Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Twenty-One

Endarion

A cell, somewhere

1st of Otanus

He saw his own dead body chained to the wall opposite when he emerged from the darkness. The final moments of his previous consciousness returned to him like a punch to the head, and he remembered Khian beheading him. In his half-asleep panic he tried to lunge forward, only to jar his shoulders almost from their sockets and pull taut the chain around his waist. It took him a few seconds to look down at himself and realise that the dead body wasn't his, because he was still alive.

He'd been stripped of his coat, left only with the shirt and trousers he'd worn to meet with Khian. His arms were secured behind the back of a chair he noticed had been bolted to the floor, his waist lashed to it, his legs fastened to its legs. All at once the aches and pains ambushed him; the demanding agony of his shattered kneecap tussled for dominance with the throbbing of his reset nose and the drunken headache inspired by the blow to the back of his skull that had knocked him out. When he licked his lips, he tasted dried blood from his nose, and when he turned his head the lump on the back of his skull made him wince.

Memories of his captivity on Shaeviren assaulted him, and in his desperation for a distraction he cast his dazed eyes around to inspect his cell.

A basic affair, windowless, one wall composed of floor-to-ceiling bars, the other three of cold, damp stone. The corridor beyond was dark and dank, the sole source of light a weak torch flickering somewhere just out of sight. Aside from the chair and the body shackled to the wall, the room was empty.

Ah, the body.

Now he'd come to his senses and knew it couldn't be his, he studied it with renewed interest. A tall figure, dressed in ragged shirt and trousers like him, greying black hair bloodied and in disarray. As his eyes roved down to the corpse's sundered stomach, the stench of rotting organs and loosed bowels reached him even through his broken nose and he gagged. He saw the wide rip of a disembowelling wound, and what few innards hadn't tumbled out during the man's death glimmered horrifically within.

He knew who it was, even before he glanced at the face.

He couldn't have mistaken himself for anyone but his older brother, whose desecrated carcass hung before him as the most grotesque reminder of what he'd done in saving Estrid and rebelling against the Imperium.

In death, Valerian's face had relaxed, the usual severity loosened to something almost resembling a sleeping peace. Uncharacteristic stubble speckled his square jaw and Endarion supposed he'd languished in the Caetoran's cells for some time before he'd been killed. The state of his body and the greyed pallor of his skin suggested he'd been dead a couple of days, presumably before Khian had offered to swap him for Estrid.

He'd known Khian never intended to return Valerian alive, and yet the stark proof of it galled.

That Sephara wasn't also strung up with her father suggested her cover hadn't been blown and she yet lived, but the thought awarded him only the briefest heartbeat of relief before his focus returned to his brother.

"I'm sorry," he said, the words a strained whimper. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'm so fucking sorry, Val. I didn't think they'd come for you. I thought you'd be safe."

So constant and reliable had Valerian been, Endarion expected the corpse to reanimate and scold him for his idiocy. He couldn't quite accept his brother's death, though in truth he'd known Valerian was doomed as soon as Kaeso appeared in Dujaro. He'd known and yet he'd continued to entertain the idea that he could rescue Val, that they could command their insurrection together, that they'd triumph and win the Invictum Throne, as united in their cause as they'd always been.

They had a bridge to mend, after all. The last words they'd shared had been to argue and threaten, half a lifetime ago when Endarion had recruited Sephara as his agent in the capital. Valerian's last sentiments to his brother had been disparaging and insulting; Endarion's had been aggressive and threatening.

"I did this," he rambled. "I did this and it's my fault. I'm sorry, but I couldn't destroy Estrid. You knew that. You knew what you asked of me when you told me to obey Dobran. You should have known we can't keep making these sacrifices."

Anger burned in the pit of his stomach. Anger at himself for his capture. Anger at Khian for displaying Valerian's body here. Anger at Val for pushing him into a corner and then suffering for his actions. He was even absurdly angry at Estrid, for the way she made him feel and the disregard he showed all else in her presence.

