. How dare they invade our homes? Threaten our women? Disturb this sacred place?

The only way a Pendray knew how to cleanse sacred places was to wash them clean with the blood of strangers. Enemies.

He accessed his gift more quickly and with more certainty of purpose than he’d ever been able. Halfway down the slope, he was no longer Tallis. He was a Pendray warrior, content in the knowledge that his family roared behind him with equal rage.

The Guardsmen were fast. Tallis gave them that much. The Indranan weren’t known for being great physical warriors, but this lot was well trained in swordplay and had the advantage of telepathy. Tallis was already too far gone for their wizardry to reach him. What felt like mental bullets pinged off his thoughts. He’d wrapped Kevlar through the folds of his brain. The closer he got, the more quickly those bullets fired. He kept running, until he was a man without legs; he was a roiling storm cloud of anger so intense that his mind was wiped of all but two words.

Kill Pashkah.

Honnas was by Tallis’s side when they charged the nest of men dressed head to foot in black Indranan armor. Swords lifted, the Guardsmen seemedready. The pitiful nature of their defense said they definitely were not. When Serre joined his brothers in the fray, he did so as a monster contained within the body of a young man in his prime.

Blood surged through Tallis’s body. Consumed him. Overwhelmed higher function. He was only turn, thrust, duck, spin, hack. They had taken on greater armies. They had taken on men with greater courage. And they had fought for the safety of their families. No opponent suffered more when stoking that enormity of purpose.

“They barely know how to wield a sword,” Honnas said on a laugh.

By Pendray standards, Tallis’s older brother was right. The Guardsmen had grace, yes, but their determination to see an attack through to its bloody conclusion was lacking. Had they relied on telepathy so much during their raid of Kavya’s followers? Did these men have any real substance when it came to physical fighting?

With a low swing of his seax, he struck a Guardsman’s foot from his leg. The man crumpled. His bravery was admirable in that he tried to keep fighting from his kneeling, crippled position. Tallis raised the Dragon-forged sword as a threat. The Guardsman’s face melted into white, streaking fear as he dropped his weapon and rolled onto his back, bare hands lifted in surrender.

Might as well be dead.

Perhaps something of Tallis’s higher thoughts remained, because he experienced a flash of pity. Any Pendray would have branded the man a coward. But what did this Indranan have worth fighting for? Without children to nurture and protect, very few Dragon Kings knew what sacrifice meant anymore.

Tallis knew. He’d seen Nynn and Leto rip open the world trying to find the people they loved, and to find each other. He was that lover now. He would die before he let anything happen to Kavya.

Then die.

Pashkah’s psychic strike lanced down Tallis’s vertebrae. His spine was a lightning rod that conducted pain through his entire body. He dropped to the rocky, sea-damp earth. His skull bounced off a mossy patch mere inches from a rugged upthrust of rock. Agony registered on all levels. Physically, his head throbbed as if it had been cleaved like a fresh melon. Mentally, he was a sizzle of fried nerve endings and thoughts mashed into a sickly soup. All of the layers that made him Tallis blended until they were screaming ghosts. Every victim. Every time he’d ever shed blood or taken a life. A lava flow of memories rolled over him.

He crawled to his knees. Around him the battle still raged. His sisters were fierce. Honnas’s wife, Olla, was particularly adept at a Pendray woman’s greatest strength: screams that had inspired tales of banshees. They fought as if their own loved ones were the potential victims, not Indranan strangers.

Another stab of anguish was beyond Tallis’s ability to describe. His consciousness fled down, down, using his berserker as a shield. The animal could not be harmed. He scanned the scene with the quickness of a predator that had momentarily lost its evening meal. He gained sharpness to his eyes and sensitivity to his hearing. Pure instinct.

Pashkah.

The man stood a hundred yards away, in the shadow of the Mother. He was dressed in colors Tallis recognized on some higher level, but his animal side jumped in the way of those analytical thoughts. All the beast knew was that those colors meant death. Death for Kavya.

Pashkah held a sword that gleamed gold in the fresh rays of dawn. Dragon-forged. They would finally meet each other as equals in armaments.

