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Mogkan’s power gripped me like a giant’s fist around my rib cage. I yelped in pain and dropped the Commander’s hand. I stood on weak legs beside the bed just as Valek yanked his sword from the last guard’s dead body.
“Stop or she dies,” Mogkan ordered.
Valek froze. Three more guards hustled into the room, Brazell on their heels. They surrounded Valek. Taking his sword, they forced him to his knees with his hands on his head.
“Go ahead, General. Kill her,” Mogkan said, stepping back to let Brazell pass. “I should have let you slit her throat the first day she arrived.”
“Why listen to Mogkan?” I asked Brazell. “He’s not to be trusted.” Pain crawled along my spine as Mogkan turned his burning eyes upon me.
“What do you mean?” Brazell demanded. He gripped his sword as he glanced from me to Mogkan.
Mogkan laughed. “She’s only trying to delay the inevitable.”
“Like when you tried to delay the Sitian treaty negotiations by poisoning the cognac? Or were you aiming to stop the delegation altogether?” I asked him.
Mogkan’s shock revealed his guilt. Although surprise touched Valek’s face, he remained silent. His body tensed, ready to spring into action.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Brazell said.
“Mogkan wants to avoid contact with the southerners. They would know about—” My throat closed. I clawed at my neck, unable to breathe.
Brazell turned on Mogkan. His square face creased with anger. “What have you been up to?”
“We don’t need a treaty with Sitia. We were getting our supplies without any problems. But you wouldn’t listen to me. You had to be greedy. After establishing a trade treaty it would only be a matter of time before we’d have southerners crossing the border, sniffing around, finding us.” Mogkan showed no fear of Brazell, only anger that he had to explain his actions. “Now, do you want to kill her or should I?”
Spots spun in my eyes as my vision blurred. Before Brazell could answer, Mogkan staggered. His hold on me slipped slightly, releasing my airway. I gasped for air.
“My children!” Mogkan roared. “Even without them, I still have more power than you!”
Like a fish on a hook, I was yanked off my feet and hurled against the wall. My head banged on the stone. Pinned in midair, Mogkan’s power pelted me. Each blow felt like a boulder crashing into me. This is it, I thought. Reyad was right; becoming the food taster had just delayed the inevitable.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Valek fighting his guards as he tried to reach Mogkan. Too late for me. With a final surge of strength, I mentally reached out. I hit an impenetrable barrier as I felt my consciousness drain. Blackness filled my world.
Then Irys’s voice was there in my mind, soothing. “Here,” she said, “let me help you.” Pure power flowed into me. I re-constructed my mental shield and deflected Mogkan’s onslaught, pushing him back. He crashed into the opposite wall with a satisfying thud.
Confusion reigned in the Commander’s chambers. Inexperienced with magic as I was, I couldn’t restrain Mogkan. He bolted from the room. With a knife in his hand, Valek fought three guards with swords. As I rushed to help Valek, Brazell grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him.
He raised his sword. Murder blazed in his eyes. I jumped back to avoid the first swing of his sword and bumped against the Commander’s bed. I leaped onto the bed to avoid Brazell’s next swing. I glanced down. The Commander’s gaze was still fixed on the ceiling. Brazell’s third swing severed one of the bedposts.
As I dived from the end of the bed to avoid another blow, I seized the post from the floor.
Now I was armed. The post wasn’t balanced properly for a bow, but it was thick. Better than nothing.
Brazell was a powerful opponent. Each swing of his sword hacked chunks out of my weapon.
At first, he scoffed at my attempts to fight him. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re a skinny nothing. I’ll gut you in two moves.”
When I found my mental zone of power, he stopped wasting his breath. Even sensing his next attack, I still scrambled to stay one step ahead of him. My wooden post was no match for his sword.
Reyad’s ghost materialized in the room. He cheered his father on, trying to distract me. His tactics worked. My back hit the wall. Brazell’s sword split my post in half.
“You’re dead.” With gleeful satisfaction, Brazell pulled his sword back to slash at my neck. But I still held a part of the wood. As his sword swung close, I deflected the weapon downward with my broken post. The tip cut across my waist. The sound of ripping fabric accompanied a line of fire across my stomach. Blood soaked the ripped ends of my uniform shirt.