"It didn't turn out quite as we planned, did it, Brother?" he said with a morbid chuckle. "You're dead. I'll be dead soon. Heller escaped long ago, so he was the smartest of us. Kaeso's an idiot, sorry to say. Sephara and Daria can continue our legacy, but I don't know what will happen without us." He scoffed, then glanced over to his brother's corpse as if expecting a reply. "Listen to me. As if we were ever that important. Just two old men who wanted more in life than they'd already taken, than they'd already been born with." He leaned back and set his head on the chair. His head wound flared, but he tamped the pain down with a growl. "It's probably a good thing I'm going to die. I'm going mad again, Brother. I suppose you already suspected that. I keep seeing things. I keep seeing Father. I wonder if I'll see him when I die. Maybe I can smash his head in all over again. Something to look forward to, I suppose." He sucked in a stuttering breath. "I keep seeing Mother, too. Keep seeing her just before I killed her. I never told you what I did that night, because how could I admit to killing our mother?" He slammed his head backwards, relishing the starburst of agony. "I killed both our parents, and now I've practically killed you. Hopefully Khian'll butcher me before I can ruin anyone else."

He didn't realise he was crying until the tears seeped into the blood streaking his face. The droplets stained his lap a watery red as they landed.

"This was never supposed to happen. I was the one who was supposed to die, and you were the one who'd lead us to victory." He looked again to his brother's body, seeking the forgiveness he knew Val could no longer give. "I'm just a soldier, Val. I destroy things. Cato was right when he told me I would be left with nothing."

Maybe he sat there, talking to the carcass of Valerian Boratorren, for days. Or maybe it was only a few minutes. But, by the time he'd scraped his throat raw with his mumbling, the light beyond his cell had grown stronger. A pair of figures materialised, one of them holding the torch aloft and blinding him with its brightness.

"Awake, then?" Khian asked as he passed the torch to his mother. He plucked a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the cell, then stepped in with Nazhira behind him. The pair of them were clad in their uniforms, Khian's the unrumpled ensemble he'd donned in Aukruna, Nazhira's the flowing skirt-and-shawl combination that always afforded her an annoying degree of grace.

The torch's glare illuminated the corpse, made starker the dead hue of Valerian's skin, the beginnings of rot around his gut, the ill-healed cuts marring his arms and face. For the first time, Endarion saw a ragged red line ringing Val's throat like the most brutal of necklaces, though the lack of blood staining his neck and collar suggested the wound had been dealt after he'd died, as a final insult.

Khian looked between the two bound men and chuckled. "Do you like what I did?" he said. He pointed to the gaping stomach wound. "It took quite a bit of force to do that. I've never disembowelled anyone before, and no one told me just how much effort it required."

If he'd had the energy, Endarion would've tried to free himself from his bonds and set upon the Warmaster like a rabid dog.

"What about this?" Khian continued, then ran a gentle forefinger around Val's sliced neck. "I did that after he died, to show everyone who watched how I could debase and punish him even beyond death." The young man's mouth curved into a sharp smile. "He cried, you know, as I cut him open. He sobbed as his guts spilled out onto the sand. He cursed your name, told me he wished your father had killed you before you turned into such a disappointment."

Endarion hawked and spat a wad of bloody spittle at the Warmaster but missed the mark. "He did not," he snapped.

"He was weak, at the end. As I'm sure you'll be," Khian sneered. "And he stank. That's another thing, by the way: I forgot that by disembowelling him I had opened his bowels. What an embarrassment that was for him, shitting out his innards through his stomach."

Endarion strained against the chain but succeeded only in exacerbating his existing injuries. His wrists were already rubbed raw, and he winded himself with the ties around his waist.

"You lie," he hissed.

In reply, Khian raised a hand to the top of Val's head and grasped bedraggled hair. That hand, Endarion noticed, was blistered, no doubt from the lightning Borso had flung at Khian outside Dujaro. Before Endarion could reap scant joy from this tiny victory, Khian twisted his injured hand sharply, tearing Val's head away from the neck, the stitches coming loose with ease. "When I had his head sown back on, it was almost like he was alive again. It was strange. I might try that with you when we're done here. Cut off your limbs and sew them back on. You don't even need to be dead for that, I suppose."

The Warmaster swaggered over to Endarion with the head still in his grip. With a smile sharp enough to cut throats, he waved the grisly trophy in Endarion's face, close enough that Valerian's cold, dead skin brushed up against his. He ducked his head away, prompting Khian to lean over him, so that Val's empty stare bored into him.

"Not going to give your brother a kiss goodbye?" the young man taunted. He chuckled as he angled Val's head so that the lifeless lips pressed against Endarion's scarred cheek.