Tallis jumped to his feet and ran. His boots gripped with sure traction, even on the slippery coastal rocks. A Guardsman put himself between Tallis and his enemy, which made that Guardsman another enemy—one simpler to dispatch. Tallis lifted the Dragon-forged sword without thought. And sliced.

The Guardsman’s head spun away from the lifeless body that collapsed sideways in a sickly arc.

The animal was satisfied, although Pashkah was still his target. The rest were mosquitoes to be swatted away.

Pashkah was laughing, and he was attacking again. The warmth in Tallis’s brain turned to hot steam, then burst into an inferno so hot and deadly that he crumpled. And he understood a new, terrible truth: Pashkah could kill his family with a single sweep of his crazy mind. If they emerged from their fury long enough to become thinking creatures again, they would be paralyzed from the inside out.

Pushing up to his knees—forcing his body to cooperate—Tallis staggered toward Kavya’s brother. Pashkah’s amber eyes glowed with manic energy and a nauseating twist of madness. At his feet was Chandrani, hog-tied and gagged and bloody. Her armor had been stabbed, leaving red-stained holes. None of the wounds would be fatal. That hadn’t been the purpose.

“I couldn’t find Kavya,” Pashkah said with a snake’s smile, “I needed a compass.”

The man’s features were a mystery. He shimmered and altered with every few syllables. He was fragments sewn together in an ever-morphing skin. Nothing genuine remained except that he was shorter and thinner than Tallis. “Kick a beloved puppy. Listen for where the puppy screamed. Keep traveling in that direction. Until . . . here? A wasteland.”

“My home.”

“Keep thinking, Reaper. I’ll make you suffer for it.”

Tallis stabbed his seax into the ground and attacked. Dragon-forged energy snapped with sparks when their swords collided. In strength alone, Tallis had the advantage. He hacked and thrust, welcoming the return of every fighting, spitting impulse to guide his weapon. Pashkah staggered until his back hit the boulder, then he retaliated with his mental prowess—just enough to slip inside Tallis’s mind and wrench. Pain was a wash of red paint.

Pashkah grunted, then spun away. The quick maneuver gave him a few seconds to recover, but Tallis pressed the advantage.

“She took so long to find,” Pashkah said, adjusting his grip on his sword’s hilt. “Maybe that had something to do with the Reaper animal she’d taken as her lover. You’re quite the beast. Have you made her into a dog, too? Rolling in the grass and howling to the moon?”

Had he been able to shut out spoken words, Tallis would have done so. Just fight.He parried, braced with a low squat, and thrust up toward Pashkah’s sternum. The man barely jumped away in time.

“I’d never hoped anything for Kavya. That she sank so low as to crawl into your bed—that was a gift I’d never expected. To know she’d been so debased before I saw her again. Just precious.”

He stabbed the sword into a swath of earth softened in the shadow of the boulder. From behind them both, Chandrani screamed. Kavya’s scream followed, as if her heart were being torn from her chest—or her brain from her skull.

“Do you think I want you dead, Reaper?” Pashkah held his hands wide, inviting attack. “I couldn’t care less. You’re that mosquito you pictured. You’ve done so much killing. Your life is dripping with blood. Now listen to those women scream, your beloved Sun—your Kavya—and I’ll tell you exactly who you’ve been killing for.”

Tallis’s hesitation was enough—that moment that wasn’t a moment, when his decades-old need to know won out over every other consideration.

To be free of it, at last? To know?

Two Guardsmen stripped his Dragon-forged sword and felled him with three sharp blows.

–

Kavya saw Tallis fall. Slow motion. Nightmares.

She screamed her husband’s name.

Her barely imagined future lay in an unconscious heap.

Across a battlefield where berserkers clashed with Guardsmen, she met Pashkah’s eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in as many months, years, decades as her.

As if without fear—although she feared the next few seconds more than any in her life—she walked through the melee. She wasn’t there. She was only with Pashkah. This was the duel they’d postponed for most of their lives.

“Let them go,” she said with spoken words.

His eyes widened, apparently taken by surprise. When the first manifestation of their gifts had been more amazing than fearful, they hadn’t used tongues, mouths, or lips to vocalize thoughts. They’d been so close. Baile, too. It was a cruel joke for the Dragon to play, bonding siblings so closely, only to have those siblings turn on one another.

