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Eilahn gave a cry of anger even as Bryce’s grip tightened to pull me away.
With a sweep of his free arm, Szerain raised a transparent barrier of shimmering blue along the perimeter of the nexus to block Eilahn. In the same motion, he slammed Bryce away from me with a hammer fist of potency, snaked arcane bindings from the ground to hold him fast where he stood.
Fear wound together with fury to rip through me. “You fucking piece of shit.” I said through clenched teeth. “You turned me into a ticking time bomb to make sure I didn’t have a goddamn choice.” And I didn’t. I had no fucking choice. I held my hand down at my side, focused, called the blade to me.
“You would have made the wrong choice otherwise.” He held me tighter, his arm locked around my waist. “Kara, give it to me. Now,” he commanded, voice fierce.
Eilahn railed at him in demon, screamed kiraknikahl, oathbreaker, over and over along with a few other words. In my peripheral vision, Bryce cursed and struggled against the bonds, jaw clenched and eyes riveted on me.
Vsuhl coalesced against my palm, whispered. Rakkuhr heat crawled up my chest and down to my side, igniting Kadir’s sigil. Szerain had no reason to save me once he had what he wanted, I realized, hating the feel of him against my back. With grim resolution, I connected to Vsuhl, felt it and wondered what an essence blade would do buried in the heart of a lord.
Teeth bared, I shifted my grip on the hilt, slammed my foot onto Szerain’s instep, and twisted in his unwelcome embrace. “Take it, chekkunden!”
Vsuhl sang as it bit into him, low on his side, but Szerain caught my wrist and wrenched it hard. I lost my grip on the hilt, and the world tipped crazily as Vsuhl tumbled to the ground.
With a harsh cry, Szerain wrapped his hand in my hair and threw me face down on the grass. Air whooshed from my lungs as he planted his knee over my shoulder blades. As he reached and claimed Vsuhl his aura smothered me, subtly powerful, covert, and tinged with chaos.
Breathing heavily, Szerain spoke in demon, the cadence like an invocation. I struggled for air, scrabbled for purchase in the grass to throw him off. A line of thin fire lashed through the twelfth sigil. Vsuhl, drawing my blood, tasting me. Three more swift cuts, and then Szerain shifted to straddle my thighs and pressed both hands against the small of my back.
I sucked in a desperate breath, felt the flare of the restructured sigil.
“Vdat koh akiri qaztehl,” he pronounced with precise clarity while I struggled vainly beneath him.
The rakkuhr answered him like a dog called by a beloved master. Where it had crawled through the first three sigils, it now raced across my body, igniting one after another. It paused at my upper back, in Szerain’s sigil, coalesced in a fiery mass of red heat, then dove down my spine to the twelfth beneath his hands.
Silence like the void engulfed us.
Szerain stroked my back, trailed his fingers over the sigil and wove the rakkuhr with disturbingly familiar ease. Into the silence he spoke a word that made all else pale.
“Rowan.”
“No!” I screamed. “Szerain! What have you done?” My foundation tilted, and I again found myself on a glassy plain with nothing between me and oblivion. “I can’t hold on!” I cried out in horror as I began an inexorable slide into the void. “I’m Kara!” I’m . . . Kara?
Eilahn let out an inhuman shriek and dove at the barrier, crashed against it. Bryce fought the arcane bonds, shouted my name.
Szerain moved off of me, gripped me by the arm, and dragged me to my feet. He shifted his grasp to the hair at the back of my head, leaned close, his face a hard mask.
“No,” he snarled. “You are Rowan.”
The name ripped through me like a mass of spinning razor blades, severing me from my Self. I mentally clawed for stability, but this time there was nothing—nothing—to cling to. My Self fell away until it was little more than a tiny, distant pinprick of light in the void.
As if through a fog, I saw Bryce jerk against the bindings. “You fix this!” he shouted at Szerain. “I swear to god, if you don’t, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Doubtful, little man, I thought as the fog cleared. The identity of whom the prisoner spoke slipped away like sand through my fingers, unimportant.
Szerain released my head and stepped back, his always-keen eyes on me. A slice in his dark t-shirt revealed a hint of skin and faintly luminous blood.
I rolled my head on my shoulders, looked down at my body, at the glorious scars given to me by my lord Rhyzkahl. I ran my hands over my face, my throat, my breasts, my body, then raised my eyes to Szerain in triumph. I watched his features shift into fuller lips and higher cheekbones as he embraced the reconnection with Vsuhl. Yes. This was the Szerain I knew so well.
He drew a deeper breath, lowered his head slightly to regard me. Behind me, the bound captive cursed. That one would be a choice prize for Lord Kadir or Lord Amkir.
“Szerain,” I said, smiling calmly as I inclined my head. A greeting of sorts, I supposed.
“Rowan,” he replied.
My smile widened. “You know me.”
“I called you,” he said mildly as he took a half-step closer, blade down at his side. “And yes, I do kn