"That's enough, Khian," Nazhira said, and thrust the torch at him. "Torment the man now, and you won't have anything to look forward to later."

Khian snorted contemptuously, then he backed away and tossed the severed head so that it landed wetly between Endarion's bound feet, the mouth hanging open, the eyes dim and sightless. Try as he might to cringe away, he wasn't strong enough to move the chair. His cheek throbbed as if he'd been struck, and a bone-deep chill gripped him.

The Warmaster moved away, placing his back to the wall beside Val's now-headless body. Nazhira aimed a soft smile Endarion's way, as if to apologise for her son's behaviour, then crouched down in front of him, ignoring Val's skull entirely. She gripped his thighs to steady herself and shot him a narrow-eyed gaze he knew was meant to be seductive. Against the backdrop of his confinement, and with the ghost of his dead brother's lips still icy upon his cheek, the woman disgusted him.

"I don't suppose you expected to find yourself in this predicament," she said.

"Get to the point." He tried to shift away from her. In response, she relinquished her hold and plucked free a small blade she'd kept sheathed at her hip. She set the sharpened tip against his crippled knee. Featherlight as the pressure was, it still hurt.

"Try not to steal all the fun from this endeavour," she said, her sharp, sun-darkened features no less beautiful for the malice in her tone. "I'm sure you know how this goes. I will ask you some questions, and every unsatisfactory answer I receive will be punished." As if her point needed proving, she pressed down on his knee and made him squirm. "I won't start here, though. I suspect we will be here a while and I want to leave the more exciting parts for later."

She surged to her feet in a single fluid ripple. "I must know, before we begin; why didn't you just give Estrid up?"

"You'd already killed my brother."

"But you didn't know that," Nazhira replied. "Tell me the truth."

"He's infatuated, Mother. I suppose even pitiful old castrates have their fancies." Khian folded his arms across his chest. "All of this has been for her, no doubt."

"Is that true?" Nazhira asked him.

"Does it matter?"

She dipped her head in agreement. "I suppose not. It's just such a shame for your meticulously plotted insurrection to come crashing down for the sake of a traitorous woman." She leaned over him and considered the knife in her hands. It was a thin blade, not suited to the sort of butchery she no doubt planned. Rather than slash it into his flesh and begin her dark work, she used it to cut his shirt away, much the same as Khian had done just before he'd been publicly whipped.

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Her gaze roamed around the scarred expanse of his chest as if deciding which old mark to focus on. For some reason, her regard made him cringe with self-consciousness, and he felt like he was strung up between those two poles again, naked before a crowd of hundreds. "Why does Sudarium wish to protect you?"

He lowered his brows in confusion. "Who?"

Palla had mentioned the name Sudarium after she'd saved him from the shadowmancer assassin who'd almost killed him at Dujaro. She'd been charged with protecting him by Sudarium, though who the individual was and why they wanted Endarion alive were questions he'd never gotten around to having his first-general answer, busy as he was with a war on his hands. It didn't look like he'd ever get the opportunity now.

"I'll ask an easier one, then: who among your forces is the Sudarium's Blade?"

How could she know to ask? He'd only heard of Sudarium from Palla and had made sure not to share their conversation with anyone else. Not even his daughter knew.

The assassin at Dujaro had named Palla 'Sudarium's Blade'. An assassin directed by Dexion, who was a godking, who was somehow allied with Nazhira. Was that what all this was about?

It occurred to him that this might be the reason he'd been taken, and Aukruna left behind for his allies without even a token fight. They knew there was someone in his forces capable of advanced magic, of worldstriding. Maybe they feared Palla to not only retreat to the Sentinel and leave his and Kalduran's armies uncontested, but also go to the trouble of laying a trap to seize and question him in order to uncover her as this 'Blade'.

He'd believed the reason for Khian's snatching of him had been to remove one of his alliance's chief overseers. With Valerian also dead, the only Boratorrens left to execute their insurrection were their unprepared children. But what if this was about more than that?

If that was indeed the sole reason for his capture, he couldn't give Nazhira what she wanted. Not when he himself didn't yet know what, exactly, Palla was to cause such wariness in his enemies.

I really should've fucking pressed Palla harder when I had the chance. All this subterfuge to find out who she is and what Sudarium wants, when Nazhira has an Arisen as her ally. What the fuck could possibly make an immortal godking hesitate?

