Touch of the Demon (Kara Gillian 5)

“Sleep…here?” I asked, brow creasing.

“Yes, it is safest.” He set one hand on my upper chest and one on my abdomen, took a deep breath as if gathering the resources to begin again. “And under my eye.”

“Right.” I exhaled a shaking sigh. “Under your eye. Guess I won’t be allowed to go on hikes to the grove.”

His gaze shifted from my sternum to my face, silent.

“Why didn’t you just…tell me?” I asked, voice cracking badly. “Why not…just say: Hey, Kara, he’s going to fuck you up?”

The fatigue on his face seemed to deepen. He looked back to the sigils and began to work. “I intended to tell you as soon as I removed the mark, and you were clear of Rhyzkahl’s influence. Even then, you would likely not have believed me. But the information could have served you later, while you were at his palace.” He breathed slowly and somewhat unsteadily, and with each breath the pain from the sigils faded more. “He has never done anything this extreme before.”

I let out a low sigh. He was right. I wouldn’t have believed him, but I sure as hell might have caught on to the undercurrent at Rhyzkahl’s if I’d had the warning.

“I’m never going home again, am I?” I asked after a while.

He looked visibly ill, though I was fairly sure it had nothing to do with my question and everything to do with the fucking sigils. “If you mean to Earth, then I cannot say for certain, though it is in the realm of possibility that you will not.”

It was the answer I’d expected, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. “I’m unmarked now,” I said, watching his face carefully. “If I don’t agree to work for you, then why the hell would you possibly let me continue to live?”

Mzatal shifted his hands to the very first sigil that had been carved upon me, and now the last one to be healed. What seemed like an eternity ago, he’d asked me my heart’s desire. My life had depended on my answer then, and he echoed it back to me now. “Because, Kara Gillian, you have yet to reach your full potential.”

I looked away. “You’re a slick motherfucker.”

He exhaled, and in the next heartbeat searing heat flooded through all the sigils. My hands clenched in the sheet as he kept firm contact on me. A shudder went through him, and his breath hissed through his teeth. Finally the heat faded, and his hands slid from me. Gasping in relief, I took several deep breaths. The sense of wrong was gone now. I remained plenty fucked in other ways, but at least I didn’t feel as if I’d been dipped in sewage.

Mzatal sank back to his heels, head bowed, trembling slightly as his hands dropped limply into his lap. Shock ran through me at the pained grimace on his face.

Worry for him rose. “Mzatal?…Mzatal?”

He remained perfectly still as my inexplicable worry increased. At long last he took a deep breath and lifted his head, though I had the sense it took incredible effort to do even that.

His gaze touched mine. “Here,” he replied softly. “Now you sleep.”

And I did.

Chapter 20

“Come, Rowan.” Jesral tugged on my leash, rousing me from my fitful doze. “You have work to do.”

I drew back from him. “No, please.”

The slim lord scowled. He gave the leash another sharp tug, then lifted a quirt and smacked it across my bare hip. I yelped and scrambled to my feet.

“Come,” he repeated as he turned and began to walk. Heart pounding, I hurried after him. I knew he’d drag me if I didn’t.

He pulled me to the center of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber, then disappeared into darkness, leaving me alone. Cold air sent gooseflesh rippling over my bare skin. Dim red light streamed from a sigil high above, and as I stood shivering, more sigils flared into life to surround me in a slowly spinning circle. Shying away from them, I cast a frantic gaze around. “Mzatal?”

Rhyzkahl caught my chin and tipped my head up. “He is not here, dear one.” He gave a soft smile. “It is so much better this way. He would only use you. I told you.”

I recoiled. “You. You hurt me!” A lasso of potency wrapped around my wrist, but it didn’t come from Rhyzkahl. I looked back in shock to see Mzatal, face angry and hard as he dragged me toward him.

“I am here,” he snarled. “I will retrieve you, and I will hold you.”

I struggled against the lasso. Kadir’s cold laugh echoed through the darkness.

“Pain is ephemeral,” Rhyzkahl said, before me again as he raised the blood-slick blade. “You are eternal. Mine.”

Jesral stepped out of the darkness. “Ours.”