The close-lipped smile he offered hurt his face when he extended the water flask to the false Ildiko. She returned it, exposing her small, square horse teeth. Square except for her cuspids which were more pointed, longer, and sharper. Were it not for the fulgent yellow eye, he might not have noticed such a minor change, but now he watched for the tiniest transformation, and her teeth were no longer as human.
She reached for the flask, and he struck. Her startled yelp at being yanked upward and spun around ended on an “oopf” when Brishen slammed her face-down into the forest floor. He wrenched both her arms behind her, gripping her slender wrists with one hand while pressing a knee into her back.
“Who are you, and where’s my wife? Fury hazed his vision red, and he barely got the words out around a snarl. He was tempted to snap her neck. The magic cloaking this Kai might be short-lived, but it was powerful. The cuts and bruises, blood and scratches—how much had been earned on the journey to him, and how much was copied from the real Ildiko? Nausea flippedhis stomach at the idea of her battered like this. He pressed his knee harder into the woman’s back. “Answer me.”
She slowly turned her head to spit dirt and debris from her mouth. More dirt smudged her pale cheek, and a thin smear of blood stained her lips. Her right eye was still human, though the white sclera bore a hint of jaundice. The spell continued to fade, and his captive grew ever stronger as she squirmed in his grip. “Brishen, please! What are you doing?”
“Ripping away the mask.” He stood, taking her with him, his grip unyielding on her wrists. She stiffened when he leaned into her and pressed his face to the side of her head. She smelled of earth and blood, and nothing at all like his wife. “You should have brought a mirror,” he murmured into her ear. “You’ve one Kai eye and one human eye.” He spun her around, let go of her hands and stepped back. If she tried to break for the treeline, he’d be on her in an instant. If she evaded him, there was always Anhuset, waiting within the shadows. “The spell you wear is fading.”
Her startled expression changed to one of fear as she touched her face, fingers running over the contours of cheekbones and nose. Brishen noted the way her fingernails had darkened, as if bruised from an injury. The fear faded, hardening her features with unmistakable resolve. She lowered her arms and shook out her wrists in a deliberate manner, her back straight and proud, head held high as she stared back at him with an oddly familiar gaze. Ildiko had never looked at him in such a way, yet he was certain he’d fallen under this particular scrutiny before.
The false Ildiko didn’t try to run. Instead, she raised her chin in challenge. “What are you willing to do to get your wife back?” Her voice matched the coldness of her expression.
Disconcerted, Brishen bared his teeth at her. “You’re lucky I haven’t strangled you with your own innards yet, and you’retrying to negotiate my hercegesé’s safety with me?” Incredulity at her gall only fueled his anger.
She paled but stood her ground, hands clenching in the folds of her ragged shift. “Give me what I most want, and I will give you what you most want.”
“And what is that?” He couldn’t begin to guess. He’d ruled out money as the motivator for this abduction long before encountering the Kai mimic. Whatever she and her cohorts wanted, it wasn’t ransom.
“Your seed,” she said. Her pallid cheeks rosied with a blush, but she didn’t look away. “A mating with you.” Her words tumbled out in a rush at his stunned silence. “I’ve no need of romance or passion, just a coupling and the life essence of the Khaskem inside me.” She crossed her arms, her yellow eye blazing pale and hot. “Give that to me, and I will tell you where you can find the hercegesé.”
Brishen wondered when he’d ceased to breathe. He gawked at his adversary, shocked speechless as his mind registered each outrageous word. Every line in her body dared him to reject her crazed demand and risk the life of his beloved wife.
“Are you mad?” The question, thick with outrage, came from Dendarah nearby.
The impersonator ignored the guard, never taking her gaze off Brishen. “You’re the direct descendent of Queen Secmis,” she continued. “And the regent of Bast-Haradis. Your ability to wield magic may be gone, but you can still pass it on to your offspring.” Her lip curled in a sneer, revealing one of her lengthening cuspids. “And yet you withhold what you owe all of the Kai for the love of a human woman. You abandon your duty by not taking a concubine or setting the hercegesé aside in favor of a Kai wife. What you won’t willingly give up, someone must take.”