But hadn't Palla refused to enlighten him for this exact reason? Torture could prise the truth from behind his clenched teeth, if Khian tormented him for long enough. All he knew—all they could cut out of him—was Palla's name. Nothing more. Nothing about the master she served, nothing about her mission protecting him. Nothing about Sudarium themselves, whoever the fuck they were.

Unless Khian and Nazhira already knew all this, and the name was all that mattered now.

Endarion didn't know whether to count Sudarium as an authentic ally genuinely interested in protecting him. But he could safely assume Khian and Nazhira were opposed to Sudarium in some way, and that to provide the monstrous pair with the information they desired would be against his best interests.

Good enough for me. Fucking hope this Sudarium is worth it.

"I don't know what that is."

He clenched his jaw as the knife descended. She'd settled for one of the long slices along his stomach, tracing the ill-healed scar with the tip of her blade, opening it up as a fresh wound. It wasn't deep enough to warrant a cry of pain, so he turned his head away and balled his hands behind his back.

"You do. The stonehound portrait your kidnapper used is a worldstriding anchor, used, no doubt, by one of your officers. The officer who is more than they seem. Which one, Endarion. Give me a name and I'll stop."

Khian had leaned forward, he noticed, watching the torture with the eagerness of an alcoholic offered his favourite wine. Nazhira deepened the cut, the knife's sharp edge gliding through muscle as if he were made of fog. He strained, his teeth aching where his jaw had tightened, the pain a hot red line across him. Blood dribbled down into his lap, soaking the hem of his trousers.

"I'll answer yours if you answer mine," he hissed between his teeth. "Why did you start the war with Kalduran? Does Castrio want to take over the Imperium?"

She wiped the flat of her blade against a clean patch of his trousers and took a step back. "Why would the League want the Imperium?" she asked with a chuckle. "There is much more on offer than one fearful little nation."

"What does that mean?"

She wagged a finger at him. "No, Endarion, I gave you my answer. Time for yours."

"Fuck you, cunt," he snarled.

The suddenness of the blow was worse than the pain, his head slammed to the side and his vision momentarily lost. Khian recoiled from the strike, shaking his fist out.

Endarion coughed and shook his head. "Don't bother defending her, Khian. Your mother sleeps with people for information," he said, looking to the man. "She bedded me three times, and she was bloody good at it. How many other nobles do you think she's fucked?"

The second punch landed squarely on his nose, and the agony was transcendent. It felt like Khian's fist had cannoned right through his face and into his brain. His world became the bright flashing behind his eyes and the sharp, swelling, cresting sensation of his nose grating against the broken pieces of itself. Blood seeped into the back of his throat and he choked on it.

"Say one more word, Boratorren," he heard the Warmaster snarl. He couldn't see him; his vision hadn't yet returned.

"You're a son of a whore whichever way you look at it," he spat, anger and pain and helplessness driving him stubbornly on. "This woman here or the one your father actually sired you on. Makes no difference."

The next blow, the one he'd been hoping would either knock him out or kill him, didn't come. When he was able to blink his eyes clear, he saw Nazhira had interjected and pushed her son back.

"I don't think you have room to make such accusations," the Castrian said as she turned slowly back to face him. "How many children do you have? With how many women? Though, as you said, it makes no difference. We'll get them all in the end."

Before he could offer a threat in reply, she drew in close again and placed an intimate hand on his left shoulder. With her other hand she replaced the knife and extracted a second one, this one long, with a scooped end. He recognised it as a flensing knife and failed to supress a shudder.

"If you wanted all these answers from me, why did you have a Caesidi agent try to kill me?"

He realised his mistake as soon as the last word had left his mouth. Too late, though, because Nazhira aimed an amused smile at him. "Now, how did you know about the Caesidi?"

"I read a book," he replied.

"No, I don't think you did," she said, and set the wickedly curved tip of the flensing knife against the old burn scar on his breastbone, where once the marriage tattoo he'd shared with Aemilia Calerus had resided. "You have an agent of your own, don't you? Who is it?"

As far as he knew, Sephara remained safe in the guise of Silvia Barum. She might still be in captivity following Valerian's arrest, but the fact her body hadn't been displayed alongside her father's meant they didn't know who she truly was. He wouldn't jeopardise her mission, certainly wouldn't be responsible for her capture and death so soon after her father had been butchered. He wondered, briefly, if she'd seen Val's death, and if she blamed him for it. Even worse, if she blamed herself, for being the one to pass on the documents implicating Khian, Nazhira, and Dexion in the assassinations.

