Satisfaction lightens his voice. “One small request, really. All I ask is that you summon me at the gate. Simply stand before the entry and call my name.”
Nothing is ever simple or harmless with Tarek, but a greater threat roams the mortal realm. “Where’s the gate?”
“Your pledge first, love.”
“Not until you tell me where it is.”
“Then you shall never know.” Tarek’s gaze strokes down my body. “You’ve always reminded me of Enlil’s hundredth rani. Does it strike you as prophetic that we never learned her name? Of all the fire-god’s wives, we learned only of her. Yet we only know of her in association to him. Her reputation lives on in infamy because she wed a powerful man. I, too, have blessed your life, Kalinda. Let me help you again.”
I swipe my dagger at his murky chest, purposely missing. “Go back down the hole you crawled out of.”
His eyes smolder, two sable pits. “Your temper will be your undoing. Udug will crush your world.” Tarek glides backward, deeper into the shadows.
“Wait!” He pauses, his lips curling smugly. I edge forward, stopping before the toes of my boots touch the gloom he dwells in. “If you care anything for your son or me, you’ll help us.”
“Doesn’t my coming here prove that I love you?” He beckons me nearer with his same vainglorious grin. The tips of my toes crest the darkness. The cold tingles, alive and crawling with tentacles. Tarek sidles up to me and grabs a handful of my hair. He lifts my locks to his nose and inhales. “Breathing you in is like drinking midnight.”
“Where’s the gate, Tarek?” His gritty hand brushes down my cheek. I force myself to remain still. “This could redeem you. Anu could forgive your indiscretions and invite you to the Beyond.”
“The Beyond will never have me. I wish to return to the mortal realm.” Tarek’s grip tightens on my hair. “Udug stole my empire, but my name and power belong to me.”
I try tugging away, but Tarek pulls harder, dragging me into the darkness. A blackout obscures me, a whirlwind of dust and grime. Rough lips slam down on my mouth. I cannot breathe or see past the filth. A rush of panic throttles me, and I drive my dagger into his chest. The blade sinks up to my knuckles into squirming quicksand.
Tarek chuckles into my ear. “Should you choose to behave and respect your husband, all you need to do is request my company, and I will come.”
His dusty form disintegrates around me, vanishing to empty shadows. I draw in gasps of unsullied night air and search inside myself for my dying soul-fire. Finding my inner flame shrunken and weak, I tremble on the precipice of the evernight.
12
DEVEN
Torches bob around Rohan and me, like large fireflies illuminating the dark. We blend in with the other soldiers fanning out through the forest. Difficult as it is not to run ahead, we stay in the thick of the hunt. But as the troops disperse into smaller groups, we break out in front of the other search parties. Soon our torch is the only one for a hundred strides in every direction. We finally arrive at the place we last saw our comrades. The leafy covert is vacant.
“Where did they go?” Rohan asks, turning about.
“I don’t know.” They were not taken. No one from camp has searched farther out than this. The torchlights must have spooked them. I would suggest that Rohan send them a message on the wind, a whistle or birdcall, but torchlights close in on us. Too many men could become suspicious of our signal or any response our friends would send.
I sweep the torch over the ground and uncover a footprint of Yatin’s boot. As a boy, he often hid from his five older sisters so they could not dress him up like a doll, or, when he grew older, saddle him with their chores. He would only leave a footprint if he intended for me to find it.