Her words sent bile hurtling into his throat and ice water sluicing down his spine. She questioned his loyalty, justifiedabduction, and proposed rape. How desperate, how despairing did someone have to be to fall so far?
It didn’t matter. As she said, he was the Khaskem. He wouldn’t be used. He wouldn’t be threatened. And he would save his wife.
He stared at her, no longer seeing an echo of Ildiko but the shade of the Spider Queen of Bast-Haradis right before he embraced her and extinguished the last dark spark of her twisted soul. Hatred had flowed through his eidolon veins then, just as it did now, hollowing him out until nothing remained except the resolve to end a malice that strove to control him.
The Kai must have seen something in his expression for her eyes widened, and she spun away to flee. He caught her by her shift, jerking her off her feet a second time. She landed on her bottom with a thud. Brishen let go of the garment long to grab her hair, wrapping the long red length around his arm like a rope. Thin streaks of white wove through the vibrant strands. He almost let go when the imposter’s eyes watered with human tears. It was a truly powerful spell if it could create tears in the eyes of a Kai.
He dodged the blow she tried to land on him, flipping her so that she was on the ground again, this time on her side. She lay there, one arm trapped under her, the other gripping his boot so that her fingers dug into his calf through the leather. A quick glance into the tree line surrounding them yielded no hint of Anhuset’s whereabouts, and the sense of being watched from the wood’s obscuring shadows still lifted the hairs on Brishen’s nape.
His captive squirmed in his hold, breath whistling out her nostrils as he leaned down close to her ear. “If I allow you to use me as stud and discover you’ve lied about the hercegesé, I will track you down and kill you.” His words were no less sincere for their softness. His fingers twisted her hair a little harder. TheBrishen he was now wouldn’t be the Brishen he’d become if he lost Ildiko because of this bitch. “Being pregnant won’t save you. Being a mother won’t save you or the children you bear. There isn’t a place in this world to run to or hide that I won’t find you. And I won’t stop with you. I’ll wipe out your entire family, from your living relatives to the mortem lights stored in Emlek. Do you understand?”
Her pained gasp made her stutter. “You would kill your own child?”
He almost threw her from him then, revolted by the question and the dark implications of infanticide. He had killed in battle. Enemy soldiers and raiders, his dead mother whose soul had been far more dangerous than her body. He’d never murdered, never planned the killing of someone with coldblooded calculation. Still, any mercy he possessed would die if Ildiko died. He knew that down to his bones. But could he kill his own offspring? Even if forced to sire them on a woman driven by some demented ambition to save the powerful magic of his line? The possibility he’d become a monster like his mother sickened him.
“Do you understand?” he repeated, tightening his grip on her hair.
She tried to nod. “I understand. Swear you’ll leave us be if I keep my part of the bargain.”
He’d swear to no such thing, especially since he had no intention of giving her what she wanted, but this dangling carrot bought him and Anhuset time.
“Herceges!” Anhuset’s excited cry reached his ears moments before she entered the clearing, dragging a trussed and struggling Kai behind her. “Found him up in the trees.” She flung her captive not far from where Brishen held the false Ildiko. A short length of rope hung from the hand she held out to him. “You need this for her?”
He nodded his thanks and tied the Kai woman’s hands behind her back. Bedraggled from her scuffle with him in the dirt, she looked even more ragged than before and still too much like Ildiko for his peace of mind. Her defiance had vanished the moment Anhuset appeared with the second Kai, her body rigid as she watched the newest prisoner from the corner of her eye.
“Run, and I’ll catch you,” Brishen warned her. “Then I’ll cripple you.” He half expected her to spit at him, call him names, or rain down curses on his head, but her gaze remained fixed on the new arrival.
Anhuset gestured for him to join her out of their prisoners’ earshot. She tilted her chin toward the Ildiko imposter. “She tell you anything yet?”
“Only things I don’t want to hear.” He relayed the extortion threat, watching her eyes lighten as her temper soared.