Nazhira let his silence simmer for a few seconds before digging the flensing knife into the patch of scar tissue and working it underneath. At first, it flared as an identical sensation to the original burn, when it had first been inflicted. He remembered that one quite well, as his Shaeviren torturers had done it early on, when he was still mostly lucid. Entranced by the ink on his skin—the blending of his and his wife's family's emblems—they'd heated up his sword, which they'd salvaged when they'd first captured him, and pressed it to his breastbone. It had sizzled sickeningly, stinking of overcooked meat, the metal held so long against his skin they'd torn some off in removing the blade.

The Castrian made shorter work of her torture than the Dhamara had. She jerked her wrist and the knife glided beneath his skin. With an expert hand, she carved away a long slice of scar tissue, flicking the bloodied strip aside when she retracted the tool.

The pain collapsed upon him a few seconds later, a scalding explosion, soul-deep and nasty. It pulsed with his heartbeat, growing and intensifying until he couldn't help but tip his head back and let loose a wordless bellow. Against his better judgement, he glanced down at the wound and saw the grotesque sheen of exposed muscle smiling up at him.

"I did you a favour there," Nazhira said, her voice pitched low and soft. "That was an ugly scar. If I let you live long enough for this wound to close, it might heal better."

He grated his teeth as his blood oozed down his chest. "Much appreciated."

She offered him an assessing stare, her eyes roving along his body, searching for the next wound. The knife's tip came to rest on the slice in his cheek, inflicted when his torturers had punched out a molar with a dagger. "This one, perhaps? Unless you'd rather give me that name. Then we shall leave you in peace and let you get some much-deserved rest."

Because he didn't trust his ability to form full sentences in that moment, he snorted back another mouthful of blood from his weeping nose and spat it at Nazhira's face. Close as she was, he didn't miss this time, and it spattered her cheeks and eyes. She recoiled, flensing knife still in hand, and swiped at her face with her sleeve. Her son leapt to her defence, snatching the knife from her hand and slashing across Endarion's shoulder, the scoop catching his exposed muscle and igniting the agony anew.

A fist landed in his stomach, driving the air from his lungs. Then to his flank, then shoulder. Stomach again, face, other shoulder. A barrage of blows he couldn't fend off, couldn't even duck away from. He'd been beaten before, of course. When she'd been training him, his aunt Novissa had made a habit of having him regularly beaten in what she claimed was an attempt to toughen him up and inspire humility. Those beatings had been delivered to a much younger, healthier man boasting the additional padding of honed muscles to protect him. If he'd had space in his mind for such fancies, he might've been ashamed of himself, the way he cried out, the way tears stung his eyes, the way he spewed out a mixture of pleas and curses.

The punches kept coming and the pain kept blossoming, spreading across his body as a wildfire. He wondered, in the spaces between hits, how much of this he could take before expiring. How much punishment could a crippled, bloodied, broken old man suffer before he surrendered, mind, body, and soul? How much pain could he possibly endure before it became too much?

He never found the answer, because Khian pulled back, his mother's hands around his forearms. Endarion sucked in a laboured breath that raked through throat and lungs. His lips were split and the taste of blood, which often inspired his bloodlust when in battle, made him want to vomit. The throbbing in his stomach made him want to vomit, too, and the persistent ache in his breastbone almost had him in tears.

Still, as much as he felt like a corpse—like his butchered brother, whose head remained by his feet, having sightlessly watched the entire ordeal—he worked his tongue around his mouth and managed a few words. "That it? You didn't even loosen any teeth, you fucking runt."

Khian tried to move his mother aside, but she stood firm. "I'll slit your throat, you pathetic old cripple."

"How uninspired," he spluttered.

"I'll cap your other knee and throw you to hunting hounds and watch you try and crawl away as they rip you apart."

He snorted, spraying blood. "Sounds like something I'd do."

"I'll cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat."

"But I thought I was already a castrate?" He canted his head to one side in exaggerated confusion, the movement birthing a brutal headache. The headache in turn birthed a crazed grin, and Endarion knew, with his own blood spotting his bared teeth, he resembled a rabid canine. "Unless they grew back? Can they do that?"

