It smells like the air after a lightning strike hits a vein of iron—acrid, metallic, and burning. It smells of sulfur and old blood.
Heavy, staggering footsteps echo on the stone.
I leap to my feet, clutching the scrap of leather to my chest.
Imas appears in the doorway of the library.
He looks like a corpse that has been dragged through a battlefield. His clothes are soaked, mud splattered up to his thighs. His platinum hair is plastered to his skull. His skin is the color of parchment, translucent and gray.
But it is his eyes that freeze the breath in my throat.
They are not violet. They are dull, washed out, rimmed in red. He looks at me, and there is no recognition in his gaze, only a blind, terrified desperation.
He stumbles into the room, one hand gripping the doorframe to keep from falling. He reeks of dark magic—not the potent,controlled Chaos he usually wields, but something raw and festering.
He has done something terrible.
"Leora," he croaks. His voice is a ruin.
He takes a step toward me and collapses.
13
LORD IMAS
Consciousness returns like a drowning man breaking the surface of a frozen lake—gasping, violent, and painfully cold.
I am lying on the stone floor of my library. The fire is dead. The room smells of ancient dust and the sharp, coppery tang of fresh blood.
A hand touches my forehead. It is small, warm, and terrifyingly gentle.
I recoil.
My body reacts before my mind can catch up. I scramble backward, my boots scraping against the flagstones, until my spine hits the leg of a heavy reading table. I gasp, the air sawing in and out of my lungs, tasting of sulfur and my own bile.
"My Lord," Leora whispers. She is kneeling where I fell, her hands hovering in the air, uncertain. Her eyes—those damnable sapphire eyes—are wide with concern.
Not fear.Concern.
It makes me sick. A wave of nausea rolls through my gut, hot and oily. I am a Khuzuth Lord. I am the Master of this House.And I am cowering on the floor like a beaten dog before a human slave.
"Do not touch me," I snarl. My voice is a ruin, cracked and bleeding. "Do not ever touch me with those hands."
She flinches, withdrawing her hands to her chest. She clutches a scrap of charred leather—the remains of the book I burned. She knows.
"You're bleeding," she says softly.
I look down at myself. My tunic is stiff with it. Dark, drying stains map a geography of violence across my chest and sleeves. My hands are coated in crimson, the substance tacky between my fingers.
It is not my blood.
I stare at the red smear on my palm, and the memory of the last hour crashes into me with the force of a falling portcullis.
The Temple.
I close my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids offers no sanctuary. It only brings the image of the High Priest’s face into sharper focus.
The memory rises, dragging me back.
