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Waiting for me to step forward and finish what I’d started.
Kill, Amaya said, and my fingers clenched tight against the hilt as I raised the sword.
But I fought Amaya’s desire and stared instead at the Rakshasa. She just knelt there, waiting for death. I shivered. My task had always been to kill this spirit, but it didn’t seem right to do it like this—in cold blood rather than in the heat of battle.
Kill, Amaya said again. Will I?
No. I had a feeling that if I acquiesced to her in this, I’d somehow be handing greater control of my body to the spirit within my sword. Besides, this was my task, not hers, not Azriel’s. In the end, I had to be strong enough to do it.
To prove to everyone that if the need arose, I could do what was necessary to survive.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then raised the sword to full height and swept it down as hard as I could. The dark blade cut through the Rakshasa’s neck with ease, but as her head plopped bloodlessly onto the stone and rolled away from her slumping body, I staggered and lost what little there was in my stomach.
After which I fell to my knees and sucked in great gulps of air. It didn’t help the buzzing in my head, the trembling in my limbs, or the burning in my lungs. I needed to get out of here—and get help—quick, or this place might become my tomb, as well.
I sheathed the sword, then said wearily, “Amaya, you need to return to the blade.”
Better here.
Fear snaked through me. “No,” I said determinedly. “This is my body, not yours. Your place is in steel, not flesh.”
One, she retorted. Here.
“No,” I repeated, and closed my eyes, picturing the dark energy of her, imagining my hands encasing it, forcing it out of my body and back into steel.
She fought me every step of the way, until exhaustion trembled through every part of me and I was all but blacking out. But if I did that, she’d win.
Damn it, this was my body, my life, and no matter how much it sucked at the moment, I wasn’t about to give it up easily!
It was that determination that kept me going, and slowly but surely I forced her back into the sword. But as her energy and spirit left me, I felt a glimmer of almost reluctant admiration.
My sword respected my actions, even if she’d fought them.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and in the end, probably did a bit of both.
Time to go home, I thought, before either the Rakshasa’s poison took effect or I collapsed from blood loss. And the dizziness sweeping me suggested I was closer to blacking out than I needed or wanted.
But how the hell did I get home?
That odd buzzing heaviness no longer rode the air, but I was weaker than a pup and I doubted I’d have the strength to become Aedh.
Which left me with only one option—chance the gray fields, and hope like hell Azriel found me there before anyone else did. Not that the Aedh had any reason to be hunting me given the tracker they’d placed on my heart, but my father was still out there somewhere, and it’d be my luck that he would choose a moment like this to hunt me down.
I closed my eyes and took a slow, somewhat shaky breath that didn’t seem to contain much in the way of air. As I slowly released it, I released awareness of the battle to breathe, the pain that shook me, and the myriad of wounds that washed blood down my body, and concentrated on nothing more than slowing the beat of my heart. Gradually that beat steadied, amplified, as the dark cavern began to fade and the gray fields gathered close. Warmth throbbed at my neck—Ilianna’s magic at work, protecting me as my psyche, my soul, or whatever else people liked to call it, pulled away from the constraints of my flesh and stepped gently into the gray fields that were neither life nor death.
The Dušan exploded from my arm, her energy flowing, buffeting me as her lilac form gained flesh and shape. She swirled around me, her movements sharp, edgy, as her ebony gaze scanned the fields around us. Looking for a threat that came from within me rather than anything the fields might offer. At least for the moment.
Azriel, I whispered, and hoped it was enough. I didn’t have the energy for anything louder.
He answered. The storm of his approach quivered through me, but I didn’t wait for him. I couldn’t. Blackness was beginning to steal through the gray, and I knew my strength was giving out. I had to get back into my body before that happened, or I might end up stranded here in the fields.
And that could be deadly. A body could survive only so long without its soul on board.
This way, I said, and fled, down through the layers of consciousness and into my flesh. Then the blackness overtook me, and I knew no more.
Chapter 14
Awareness surfaced slowly, as did the knowledge that I was warm and safe and—most important—alive. I smiled, but I couldn’t seem to shake sleepiness or force my eyelids open, and soon I drifted back to sleep.