The younger man's face flushed a deep, angry red, but Nazhira stood resolute between him and his victim, so he backed down and stepped away. He punched Val's chest, as if that could hurt Endarion. Valerian's decaying flesh sank beneath the blow, and Endarion imagined he could taste the rot in the cell's fetid air.

"We won't be getting any answers out of you today, will we, Endarion?" Nazhira asked kindly. His blood and saliva still speckled her skin.

"It's not likely."

"Very well." She handed her flensing knife to her son. "Don't kill him, Khian. We still need him."

Without another word, without even a backward glance at him, she waited for Khian to unlock the cell door, then disappeared into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

"I won't bother with the questions. We can skip straight to the fun part." Khian raised the blade before his face and considered it, the admiration in his gaze one someone might reward their lover in the utmost privacy.

There was no fanfare to his first attack. He aimed the flensing blade at the long, ridged scar along Endarion's left forearm, where his previous torturers had partially flayed him. Khian wasn't as adept as Nazhira, the flensing blade skimming into flesh and muscle with the fumbling of someone unpractised in the ways of torture. It hardly mattered, because it still hurt, still made him thrash against his bonds and rub his wrists raw in his struggles.

"You should know," Khian whispered into his ear, "as soon as your absurd rebellion is defeated, I'm going to take Daria for myself." His breath was hot against the side of Endarion's face, the closeness obscene. "I'll give her another black eye, to remind her of the first one. I won't stop there, though. Maybe I'll do to her what I'm doing to you and tie her down and cut her apart. Maybe I'll take her to my bed, whether she wants to or not." The flensing knife came to rest against his throat. "I've heard she was never interested in a man's company. I'll see if I can rectify that."

Something deep within Endarion stirred, like a Drasken cave-bear rousing itself from hibernation.

He shifted against his bonds, numb to the pain he caused himself. The legs of the chair grated against the stone floor and the binds around his wrist seemed to loosen. He imagined murdering Khian in a hundred different, prolonged, gruesome ways, and the images, vivid as they were to his half-mad mind, wafted his rage from a wildfire to an inferno. The chair moved beneath him, the legs crunching as his efforts snapped the bolts keeping it in place. He felt like he lifted a mountain, every muscle straining, every vein engorged with a strength he couldn't claim as his own.

The chair toppled sideways, him with it. He crashed to the floor and a wave of weakness drowned him, banishing his inhuman darkness and seeping his strength out through the copious amounts of blood he'd already lost and continued to lose in his straining.

Khian, his mouth agape, stood and stared as Endarion used his last seconds of consciousness to try to pry his hands from the chains still securing him. Not that it would do him any good, as he was far too weak to fight Khian off and escape.

He closed his eyes to compose himself, and when he opened them again, he was upright. It wasn't Khian who stood before him but one of the monstrous Dhamara who'd torn him asunder at Shaeviren. A great misshapen beast, taller than him by a good foot, its horns wide and straight like a bull's, a pair of ruthless fangs protruding from a jutting lower jaw. It rumbled at him in its indecipherable language, the tool in one of its four hands thick and shiny with his blood.

I will make you whole.

At first, he thought he heard his own voice in his head, lulling him asleep on the tides of his madness. But it was too deep even for his baritone, too low and old and menacing to be mortal.

You shall bear our power, and in doing so shed this half-life you mortals experience.

Whatever spoke lurked behind him, as it had always been during every nightmare that had afflicted him since his escape four years ago. It lingered just out of sight. His neck prickled at its presence; its breath rolled warm and putrid across his skin.

The world will cower when you stand before it, whole. Whole, as everything is meant to be.

The decay of its existence fanned across his tortured back and melted into his muscles. He felt like his bones might crumble from the taint, his flesh disintegrate to nothing, his mind collapse into a void and drag the world into it with him.

Feel the darkness. Let it claim you. Let it free you of your mortal shell so that you might be whole. Let it annihilate all those who would harm you.

Oily black tendrils stroked the base of his skull, caressing his scalp, trying to break into his mind. He shook his head to banish it. "No," he growled. "I won't."

He threw a glance over his shoulder, desperate to lay eyes upon his chief tormentor, upon the one who had followed him from Shaeviren and stalked in the shadows of his dreaming hours. Instead of another Dhamara, or even the dark mass he might've expected, he found himself, black-eyed and devilish as he'd been at Dujaro, standing there watching.

You will be whole.