Then Brazell made his first error. Thinking I was finished, he relaxed his guard. But I was still on my feet. I raised my weapon. With desperate strength, I struck him across the temple. We crumpled to the floor together.
I gazed at the ceiling, trying to regain my breath. Valek hovered over me. I shooed him away. “Find Mogkan.” He disappeared from my view.
Once strength returned to my limbs, I examined my wound. Running a finger along the gash, I thought all I needed was some of Rand’s glue.
Reyad’s ghost floated over me, sneering. I couldn’t bear lying on the ground with him in the room. Cursing and bleeding, I stood.
“You.” I stabbed a bloody finger at him. “Go away.”
“Make me,” he challenged.
How could I fight a ghost? I moved into a defensive stance. He scoffed. No, not a physical fight, a mental one.
I thought about what I had accomplished in the year and a half since I had slit Reyad’s throat. Overcoming my fears to make friends. Confronting my enemies. Finding love. How I felt about myself. Who I was. I looked into the gilded floor-length mirror of the Commander’s room. My hair was wild. My shirt soaked with blood. My face streaked with dirt. Almost the same reflection when I first became the food taster. But this time there was something different. The shadows of doubt were gone.
I peered deeper and found my soul. A little tattered and with some holes, but there all the same. It had always been there, I realized with a shock. If Reyad and Mogkan had truly driven it from me, I would be chained to a floor right now and not standing over Brazell’s unconscious form.
I was in control. This new person in the mirror was free. Free of all poisons. I glanced at Brazell. He was still breathing, but I was in charge of him and of myself. In command. No longer a victim. No longer the rat caught in the metal jaws of a trap.
“Be gone,” I ordered Reyad’s ghost. His shocked expression gave me great joy as he vanished.
But joy was like a butterfly alighting on a hand; a brief rest before flying away.
“Janco’s hurt.” Irys’s alarmed voice resounded in my skull. “We need a medic. Come now.”
Using manacles from a dead guard’s belt, I handcuffed Brazell to the heavy bed. Then I bolted from the room. I raced through the corridors. He can’t die, I thought. Not Janco. I wouldn’t be able to bear his death. Horrible scenarios played in my mind. I was so preoccupied that I rushed right toward Valek and Mogkan without even recognizing them.
They dueled with swords. The reason the scene had taken a while to clarify in my mind was because Mogkan had the upper hand. Valek’s pale face was haggard. He swung his sword as if it was a dead weight. His natural grace had fled, and what remained were sporadic, jerky movements. Mogkan, on the other hand, was quick and competent, technically accurate, but lacking style.
My disbelief and concern grew as I watched the match. What was wrong with Valek? Was it Mogkan’s magic? No, Valek was immune to it, I thought. Then realization dawned. Valek had said being close to a magician felt like wading in thick syrup. And Valek had fought seven guards in the Commander’s room after spending the last two days in the dungeon without food or sleep. Exhaustion had finally caught up to him.
Mogkan’s grin widened when he spotted me hovering nearby. He executed a lightning-quick
feint, and then lunged. Valek’s sword clattered to the floor as a crimson slash snaked up his arm.
“What an incredible day!” Mogkan exclaimed. “I get to kill the famous Valek and the infamous Yelena at the same time.”
I triggered my switchblade. Mogkan laughed. He sent me a magical command to drop my weapon.
Just as my hand released the blade, I heard Irys’s voice in my head. “Yelena, what’s wrong? Did you find the medic?”
“I need help!” I cried in my mind. Power swelled inside me, pushing to break free. I aimed a finger of power toward Mogkan. His sword dropped from his hand. Terror gripped his face as the magic swaddled him like a baby, then tightened like a noose. He was paralyzed, rooted to the floor.
“You rat-spawned daughter of a demon!” Mogkan cursed. “You’re a blight on this earth. An incarnation of hell. You’re just like the rest of them. The Zaltana bloodline should be burned out, erased, exterminated…”
