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I scrambled to my feet, mouth tight, then gave in to my inner twelve-year old and flipped him off.
He held my gaze for another few nervewracking heartbeats. With a final shake of his head, he turned and strode back down the tree tunnel, hands clenched into fists at his sides as potency that wound through my core like a visceral threat poured from him. It seemed odd to see him not walking with his hands clasped behind his back.
The reyza took hold of my upper arm, breath pluming in the chill air as he bellowed after the departing Mzatal. I waited until I felt the grove activate, taking the lord away, and only then let myself slump in relief. Crap, but that had been close.
The cold really hit me now that I could think about it. The light shirt and pants I’d put on this morning were great for the climate in Mzatal’s realm, but Rhyzkahl’s palace was either much further north, or in an entirely different hemisphere. Of course it didn’t take much for me to feel like I was freezing to death. I went to long sleeves anytime the temps dipped below sixty-five, and hat and gloves if they went below forty.
Right now I was seriously ready for hat and gloves. And coat. And boots. And a damn fire.
“Thank you,” I said to the reyza, willing my teeth not to chatter. “Will you take me to Rhyzkahl now?” I gently tugged at my arm in the hopes of getting him to release me.
A sigil similar to the message one I’d seen at Mzatal’s shimmered into existence in the air in front of the reyza. He touched it with a clawed finger, snorted, and dispersed it, then turned back to me with a soft hiss. To my shock, instead of releasing me, he pulled my arms behind me and bound them with a simple binding ward.
“Hey! Wait!” My heart pounded as I pulled futilely against the binding. “What’s going on?” This sure as hell wasn’t the reception I’d expected.
“I take you to await the will of Rhyzkahl,” the reyza stated, moving me forward and toward the palace with the relentless grip on my upper arm.
My mind whirled. “I don’t understand. Why am I bound if I’m his sworn summoner?”
He let out a snort. “Because he has commanded it.”
I swallowed hard. Had coming here been a colossal mistake? It wouldn’t be the first. I’d sure as hell made some huge ones in my life.
Forcing down the surge of panic, I did my best to pay attention to details around me. The cloudy night closed in as we left the soft glow of the grove area, and I couldn’t get a good sense of the layout other than that a massive palace rose ahead, marked by light seeping through windows and a pale blue luminescence to the stone itself.
The reyza moved me through the entrance. I had only the briefest look at a sumptuous and opulent entryway before we passed through and to a door immediately inside. My anxiety rose as the demon continued to escort me down a short hallway and finally through a door into darkness.
With a quick motion, the reyza set a sigil alight above. It bathed the room in a warm golden glow, revealing a small circular chamber devoid of all furnishings. He released my arm in the center, but before I could move, he traced six sigils and spread them to hover a couple of feet from me in each direction. I didn’t recognize the sigils, but I had no doubt I didn’t want to even try touching them.
“What are you doing?” I asked, seriously freaked out at this point.
“Shielding,” the reyza replied with implacable calm. He crouched by the wall and went still, watching me.
The door burst open. I jerked and had to catch myself from taking a step back. Rhyzkahl stood with his left hand on the door, beautiful face hard, radiating intensity like heat from desert stones. His white-blond hair stirred in an unseen wind, and his crystal-blue eyes seemed to bore deep into my essence. He was barefoot, wearing black pants and an unbuttoned black shirt that revealed a well-muscled torso and rock-hard abs.
A smear of blood from his palm marred the pale wood of the door. He lifted his other hand in an upward spinning motion, and an instant later a cylinder of bluish potency sprang into existence around me within the circle of sigils. He moved fully into the room, gaze never wavering from me. The door closed soundly without him touching it.
“Rhyzkahl? What’s going on?” I asked, voice shaking. “I escaped Mzatal and came right here—”
“Silence!” he ordered through clenched teeth. Slowly, he circled around, eyes traveling methodically over me. I’d reached one hundred percent freakout at this point, but I did my best to stay as still as possible, though I couldn’t keep my knees from shaking.
Rhyzkahl finally completed the circle, keen and inscrutable eyes on my face. He lifted a hand, and the binding on my wrists dissipated. Before I could twitch, he reached through the shield and removed the collar, blue glow coating his arm like a glove. He flicked the collar aside to skitter to the wall, then seized my left wrist and dragged my arm toward him, exposing the mark. He dropped his gaze to it, grip hard.
“Mzatal…he tried to get it off,” I told him, breath coming raggedly. “I stopped him—”
“I said silence!” He bared his teeth in a feral manner and raised his eyes to mine. I shrank under his hard gaze, a shiver of dread going through me. He was so not fucking around. His grip tightened painfully. I clenched my teeth together to stay quiet. He laid his bloody left hand over the mark, and I bit back a whimper as pain seared up my arm, the blood actually sizzling as it touched the tracings. Coming here had been a horrible mistake. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked furiously to hold them back.
Rhyzkahl locked his gaze on the mark for nearly a full minute, still and silent. He finally looked back up to my face, lip curling. “Tell me what he did.”
I took a gulping breath. “H-he had me in a diagram—locked me down with potency. He called his essence blade and…started to unwind the mark.”
“Why did he not finish?”
I sucked my breath in as his eyes penetrated mine. I could feel him reading it from me, as if someone was literally moving through my head. It took me a couple of seconds to find my voice before answering. “I pushed him away, scattered the diagram,” I managed. “He said I used grove potency.”
Rhyzkahl continued to read deeply, eyes narrowing. “How did you get here?”
“I asked the grove to bring me here,” I told him. And boy, was I ever regretting that decision right now.
