their own center.
I stab the knife into the spiral, filling it with violence.
Nayan steps across the room in a single stride, emerges from the shadows beside me, puts his hand on my shoulder. His grip is firm, not friendly, and I resist the urge to cut off his fingers.
“You are not well,” he says.
I scoff, my eyes still on the table. “No. I am not well.”
He will get no more from me and knows it. Shadows curl around him, around me. His grip loosens.
“We are here,” he says, his eyes on me.
I nod and he moves away, his expression unreadable.
I know his true concern—he fears I may be a danger to Cale and Riven, the Right and Left hands of Mask. He is right to fear, and once more I want to murder him for being right.
I close my eyes, put my thumb and forefinger on the bridge of my nose, try to find a focus, peace from the swirl of thoughts.
I cannot control my mind. It is an animal free of its cage of conscience.
Tears well in my eyes and I wipe at them furiously, hating my weakness.
I feel a faint twinge deep in my consciousness and it sits me up straight in my chair. It is vaguely familiar. The twinge distills to an ache, then an itch. At first I think it must be a false memory, another symptom of my mental deterioration, but it lingers, not strong, but steady.
I recognize it, then, and it sends a charge into me.
It is the mental emanations of the Source. Distant, faint, but undeniable.
The Shadovar have reawakened it.
The familiar hunger comes over me, another empty hole that I need to fill, this one born of addiction. Surrendering to the need seems fitting and I do not fight it. The mental connection opens and I gasp at its feel. My body shudders.
I sigh, satisfied, for a moment at peace. I wonder how the Netherese keep the Source’s damaged consciousness functioning without me.
The question frees a flood of memories. I recall the dark-skinned servant creatures of the Shadovar, the krinth, whose minds I broke, whose consciousnesses I altered, whose minds I turned as brittle as crystal. Useful for a time, but fragile. I remember their wails as I pried away the layers of their simple minds, the blood leaking from their ears. I feel shame, but the shame manifests as a giggle.
The Shadowwalkers eye me, concerned at my outburst. The shadows cloaking them do not hide their mistrust.
“What is it?” Nayan asks in his accented common. He looks as if he might attempt to restrain me.
Contact with the Source reawakens my desire to use my mental powers despite the damage done to my mind by my father, despite the jagged edges of my brain that make the use of mind magic like walking on broken glass. I consider scouring Nayan’s mind clean, but resist the impulse.
“It is nothing,” I say, but it is not nothing.
I no longer care if using the Source consumes me. With its power, I might yet have my revenge. It will kill me, but I would rather die an addict than live as I am.
Wouldn’t I?
The need for revenge grants me certitude.
I will use the Source’s power to make Rivalen Tanthul and my father pay.
Then I will die.
Cale, Riven, and Abelar materialized in the darkness on a rise overlooking the Saerbian refugee camp at Lake Veladon. Tents congregated on the shore like fearful penitents. The glow of campfires lit the camp here and there. The reflected light of Selûne’s Tears made fireflies on the mirror of the lake’s dark water.
Thunder rumbled behind them, in the east, heralding a storm. Rain was coming.
Cale’s shadesight cut through the darkness and he saw the nearest team of armed and armored watchmen before they saw him. He hailed them and word that Abelar had returned spread like wildfire through the camp.
A few members of Abelar’s company met them, armor chinking, smiles in their eyes. Displaced Saerbians followed more slowly, fear in theirs. Most stared at the shadows around Cale, at the hole in Riven’s face where his eye should have been, and spoke in hushed whispers.
Cale’s shadow-sharpened hearing caught snippets of their conversations.
“Saved Elden Corrinthal, they say, but what is he? Shadovar?”
“Servant not of Lathander but a dark god …”
“Leave off, they are friends …”
Regg emerged from the press, his mouth a hard line behind his beard. Battle scars lined the rose of Lathander enameled on his breastplate. His face looked worn, creased