Page 41 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“How?” Martar asked, while everyone listened.

“Salt.”

“Special salt?” Martar frowned as the others murmured in disbelief.

“No.” Zarek reached for the shaker and poured ordinary white crystals into his palm, letting them fall between his fingers and onto his plate. “Everyday kitchen salt.”

“Impossible,” Condorr muttered.

“Did you throw the salt?” Gellar pressed.

“No.” Zarek’s fingers curled, crushing a few grains into his gloved hand like he could grind sense out of them. “I was injured. Paralyzed by the Poison Blade and lying on the ground.”

“What happened then?” Martar asked.

Zarek stared down at the table’s woodgrain, following the knots and lines—anything but the image of her face.

Don’t say her name.

He didn’t know why it mattered. Or why his throat tightened as if it were a secret he would die to keep.

“She showed up,” he said to Martar. “I thought I was going to die. I was calling out to you… instead she was there.”

“Who?” Gellar demanded.

Zarek’s jaw locked. He didn’t want to share her. He didn’t even want his brothers thinking her name, or to have their attention on her.

Which was ridiculous.

She was just a temporary complication. A mortal female who should never have known he existed. Just as she should not have been able to see or touch him.

She was—

His chest tightened again, and the heat in his lower chest surged like something was waking up.

He forced the words out, rough and clipped to keep control of them, because they needed to know he was not compromised. “She drove her car into the Black Cloak. Knocked it off balance, then she threw salt over it.”

His gloved hands flexed on the table. He could still hear its vile scream, but he smelled her fear more, and how she pushed through to save him. She put herself in harm’s way for him. A woman he’d only just met.

“Go on,” urged Martar. “What happened next?”

“I saw steam rise from its cloak like vapors. The pain was so severe its scream was like the ghostly wails of those tortured wraiths haunting the underworld.”

“Then what?” Gellar asked quietly.

Zarek’s teeth clenched. “She stabbed it with an athame, and it turned to stone, then ash. Like they always do.” From there, it’s soulless being should have returned to Katarra for resurrection, to then battle again the next night. It was a battle that never ended, night after night, centuries after centuries.

The silence that surrounded him became deafening, which was rare from this table of warriors, while the sounds of the other soldiers eating in the Great Hall felt miles away.

But he knew what his brothers were thinking; he didn’t need to read their minds to hear their thoughts: a mortal woman killing a Black Cloak with salt and an unconsecrated blade was unthinkable.

Then the other questions floated loud enough for him to hear: How could she see them when they were cloaked? How did she know where to find him? Questions he hadn’t dared to ask. But he was also honor-bound by duty to answer them, even though he didn’t fully understand it all himself.

“So, what happened then?” Martar asked.

Zarek’s throat tightened again. The beast in his chest shifted restlessly, as if unhappy with how close their questions were getting.

“She…” He swallowed harshly. “Took me in her car, to her home, and tended to my wounds.”