Then he remembered. He looked up. From the look of frozen horror on Durzo’s face, it all must have taken only seconds. Kylar jumped to his feet, feeling stronger, healthier, more full of energy than he could ever remember.
The look on Durzo’s face wasn’t anger. It was grief. Bereavement.
Kylar slowly turned his hand over. The skin was still cut on his palm, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. The ka’kari had seemed to push into—
No. It couldn’t have.
From every pore in his hand, black poured out like sweat. It congealed. In a moment, the ka’kari rested in his palm.
A strange glee filled Kylar. Fear followed. He wasn’t sure the glee was all his own. It was as if the ka’kari were happy to have found him. He looked back to Durzo, feeling stupid, so far out of his depth he didn’t know how to act.
It was then he realized how clearly he could see Durzo’s face. The man still stood in the hallway, the lantern behind him. A moment before—before the ka’kari—his face had been all but invisible. Kylar could still see the shadows falling on the floor where Durzo blocked the light, but he could see through them. It was like looking through glass. You could tell the glass was there, but it didn’t impede your vision. Kylar glanced around Elene’s little room and saw that the same applied to everything he looked at. The darkness welcomed his eyes now. His eyes were sharper, clearer—he could see further, could see the castle across the river as if it were high noon.
“I have to have the ka’kari,” Durzo said. “If he doesn’t get it, he’ll kill my daughter. Night Angels have mercy, Kylar, what have you done?”
“I didn’t! I didn’t do anything!” Kylar said. He held the ka’kari out. “Take it. You can have it. Get your daughter back.”
Durzo took it from him. He stared into Kylar’s eyes, his voice sorrowful, “You bonded it. It bonds for life, Kylar. Your Talent will work now, whether you’re holding it or not, but its other powers won’t work for anyone else until you’re dead.”
There was sound of feet running up the steps. Someone must have heard Durzo’s yell. Kylar had to go now. The import of Durzo’s words was barely beginning to register.
Durzo turned to face whoever was coming up the steps, and the prophet’s words echoed in Kylar’s ears: “If you don’t kill Durzo Blint tomorrow, Khalidor will take Cenaria. If you don’t kill him by the day after that, everyone you love will die. If you do the right thing once, it will cost you years of guilt. If you do the right thing twice, it will cost you your life.”
The bollock dagger was in his hand. Durzo’s back was turned. Kylar could end it now. Not even Durzo’s reflexes could stop him when Kylar was this close. It would mean stopping an invasion, saving everyone he loved—surely that meant he held Elene’s life in his hands right now. Logan’s. Maybe the Drakes’. Maybe the whole invasion hinged on this. Maybe hundreds or thousands of lives were balanced now on the point of his dagger. A quick, painless cut, and Durzo would die. Hadn’t he said that life was empty, worthless, meaningless, cheap? He wouldn’t be losing anything of value when he lost his life, he’d sworn that.
Durzo had said it, and more, but Kylar had never really believed him. Momma K had already stabbed Durzo in the back with her lies; Kylar couldn’t do it with his hands.
The moment took on a startling clarity. It froze like a diamond and rotated before his eyes, every facet gleaming, futures shearing off and sparkling. Kylar looked from Elene on his right hand to Durzo on his left, from Durzo to Elene, Elene to Durzo. There was his choice, and their futures. He could kill Elene, the woman he loved, or he could kill Durzo, who had raised him as his son. In every facet, this truth glared pitilessly: If one lived, the other must die.
“No,” Kylar said. “Master, do it. Kill me.”
Durzo looked at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“She’s only seen me. She won’t be a threat to anyone if I’m dead. You can take the ka’kari and save your daughter.”
Blint’s eyes filled with a look Kylar had never seen before. The hard, jagged cast of his master’s face seemed to ease and it made him seem a different man, not old