Prince of Spies - By Bianca D'Arc Page 0,70

little witch?”

A sickening, slithering voice sounded through her mind in a perversion of the way she communicated with Nico. Riki looked around for the source of the voice. Someone was watching her. Fear skittered through her already adrenaline-charged body.

“Come, little witch.” She would swear it was Lucan’s voice. “Come home to me, little witch, or my brothers will sever your head and eat your entrails.”

She felt the anger rising with the words, but where were they coming from? Lucan was nowhere to be seen. In fact, she couldn’t see one single human within range of her high perch. The only living things left in the area were skiths. All the animals had fled before the evil creatures or been eaten.

Then Riki noticed one skith in particular seemed to be watching her. The others slithered around below the tree in a mass of scaly flesh, but this one stood apart, its slitted eyes trained on her. It made her skin crawl.

This was where the voice originated. Could Lucan somehow channel his thoughts through the skiths? The idea was terrifying, but it explained why these skiths were so far north and why they were heading en masse toward the Jinn encampment without a single human soldier driving them.

Lucan was controlling the skiths.

It was the only explanation.

Loralie had warned of this, in her oblique way, all those months ago. She’d told Lucan, in Riki’s presence, how he might discover a way to communicate with and control the creatures with which he was blending his essence. Lucan had crowed in delight at the thought, but Riki had always felt the significant look Loralie gave her was meant as a sort of warning. She hadn’t understood it at the time, but many things she’d seen and heard back then were starting to make a horrific sort of sense.

Lucan could not only control the skiths, but he could see through their eyes. And he’d found her. He knew exactly where she was. Panic set in until she realized she was well and truly stuck in this tree. To move was suicide. To stay was even worse. Lucan would send his men to recapture her and who knows what tortures he would think up when he finally had her back in his control.

Despair washed over her. The only choice she had left was how she would die. Should she wait to be recaptured and let Lucan kill her by slow degrees over the course of what could easily be years? Or should she jump and end it quick, letting a skith sever her head?

Anger rose up to smother the fear Lucan struck in her soul. There was another choice.

Defiance.

And this time she wasn’t alone. Nico would help her. He would return for her any moment, and the Jinn had promised their aid as well. She could do this. She could stand up to Lucan for the first time in her life, and she knew there would be others standing with her, if she needed them. She wasn’t alone anymore.

“Damn you!” she screamed at the evil creature. “Damn you to the seven hells and back again!”

Anger bubbled up and with it came the heat and fire of the dragon. Never before had it been so close to the surface, though she recognized it as the power that had lain dormant in her soul all her life. Only now, she could tap into it.

Riki reveled in the fire, letting the power bathe her soul in its purity. Renewed, she opened her eyes and pointed to the skith.

Flames shot from her outstretched hand, shocking her. But it felt right. The flame was real enough, but it did not burn her, for it was of her, part of her very soul.

Calling on the fire of her dragon nature, Riki poured all she had into the flame, sending it to the skith through which Lucan watched, reveling in its screams of death.

The other skiths scattered, slithering away from the flame that burned pure and hot. This was magical flame and it consumed only the skith, leaving the forest around it unburned.

Riki felt triumph rage through her. She’d just killed a creature that should never have lived in the first place. For some reason, that knowledge made her feel good, though she’d never taken a life before. Riki had been taught as a child that all life was sacred, but she’d learned the hard way some things were too evil to live.

Lucan was one of those. Skiths were another.

Killing the skith didn’t fill