“This ends here, Pashkah. I’m not running. I’m not hiding. I’m returning to the Indranan to repair the damage you’ve done.”

“With this disgusting Reaper?” He kicked Tallis in the stomach, who was slowly rousing but pinned to the ground by four Guardsmen.

“He’s going to kill you,” Kavya said. “Not even the Dragon could change that now.”

Pashkah strode forward, his Dragon-forged sword in hand. Kavya backed up a step, then another.

She was defenseless.

Around them, the fray had eased. Everyone knew why they were there. The Guardsmen and Tallis’s family were foot soldiers as the generals squared off.

“You always thought you were above the rest of us.” Pashkah’s face contorted in a blend of expressions. “You thought you could erase thousands of years of suspicion and hatred. It can’t be done. She said the same thing, and she forced my hand.”

“She? What are you talking about?”

“Baile! Don’t you remember what we promised? We’d never succumb to what the others did. We were stronger than that. Kavya, you remember how we vowed.”

“And then you killed our sister! What sort of vow is that?”

“One I couldn’t keep when she attacked me with Father’s sword.”

Kavya staggered back a step. “No. That’s not how it happened. You betrayed our trust and you killed her.”

“I did kill her, yes.” His single nod reminded her more of her lost brother than anything ever had. His voice wasn’t the same, nor his looks nor his demeanor. Kavya caught images of unfamiliar men and women, but mostly she saw Baile. Their sister. Her so-distant features flickered over his. But Pashkah had used that particular nod when absorbing new information or admitting a wrong. “It was her life or mine, not because I meant to betray anyone. Who was the strongest of us, Kavya?”

She swallowed. The cold was getting to her now, although the sea winds had nothing to do with it. Old memories realigned. She adjusted her grip on the hilt of Tallis’s seax, if only to urge blood back into her pinched, numb fingers. “She was.”

“And who was the strongest of us, physically?”

“You.”

Pashkah shone through his own eyes. He was taking control of . . . something. Even the appearances of his shape-shifting features had slowed, calmed, resumed their usual configuration. He’d always been so handsome. Now Kavya saw that he’d have matured into a magnificent man. “And who of us was the least threat?”

“Me. My gift was weaker. I was weaker.”

“We were all wrong on that score.” He twirled the hilt of the sword their father had kept safe. Their pod had been so peaceful. He and Mother had assembled another three couples. The sword had been insurance, in case adult brothers or sisters came with murder in mind. It hadn’t been intended for one child to use against another. Members of the pod had worked tirelessly to teach the siblings tolerance and peace—that they were better than the greed of their gift.

“That’s right,” Pashkah said. Kavya had been with Tallis for so long that she’d forgotten how invasive that could feel. “Tolerance and peace. You learned that lesson better than any of us. Baile smiled along. She hid from us even then. Tell me in truth that you knew our sister. Knew her heart, her fears, her deepest thoughts. Tell me whatever it is you think you know and I’ll tell you it was a lie. She wanted both of us dead, and she started with me. I never saw it coming, and you wouldn’t have either. She wanted a stronger body to keep pace with her mind.” He smashed his left fist against his skull and roared in pain that didn’t seem physical. “Then we’d come for you.”

“This is long past, Pashkah. It’s toolong past. Fight her now. Let Chandrani and my husband go. We can walk away. Or . . .” Her voice broke, thick with emotion. She didn’t like seeing him this way—as her brother. As the brother she’d loved long ago. “Or, Dragon be, you can help me. Our people need us.”

A telltale sneer reshaped his face. Baile again. Even his voice took on her inflections and cadence. “Always so good. It’s not going to happen, Kavya. You’re going to die today, so I can stop chasing you and begin the culling that needs to take place.”

Kavya raised the seax, although she knew it would be destroyed if they clashed weapons. She growled. Only then did she glance at Tallis where he remained pinned. The dawn bathed his face with a pink light that added more vitality than he possessed. Blood dripped from his temple, and his eyes were unfocused. She knew that look. Constantly bombarded by psychic pain.