The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,120

and keep you out of trouble, though all the gods know that’s impossible.”

Surprise kept me from resisting as she tugged me away from the window. Her mouth quirked. “You know he loved you, right? He told me once he couldn’t have been prouder of you than if you were his son. You think he’d try to take care of Melly, and not of you?”

Sethan. My chest ached. “I can take care of myself,” I said, around the lump in my throat.

“Yeah, because you’ve been doing such a terrific job of that.” Cara pushed me into a chair. “No more excuses. Tell me your plan, and we’ll figure out a way to save Kellan—Kiran—whatever his name is!—without anybody dying.”

***

(Kiran)

“No doubt you’ve spent the last day constructing an elaborate defense against me.” Simon stalked into Kiran’s room, the dry amusement in his voice belied by the taut eagerness of his stride.

Kiran didn’t waste breath on a reply. He summoned his focus, a simple image of one of the earliest sigils he’d learned. Behind the focus waited a contorted maze of painstakingly assembled imagery that would twist Simon away from the akhelashva ritual into endlessly looping chains of false memories.

At Kiran’s silence, Simon inclined his head. “Let us see how thoroughly Ruslan trained you.” He turned and called, “Iannis!”

The scowling old woman appeared in the doorway, a vial of viscous yellow liquid in one gnarled hand. Morvain loomed behind her.

Kiran’s stomach clenched. Drugs...given Dev’s comment on Alathian expertise with herbs, he’d suspected Simon might attempt such a tactic. Though Simon couldn’t drug Kiran into incoherency if he wished to view Kiran’s memories without distortion, a drug that blunted concentration would put Kiran at a severe disadvantage in the mental battle to come.

He aimed a contemptuous look at Simon. “A truly powerful mage wouldn’t need the crutch of a drug to defeat a mere apprentice.”

Simon lifted a sardonic brow. “Perhaps you confuse me with Ruslan. I am not so blindly arrogant as to refuse a useful tool out of scorn for nathahlen methods.” His hand flicked in the hatefully familiar gesture.

Kiran’s muscles gave way. He shut out anger and frustration, as Morvain hauled him off the floor and dumped him on the bed. For years, Kiran had hidden the memories of his trysts with Alisa from Ruslan, even through mind-shredding pain. He’d hold his focus regardless of what Simon’s drug did to him.

Iannis approached the bed. Her black eyes surveyed Kiran with utter indifference, as if he were no more than an animal. Despite her seamed skin and stooped shoulders, her hands moved with practiced efficiency as she broke the vial’s seal. She tipped the contents into Kiran’s mouth, then held his jaw shut and stroked his throat to force a swallow.

The liquid tasted strongly of cloves, with a thin, sour undertaste far different than the oily bitterness of hennanwort. Iannis gripped Kiran’s wrist, her fingers pressing his pulse, her dispassionate eyes studying his.

As long moments passed, a dreamy lassitude overtook Kiran. He seemed to float in a warm, placid pool, like one of the marble baths in Lizaveta’s chambers. When Iannis released his wrist and nodded to Simon, her actions felt distant and unimportant as something seen in a scry-vision of the ancient past.

The focus sigil gleaming in his mind took on the weight of a mountain. Far, far easier to let the sigil fade...but Kiran fought off lethargy and held the image, even as cold tendrils of power crawled into his head. Somewhere, Simon was speaking, his voice seeping into Kiran’s consciousness like water through fissured stone.

“Think of Ruslan. Think of your master. He raised you, and trained you, and you loved him, did you not? I saw it in your memories as a child. You loved him, and desperately desired his approval. Tell me, Kiran, what changed that love? Show me how it turned to fear and hate...”

No. He clung to the sigil, even though he could no longer remember why it was so important to resist.

Power stung his chest. Simon was tracing Ruslan’s mark with a bloodied finger, over and over. “Remember the moment when he gave you this? When he linked you, marked you, bound you? Think of that, Kiran...” Simon’s voice murmured on, constantly asking, constantly reminding, as grasping tendrils sought to tear apart Kiran’s myriad chains of images.

Kiran clutched the sigil tighter yet. After a timeless interval, the tendrils withdrew. A dull wash of relief rippled through him. His hold on the sigil wavered, but he refused