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It was the aroma of cooking that eventually woke me. My nostrils flared as I drew in the tantalizing scent of roasting meat more deeply, and my stomach rumbled noisily.
“That,” a familiar voice mused, “had better be your stomach and not a fart.”
Tao, I thought with a sleepy smile.
Then I sat bolt upright in bed. Tao!
I stared at him. Rubbed my eyes and stared at him some more. Reached out and touched him. Lightly, carefully, like he was a mirage that might disappear at the slightest sense of movement.
He wasn’t a mirage.
He was warm and real and here.
“Oh, god,” I said, and flung myself at him.
He grunted as my weight hit him, then laughed softly and held me as fiercely as I held him. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said softly, his words whispering past my right ear. “You gave us quite a scare, you know.”
I snorted softly and drew back a little, my gaze scanning his features. He was pale, and thin, and deep in his warm brown eyes something more than human burned, but none of that mattered right now. He was awake, he was aware, and most important of all, he seemed to have come back to us whole.
“When did you wake up?”
“About the same time that Azriel dragged you half-dead out of that hellhole you were stuck in.” He gave me a weary smile and flicked my chin lightly. It still hurt, so the wound hadn’t completely healed.
“It was touch and go for a while there, you know. Our reaper tried to heal you, but it didn’t fully hold. You were out for days, and he was like a bear with a sore head. And the depth of his concern scared the hell out of us.”
Why wouldn’t the healing hold? I glanced around the room, half expecting an answer, even though I knew he wasn’t near. “Where is he?”
Tao shrugged. “He said something about needing to inform Hunter that the task was done.”
Oh fuck, I thought, and hoped like hell the “informing” didn’t involve violence. We didn’t need Hunter or the council as enemies right now. I took a deep, somewhat calming breath, and my stomach rumbled again.
Tao laughed. “Sounds like you’d better get something into that belly of yours.”
“Only if you do the same.” I scanned him critically. “You, my lad, need to put on some weight.”
He grimaced. “Ilianna’s been feeding me like a horse for days, and with little effect. The new me, I’m afraid, will probably remain razor thin.”
I hesitated, then said softly, “How is the new you?”
“Awake, alive, and damn grateful for both.”
“But?” I said, sensing there was one.
“But,” he added grimly, “I also fear it.”
Given that he’d consumed a fire elemental—and survived, something no one had ever done—he had a right to be scared. We didn’t know what the long-term effects were going to be—not even the most powerful witches in the country could tell us that.
Still, I said, “Why?”
“Because I can feel it in me, Risa. Its presence burns constantly at the back of my mind, and though I’ve won this battle, I’m not sure I’ve won the war. It could yet take me over.”
I cupped a hand to his cheek. His skin burned under my fingertips. “You’ve made it this far. You can—and will—control it.”
“Then you have more faith in my strength than I do,” he muttered, and rose. “I better get back to the kitchen, before Ilianna cooks the hell out of those steaks. Do you want to eat in here, or out there?”>I ran on. In the shadows that lurked around the cavern’s point a simple urn sat on a pedestal of stone.
Power within, Amaya said. Crush.
We slid to a stop, raised the sword two-handed, and brought her down on the urn as hard as we could. The dark steel sliced through the urn as easily as it would have through butter, and the contents spewed out, a gluey mess of blood and other matter. In the center of the now shattered urn lay a small heart, its rhythm matching the beat in the stone around us. We raised the sword fractionally and slashed down. The blade shuddered as steel met flesh, then slowly, surely, it sliced through. The beat of life in the stone around us became unsteady, erratic.
