Dreams of ki, licking and petting every forgotten corner of my being. Dreams that seeped through my skin and settled deep within my bones. At once the breezy flames of Priestessanda granite wave of Elite strength. The perfect harmony of a rare and dangerous thing beseeching me to join him. To give up my fight after all this time.
Wouldn’t it be nice? To give over to someone else? To let him carry the hopes of my people so I could rest… if only for a little while…
He would make itsogood…
They were twisted lies of power and seduction that got progressively worse as the months passed and the flood of Eloran and Tritan refugees began to dwindle. Until they stopped altogether, and the wood was truly quiet for the first time since the fall of my people.
Leaving me nothing to do but think.
Of those Ihadn’tbeen able to save. The thousands upon thousands of honest, hardworking people who’d been enslaved by a bigger power for nothing but the sake of power itself.
Of the Priestesses, of whom I’d not seen asingleexample in five long years.
There was nothing to comfort me but the burden of my failures.
That the captain was trying to wear me down wasn’t lost on me, for he’d been at this for years. There were periods of draught, certainly. Even one time I thought I felt him close to death, only to pull from the pendant he’d stolen and restore himself.
But that could have been just another dream—a fabrication meant to confuse and mislead, to fuel my isolated paranoia.
I honestly couldn’t sort the facts from the lies. Didn’t even really bother to try.
And so it was that Kas’ heated yowl jerked me from restless, tormented sleep thick with dreams ofhim.
Disoriented, I sent a pulse through the Grandmother before I’d done more than blink. What had roused Kas’ ire? Another suitor who didn’t meet her standards, perhaps? Or—
Impossible!
Jaw slackened, I turned sightless eyes toward the familiar ki, trying to blink the sleep away. To decide if it was real.
But it hadn’t been a dream.
He washere! On my soil for the first time in working memory, pressingmypendant to the earth in blatant challenge as he’d done the very first time!
Captain Rawlings. All the way at the western border of my lands, the tease. Traveling north, on the last remaining road between Elora and what had once been my homeland. A road that skirted the farthest perimeter of my reach.
Cocky amusement whispered through my blood as he caressed the soil, burying his fingers and the pendant within the earth, the touch felt both through the forest and the raw nerves that had connected us since Tritan’s fall. Drawing me in. Taunting me with the bottomless wealth of ki that wasn’t his to wield.
Roused, the darkness surged to the fore, reaching for his power mixed with mine—but he pulled back, breaking contact with the forest before I got close enough to strike.
I laughed, baring modified canines and thumbed the brand.
Did he really think he could touch what was mine and be gone before I could retaliate? That I would allow him to play the same trick he’d played on an innocent girl whose heart had been broken by the murder of her only parent?
Foolish to assume I could not cross the width of the forest in time to catch him,here,where the rules were ofmymaking, and there was nothing stopping me from using any advantage to tip the scales in my favor.
I had prepared for this meeting since the last, refusing to fail again.
Eyes drifting closed, I sank into the Grandmother, sending my ki further north, intending to leave a little present for the good captain.
Alien amusement skated along my senses as I worked, but this time, I didn’t cast him out. Merely concealed what I was doing, setting off dozens of decoys to dazzle his pathetic Elite mind, for if the captain wanted to feel true power, who was I to deny him?
Laying my trap took longer than I’d hoped—I was dreadfully out of practice wielding ki for anything more strenuous than merely connecting with the forest. But when finished, I scrambled out of bed, determined.
This was no time for sloppy mistakes, no matter that I’d grown lazy and fat, content to wallow in self-pity while the forest blossomed with spring. Doing little more than suckling at the Grandmother’s teats.
The captain was making a move at long last—and I’d be there to ensure he regretted it.
Snuffing the embers in my fireplace, I snagged my satchel and told the glitterbugs to sleep while I was away, then pushed through the door and scanned the Grandmother’s dense foliage for Kas’ tawny fur.
