“An intruder, ma’am.” Lhuka’s voice.
Then Jakhov snarled something in the dhemon tongue to which Phulan responded with a stern rebuttal. They countered one another, the strange language washing over Emillie’s ears like gravel before the three of them returned.
Except they were not alone. Between Lhuka and Jakhov hung a limp figure whose face was covered by a shemagh despite the early morning darkness. Emillie had assumed the cloth had todo with coverage from the sun. Perhaps it was, but there was clearly something more to it than she understood.
“Put them over there, you brutes.” Phulan shook her head as she pointed to a low pile of pillows beneath a bay of mashrabiya windows.
The two did as they were bid. When the person was lying upon the large cushions, eyes flickering open again from having been knocked unconscious, their mage host squatted down beside them.
“I am so sorry for their reaction.” Phulan fluffed a pillow. “I hadn’t yet told them you would be visiting.”
“Who this?” Jakhov demanded, shifting so he stood between the stranger and the table where Emillie and Revelie still sat.
Phulan glowered at him. “This is who we came to meet.”
“Name.” Jakhov’s sharp face held no remorse for having caused the person harm.
Sighing, Phulan straightened again. “This is Paerish. They were once the head guard for Melia Tagh.”
Two nights. It took two nights of flying for Madan to locate Ehrun’s eastern encampment of dhemon soldiers. Though they didn’t expect the journey to be quite so long, Ehrun spent the early morning of the first night apologizing for not being able to find their destination.
“Sehrox helped my memory a lot,” he’d admitted when they settled in for the day. “I never realized how much I depended on him to keep my head on straight.”
Whelan had glared at him. “If you thinkthatwas you keeping your head on straight, I think you need a little more self-reflection.”
“The broken bond did strange things to him, I fear.” And with that, Ehrun lay down without accepting any rations.
When they arrived at the encampment, Madan wasn’t surprised to be almost immediately surrounded by no less than two dozen armed dhemons. Brutis and Oria tucked their wings in tight, well aware of the advantages an enemy could have with their membranous limbs outstretched, but remained nearby. Both lowered their bellies almost to the ground, snapping their jaws at anyone who ventured too close.
“Ehrun?” a dhemon woman asked in their language after he dismounted Oria and stepped in front of Madan and Whelan, his fae collar on full display. “What have they done to you?”
Overhead, two dragons swooped in—one sky blue and the other a poisonous red. Their riders hollered as they descended and dismounted in a rush the moment the dragons’ claws touched down. As they were the pair in charge, the other dhemons parted to let them pass.
Madan tracked their movements. The first, who rode the blue, had a shaved head and runic tattoos on his scalp. When he resided inAuhla, he’d been quiet, but harbored a deep loathing for most vampires. At the time, Madan seemed to have escaped his vitriol. Now the dhemon surveyed him as he had any enemy before.
“Sabharni, Ahn,” Ehrun said and stepped forward. He gestured to the collar on his neck and continued in the dhemon language, “I put this on willingly.”
Ahn didn’t seem convinced. “You expect me to believe that after the last year of orders telling us to kill this bastard on sight?”
Well, now, that didn’t bode well. Madan wasn’t often afraid in the presence of dhemons, but with so many vampire-hating extremists surrounding him, he was grateful for Brutis at his back.
“They won’t touch you,” the gray dragon reassured him, heat radiating from his maw.
Taking a step closer, Whelan put a hand on the greatsword over his shoulder. “You’re safe.”
“I know.” Between the two of them and Anthoria, he was perhaps the safest a vampire could be. That didn’t negate the uneasiness he felt while watching his imprisoned enemy attempt to talk down his command of soldiers.
Ehrun, however, appeared unperturbed. “I do. Things have changed.”
The second dragon rider, a woman named Ygret capable of committing war atrocities without remorse, shook her head, braided hair shifting with the motion. “No. It seems thatyouhave changed.”
“I have,” Ehrun admitted. “I’ve been reconnected to Keon.”
A murmur swept through the dhemons. Some shook their heads. Others craned their necks to get a better look at him. Still more echoed the inevitable question:how?
“The ritual was found in the hands of vampires.” Ehrun’s voice took on a different tone—the one Madan knew from decades of following his commands. Despite his position as a prisoner, he stood a little straighter and swept the loose hair back from his face, eyes blazing. When the crowd called for the downfall of Valenul, he held up a hand. “That is what I came here for.”
Madan’s heart stuttered. “Ehrun…”
