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“Bryce, any casualty reports yet?” I kept my voice nice and even, but my stomach was doing pretzel imitations.
“Still coming in,” Bryce said, tablet in hand and eyes on the screen. “So far they’re reporting fourteen injured, four seriously.” He looked up at me. “No fatalities reported, but a handful of personnel haven’t been accounted for yet.” His eyes didn’t so much as twitch toward the body on the nexus, but it didn’t matter. I knew it was there.
“Thanks.” One dead for certain. But not the dozens I’d feared. I closed my eyes and gave myself a count of ten to savor the victories, however small, before I had to deal with the rest.
“You okay with me telling the DIRT squads to stand down?” Pellini asked.
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my gritty eyes. “In fact, you can dismiss them. They won’t be needed here.” I turned to Giovanni. “All right, let’s—”
“She does not wake!” Distress shone in his eyes. “Why does she not wake?”
“Elinor is . . . incomplete.” I sighed. “Her essence is still glued to mine, so she can’t be, er, switched on.”
He gazed down at his beloved and gently wiped the goop from her face.
But something was wrong apart from the missing essence. She wasn’t awake, yet there was an awareness. Just like when she’d been aware of the people in her room and the ticking clock. I was no mind reader, but Elinor and I had an intimate connection. I took her hand then flinched as her fear ripped through me like an primal scream. Why?
With the physical contact, I knew.
Because she doesn’t know she’s here and safe. The majority of her perception had been through me, but whatever Xharbek had done to her in these last hours left her too freaked to pay attention to what I was doing.
I sat in the grass across from Giovanni. “Talk to her,” I said. “Reassure her, and tell her that you’re with her, that she’s safe.” I paused. “But you need to say it to me.”
He stared at me as if I was insane. “To you?”
“To me. Trust me. Look right into my eyes and go for it.”
Giovanni gave Elinor an uncertain look then squared his shoulders and drilled his gaze into mine. “My beloved Elinor. My heart fills with joy to have you safe in my arms.” He continued to shower words of adoration at her through me, with impressive eloquence and uninhibited passion.
Yeah, this was fucking weird. But I had to hand it to him, the dude was giving it his all. I focused on taking in everything about him—not only his words, but his accent, the way his mouth moved, the way the light breeze ruffled his hair.
Elinor’s body didn’t so much as twitch, but around the time Giovanni was raving about the radiance of her skin, the scream eased off to distressed moans and whimpers. I waited to see if it would subside more, but no. Before Giovanni could launch into the perfection of her breasts, I held up my hand to stop him. “You did good. She’s a little calmer now.”
A hand touched my shoulder. I glanced up to give Pellini a smile of reassurance, then scrambled to my feet, heart thundering. Bryce and Pellini gave matching shouts of alarm and surprise, as both had been focused on the occupying Jontari demons.
Rhyzkahl. Out.
We were at the perimeter of his orbit, but he was outside it. Purple lightning bursts flickered over him, and writhing chains of potency trailed back to the rift-breach of his orbit, as if he’d emerged from viscous slime—Mzatal’s protections clinging to him but diminished by the disruption. Sweat plastered Rhyzkahl’s shirt to his chest, and his face spasmed from the pain of the wards.
Giovanni pulled Elinor close, his expression defiant though he shrank back from the threat of the lord. I reached for potency from the nexus even as Pellini and Bryce drew weapons a dozen feet away. The arcane answered my call in a sluggish flow, depleted by the drain of the summoning and disrupted by the straying of its Rhyzkahl-battery. Yet answer it did, though I wasn’t at all certain it would be enough to take him down. “Return to your orbit, Rhyzkahl,” I commanded.
“No, Kara Gillian,” he said through gritted teeth.
I sent the potency into my hand to coalesce into a shimmering azure globe. “You know I’ll win this challenge,” I said, hoping it to be true. “Save yourself the pain and retreat.”
“You can use that potency to smite me,” he said, voice strained, “or you can use it to aid Elinor. Can you not feel her anguish?”
I blinked. Elinor. The one he had named zharkat. He hadn’t fought through Mzatal’s wards to deal with me, or even to escape. He’d fought through them for her.
He met my eyes. “Trust me in this, if in nothing else.”
Giovanni glared. “We will not succumb to your trickery.”
“When have I ever harmed her, Giovanni Racchelli?” Rhyzkahl winced as Elinor’s mental whimpers twisted into a scream again. He seemed to hear them as clearly as I did. “It is you who prolong her suffering by denying me.”
“Rhyzkahl is right, Giovanni,” I said quietly. “In this one matter, I do trust him.” He had loved Elinor—and still loved her—as much as he could love anyone after being manipulated, suppressed, and emotionally crippled by the demahnk. “You need to allow this. Elinor is suffering.”
The last bit seemed to get through to Giovanni. He eased his death grip on her and gave an oh-so-reluctant nod.
