Touch of the Demon (Kara Gillian 5)

To my surprise, I found myself slotting in exercise as silly-but-necessary—and completely by my own choice, at that. Swimming, the damn stairs, and now even running.

Look at me being all athletic and shit, I thought with a snort as I tugged on a sports bra and shorts and laced up my sneakers for a run after supper. Jill wouldn’t have any idea who the hell I was by the time I made it home. Hell, I actually had—gasp—muscle tone in my legs!

Safar and Gestamar flew sparring patterns above, watching over me as I headed out. The sun drifted low over the sea surrounded by banks of white clouds that promised a glorious sunset, but I estimated I had at least an hour and a half of daylight left. It had been well over a month since I’d last gone jogging with Jill, so I started out at a sedate shuffle. I was a crap judge of distance, but Gestamar had advised me that the path that looped around the lake was approximately two miles.

I had to do the stop-and-walk a few times, but nowhere near as much as I expected. By the time I made it around the lake and headed back toward the palace, I barely even felt sore anymore, though I knew that tomorrow would probably be a much different story.

The path curved up toward the main entrance, but when I neared my favorite pile of bricks at the base of the hill, I left the path and jogged across the grass toward the rocky slope and the column atop it. I could finish up with a speed climb up the hill and then feel super virtuous before collapsing in an exhausted heap. Hey, it was all about making me stronger, right?

My sprint-climb up the hill ended up being more of a gasping, flailing slog, but I eventually made it to the top. To my surprise, a shirtless Idris was there, about fifteen yards from me, doing pushups in the grass beside the column. As I watched, he cranked out another dozen or so perfect pushups, then leaped up and began tracing a series of complex sigils, face a mask of concentration as he worked his scarred hand. As soon as it was done, he waved a hand to dispel the series, then dropped to do more pushups.

I slowly lowered myself to sit cross-legged on the grass, not wanting to interrupt. Idris smoothly pressed out twenty pushups, then rose and began tracing the same series again with a grace that was utterly at odds with his somewhat awkward social skills. For that matter, everything about him right now was so far from the uncertain youth that it was nearly impossible to believe they were the same. Not only the surety of movement and the confidence with which he traced the sigils, but—holy shit, dude was built like a gymnast. He’d been shirtless when he summoned me, but I’d been a bit too preoccupied to notice anything but the fact that, yeah, he wasn’t scrawny.

A breeze cooled the sweat on my body as Idris dispelled the sigils and dropped to do yet another twenty pushups. I watched the muscles flow in his shoulders and back. Why the hell had he been wasting his time pining over me? Girls would be falling all over him given the chance.

He rose again, but this time he began to move in what I quickly realized was the beginning of the shikvihr. I remained utterly quiet, watching in fascinated awe as he traced sigils in a fluid dance of movement. He set the first four rings as easily as breathing, slowing only slightly on the fifth, and having only the barest uncertainty as he finished the sixth. He began the seventh ring, made it halfway through, then paused as if he’d run into a wall of molasses. I held my breath as he oh-so-carefully unwound the last sigil without disturbing the rest of the pattern. He went utterly still, and I could practically feel his complete focus.

After nearly half a minute he began to move again, with only a minor adjustment in his stance and in the position of the next sigil, but apparently that was enough. He finished the series and ignited the partial pattern, then gave a whoop of triumph.

I got to my feet, applauding as I headed his way. “Dude, that was amazing!”

Grinning, he met my eyes. He’d been aware of my presence the whole time, I realized. He turned a slow circle, admiring the creation, then made a sweeping motion, dispersing the pattern with a whisper of wind and soft chiming sound. “Yeah!” He lifted his hand for a high five, and I was more than happy to provide one for him.

“How long have you been working on learning this?” I asked.

Idris picked up a towel and water bottle from beside the column, wiped his face, still smiling broadly. “Since about two weeks after I got here. So, four months-ish.”

Blinking, I did my best to hide my dismay. “Damn. If it took you four months to get to the seventh ring, I’m going to be here for years before I finish it.”

He took a slug from the water bottle and shrugged. “Most summoners never finish it. You get whatever you can out of it, and that’s what you end up using.” The grin spread across his face again. “I’m psyched I got through the seventh ring!”

My mouth tightened in annoyance. “Mzatal said I couldn’t go home until I learned it.”

“Damn,” he said. “The whole thing?”

I thought back to the wording of the agreement. “Yep. He definitely said that I had to pass the shikvihr initiation. The whole motherfucking thing.” I cursed under my breath, then straightened and shook my head. No, I wasn’t going to wallow in homesickness or angst or any of that shit. “So I guess I need to get my ass in gear.”

Idris’s face was a mask of consternation. “Wait. He said you had to pass the initiation?”

“Well, yeah.” I frowned. “Why? Is there some difference between learning and passing?”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “It’s the difference between this,” he pointed at the ground, “and that.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the column. “Most never complete a full shikvihr on the ground. I think there’ve only been a handful of summoners in all history who’ve passed it on the column.”

Numb horror flowed through me, and for several seconds I could only stare at Idris. “A handful?” I finally managed. “In what, a few thousand years?” I thought quickly back to Mzatal’s words. That rat fucker. He hadn’t lied. He’d told me how long it had taken people to pass the shikvihr initiation. He’d simply cleverly omitted the detail about it being such a miniscule number. Fury and hurt rose within me.

I turned toward the palace. “MZATAL! YOU’RE A FILTHY DEVIOUS MOTHERFUCKER!”

Idris winced and ducked his shoulders as if expecting a lightning strike. “Shit, Kara!”

I clenched and unclenched my hands. “That devious, conniving son of a bitch. He found a way to make sure I stay here.”

Idris gave me a worried look. “The agreement to go back is based totally on that?”

“Yes!” Anger coiled with the deep sense of betrayal in my gut. I’d trusted him, had actually felt a real connection to him, as though we were far more than summoner and lord, or student and teacher. I’d liked the feeling that we were friends, and most of all, I truly needed to be able to trust him. “I can’t go back for six months,” I told Idris. “I wasn’t happy about it, but I could deal with it, y’know? And then he said that after the six months I could go home as soon as I passed the goddamn shikvihr initiation. So I asked him how long it took to pass, and he said—” I gritted my teeth. “—he said that some dude passed it in seven months, and the longest anyone’s ever taken to pass is eighteen.” I shoved a hand through my hair. “He didn’t care to mention the odds of never passing at all.” And I was too stupid to ask.

And the shitty part was that I knew why he did it. I knew perfectly well it wasn’t some nefarious scheme with darker purpose. He’d carefully employed that demonic lord deceit in order to keep me here—to protect me and make absolutely sure that I could never go back to Earth anything less than a goddamn superhero.

Didn’t matter the purpose. It still cut deeply. How could I trust him if I never knew when he might pull another stunt like that, whether to protect me or not? His words came back to me: Kara, I could no more keep you prisoner now than cage the lightning or bottle the surging sea. I snorted. Wasn’t that a lovely pile of bullshit?