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He sagged, squeezing his eyes shut as my words hit home. “Three centuries.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t even imagine how much of a shock this is.”
“Elinor,” he murmured, voice shaking.
He thinks her dead all this time, I thought. That was no doubt kinder than the truth: trapped in Szerain’s essence blade for centuries. “What do you remember,” I asked again, “of what happened to her . . . and you?”
Giovanni raised his eyes to mine but didn’t speak for several seconds, as if gathering pieces of the nightmare. “Elinor danced a ritual with Szerain in his summoning chamber. It was sooner than planned. She was not ready, but neither she nor Szerain could be dissuaded. I waited in the antechamber for her to finish, but . . .” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “The ritual shattered. I felt it. Heard it. The palace shook, and the air shrieked. I should not have been able to enter the chamber, but the door lay askew, wrenched from its hinges.”
I’d felt Elinor’s terror and panic, seen glimpses through her eyes of the ritual spiraling out of control, but now I wanted his perspective. “What did you see?”
“A vision of hell,” he said, staring at nothing. “Violence and chaos. A wailing vortex of corpse-livid hues. Elinor . . .” His voice caught. “My Elinor in the center of it all, eyes glowing, fierce and terrible. And terrified. Though I have but small ability to see the arcane, the power burning through her . . . coming from her . . . near blinded me. Yet I could think of nothing but to reach her side and save her from the madness.” Grief and helplessness swam in his eyes. “But it was Szerain who stood behind her, holding her upright with his arm tight around her waist as if in a grotesque dance. He looked at me over her head and shouted, ‘Call her.’” Giovanni tensed, and one hand curled into a fist on the table. “I did. I called her name, screamed it through the gale that sought to tear me away. Szerain raised Vsuhl, and it shrieked louder than the vortex.” His jaw clenched. I waited on tenterhooks for him to continue, even though I knew what happened next.
“I trusted him, believed with all my soul that he would protect her, save her.” Anger darkened his face. “But no. He drove that accursed blade into her heart.” The anger melted into distress. “I fought to reach them, to drive him away from her, but for naught. He bore her to the stone as the blade consumed her soul, and he commanded me, ‘Call her. Do not cease calling.’” A shudder went through Giovanni. “I called her. I have never stopped calling her. I . . .” His voice broke. “Elinor.”
Holy shit. I sat back and struggled to process everything—not only his account of events but also the unbelievable determination of this young man to keep calling to the woman he loved for over three hundred years. Not to mention, Giovanni’s version of events shone a slightly different light on Szerain’s actions. Yes, he’d killed Elinor and trapped her in the blade, but what was Giovanni’s role? Had Szerain held hope for her recovery down the road? Why else order him to keep calling her?
But not centuries down the road, I thought with a pang of sadness for Giovanni. All that remained of Elinor existed in the fragment of essence attached to mine. “Slew Elinor. Created you,” Szerain had once told me. Why? How?
“You called to me,” I said gently.
“In the darkness,” he murmured.
“Yes, you helped save me.” He’d kept me from losing my Self. Kept me from becoming Rowan, thrall to the Mraztur. “How did you know to call me? How did you know my name?”
“A whisper in the darkness,” he muttered, eyes growing haunted. “Like leaves in the wind, but there was no wind. There was nothing.”
The darkness of the void? A chill walked down my back. I had shadowy memories of my own trip through the void, yet mine had only lasted a couple of weeks.
I leaned forward. “Do you remember what happened to you? How you died?”
He blinked and seemed to come back to himself. He looked briefly perplexed at my question, as if still unable to believe that he could have died—which I figured was perfectly reasonable. “Szerain came to me. Bade me to continue calling Elinor.” He frowned. “I remember nothing more.”
With the world falling apart around him, there were any number of ways he could have bought the farm. I banked my frustration and changed tack. “What about the ritual? Do you know what it was for?”
His expression cleared. “To awaken Szerain’s Earthgate.” He hesitated and gave me a hopeful look. “Did it succeed?”
“No, it didn’t,” I said, then watched him deflate. Great, I couldn’t even tell him his girlfriend’s death had actually been for a good cause. And here I was about to make it worse. “It wreaked a terrible cataclysm upon the demon realm, and the ways between Earth and the demon realm slammed closed. That’s why it took you so long to return.” Yet now Kadir’s gate was awake. Could the others be far behind?
Giovanni remained silent for close to a minute as he struggled to reconcile this new and unpleasant information. “I must return to the demon realm,” he finally said with intense determination.
Damn, it was Kara-disappoints-Giovanni-at-every-turn day. “You can’t,” I said. “Not right now. I’m sorry. There’s too much upheaval both here and there.”
He stood, eyes blazing as he clenched and unclenched his hands. “I must see Szerain,” he said through his teeth.
Yeah, he was a tetch upset. I couldn’t imagine what he’d be like without the five nexus pygahs. I leaned back in my chair. “He’s not in the demon realm. He’s in hiding on Earth now.” Of that I was mostly sure. I paused as a spasm of grief tightened my chest. “He was my friend.” Or rather, Ryan was my friend. But Ryan was gone and had never even been real. I barely knew who Szerain was.
Giovanni’s shoulders sagged. “He was mine as well. And he . . .”
“He killed the woman you loved.” I let out a low sigh. “I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could do for you.”
“I need solitude,” he said, voice hollow.
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. Pellini ste
pped in from the war room right on cue, followed by Sharini Tandon. “You can go anywhere you want,” I continued to Giovanni, “but for your own safety, we’re assigning you a bodyguard. Her name is Sharini, and I promise she’ll keep her distance unless there’s reason to do otherwise. For now, I’m asking you to stay within the fence line. It’s not safe beyond it.” I had no intention of letting him leave—at least not yet—but it would be a lot easier if he remained here willingly. “If there’s anything you need, you have only to ask.”
Tandon stepped up. “Signor Racchelli, it’s my pleasure to serve as your security detail. If you’re looking for a quiet place, there’s a nice little shady spot where Miss Jill put a couple of benches.” She smiled. “How about I show you the way, then I’ll leave you be.”
