of her people, and the harbinger of death. It was the only message she could send without Lady Pravda being aware.”
“Kill me,” Dari said, her words soft against her own palm as her heart seemed to tear in half.
Kate hadn’t been trying to fool Aron into believing she was Cayn.
Kate had been doing everything she could to communicate her location to Dari, and to plead for someone to free her from such torture—even if freedom meant death.
“You can’t sense her because she’s drugged.” Aron’s face was now as red as Stormbreaker’s and Snakekiller’s. “When she’s not being used for her energy, they’re probably keeping her drunk on bullroot, and maybe something like the wine Falconer used to paralyze me.”
“Where is Lady Thorn?” Lord Ross asked Lord Cobb, and if Dari had been standing next to her grandfather, she would have run from the murder in his voice. For all his wise-headed talk of sacrificing Kate to save Dari or the Stregans, now that the moment presented itself, he could no more do so than Dari could. The rage in his eyes mirrored her own as he said, “I know you have some idea, Westin. Tell me. Now.”
“I wish I did know.” Lord Cobb’s own cheeks shaded maroon across the bridge of his nose, and his hand already gripped the hilt of his sword. “At the last sighting our scouts made, Pravda was traveling by carriage with an unmarked escort, somewhere within my borders, presumably picking up orphans.”
“Carriage,” Aron said as Dari’s mind reeled outward, soaring through the Veil as she grabbed for some sign or vision of her twin.
“What kind of carriage?” Aron demanded. Then, “Kate really wants me to kill her?”
He sounded horrified.
Dari could no longer contain herself. She sent her awareness pelting through the Veil, across the world carved over the world.
Kill me….
The words thundered through her mind like one of Stormbreaker’s unnatural bursts of weather.
Kate was being drugged. Used. Drained like a wineskin whenever Lady Thorn needed more graal than she herself possessed. Kate’s damaged mind and damaged body couldn’t withstand such mistreatment. The drugs probably kept her from shifting too, which would have been fresh torture to Kate.
Dari and Kate weren’t identical twins, but alike in many ways except for one. Dari felt completely comfortable in her human skin, but Kate—poor Kate! It was only in her Stregan form that Kate became whole. Feral, but complete and rational. Her mind played no tricks on her when she hunted and flew.
Dari felt warm arms taking hold of the body she had left behind.
Moments later, the calming flow of Nic’s energy reached her, given freely. His image joined her on the other side of the Veil, and she grabbed the essence of his tunic and held on to keep herself from dropping to the ground, or letting her Stregan essence burst forth and consume her. The fury inside her wanted to chew through her skin and explode into Eyrie, destroying everything between her and her imprisoned twin.
The world on both sides of the Veil swam around Dari, and nothing seemed real save for Nic, right there beside her, helping her hold herself together.
Kill me….
For the first time since she came to Eyrie to find her twin, Dari wondered if death might be the greatest kindness she could offer her sister now.
Then, for the briefest of moments, she felt what Kate was feeling, and she saw what Kate was seeing.
For the first time in too many cycles to count, Dari touched her twin’s mind.
She shouted across the Veil as the connection settled into place, restoring a wholeness to her soul she thought she would never experience again. Kate’s warmth surged toward her, through her, wrapping her in a love she had known before she knew any human voice or touch.
Dari.
Kate’s whisper seemed so weak, a ribbon of thought Dari could barely grasp.
“Kate!”
The word reverberated through Dari’s mind and graal, through the other side of the Veil, and if she could have thrown her entire essence after that thought-ribbon, she would already be flying.
But the ribbon vanished.
The warmth broke away.
Agony racked every fragment of life in Dari’s body as she lost sense of her sister again. Her awareness slammed back into her body with wicked force, and she swayed and fell forward. Only Nic’s support kept her on her feet.
“Kate,” she wailed, unable to hold back a scream of rage, or the sobs that followed.
Kill me….
Was that her thought? Her sister’s?
In that moment, Dari wished she could die herself rather