forced him to drink vials of venomous bloodbane just to witness its effects. Silas’s muscles twitched with pain, and Kate watched it all, feeling his hate for the councilwoman growing deeper with every strike.
Kate pulled back from the memory.
Da’ru was Silas’s enemy. The bond she had created between them on that night had condemned him to a life with only a fraction of a soul. For two years he had been a subject of her experiments, and since then he had suffered constant pain as his spirit struggled and failed to rejoin its two halves.
Silas had learned to endure that suffering over time but the rituals in Wintercraft had bound him to Da’ru, letting her cruelty and hate drip into him day after day. He could sense her spirit inside him, even when she was not there. He could feel her anger and taste the venom of her thoughts, as if an echo was traveling through the veil, feeding directly from her spirit into what was left of his.
This connection had become Da’ru’s greatest power over him. She had made Silas believe that to turn against her would condemn him to even greater suffering than he already faced. She had used his early ignorance of the veil to deceive him. He had no reason to doubt her threats, but Kate knew now that there was no truth behind them. That bond had been Silas’s greatest torment. Da’ru had infected his life, forcing him to endure years in the service of his torturer, and that was something he could not bear.
Kate might not be able to send Silas into death as he had asked, but Da’ru’s link with him had been created by the circle and that circle was under Kate’s control now. If there was even a chance she could break it, it had to be worth a try.
Kate lowered her hands and held one of them against Silas’s palm-scar. Now that she was looking for it, she could see a silver thread of light trailing out of it like a spider’s web, binding what was left of his spirit to Da’ru. All she had to do was sever it. But how?
The circle answered.
Blue light from one of the inner symbols struck out like a bolt of lightning, infusing the thread with blinding light. The shades stayed well back as the entire hall began to shudder and shake, and faint cracks spread across the listening circle, crumbling many of its carvings into dust. Kate did not know what was happening. The energy spreading up through her feet was too powerful. She couldn’t stop it. Light burst through her hand, the silver thread ignited in pure white fire and the flames leaped into Silas’s palm, making his body buckle as the fire spread through his blood.
Kate closed her eyes—all she could do was let it happen—then the thread snapped in two and the two halves crumbled to the floor like fallen ash, returning its energy to the circle that had created it. The white fire bled out through Silas’s boots and down into the floor. The light faded, the mist cleared, and with one last scream of anguish the souls within the circle disappeared to be seen no more.
Kate looked around, confused. She had not meant for that to happen.
She snatched her hand quickly out of Silas’s grip and he glared at her, exhausted, very angry and still very much alive.
“What . . . did you do?” he asked.
Moonlight bled in through the museum’s windows. Night had fallen over Fume. They must have been in the circle for hours, but it felt like only a few minutes. Sweat covered every pore of Silas’s skin, his breath coming in gasps as his body tried to recover.
“What did you do?” he asked again.
Kate dared to meet his eyes. “You wanted my help. I helped you,” she said. “What Da’ru did to you can’t just be undone. Maybe there is a way, but the book didn’t tell me how. I did the only thing I could do. There was a link binding her to you. I broke it. You are free of her now.”
Silas looked at her with suspicion, then touched the old scar on his palm. The heat that had smoldered within it was gone and the wound was already beginning to heal. Kate could not tell if he was pleased about that or not.
“Da’ru shouldn’t have tried to bind your soul,” continued Kate. “She knew she wouldn’t be able to fix it.