Manipulating.
Infecting.
As Sasha had done to me. And Asher. Both more proficient in the art of wielding another’s energy, both lacking the pure, unfiltered rage that sang in my blood.
“The program…” Murky brown eyes flicked up to meet mine, and the general frowned. “It’s for Tritans. For the good of the… empire…” Elite energy surged to life. Laced with confusion, tainted with alarm, the general took a breath. “What is this?”
I couldn’t help it—I grinned my toothiest grin.
And lost control of the empath in a second.
She surged to the fore. Skating through flesh, drawn to the buffet of banked flames peppered with a tantalizing whisper of fear, my palm landed on the general’s broad chest.
Closing the loop.
Beneath my palm, the beat of a healthy heart.
Strong. Rhythmic and steady.
Until I found a soft spot and burrowed deep as I might go.
Drinking my fill. Gorging on the strength of a man who’d taken everything from my people. Whose very life force was laced with the beauty of priestess magic.
A large hand wrapped about my throat, but I paid it no mind. Lost in the seduction of indulging myself, I feasted. Replacing all that Asher had stolen. Reveling in the way that strong pulse broke down and grew erratic, I grew entranced by the sour sweat beading on the general’s brow.
“You… little…bitch,” he rasped, face blooming a deep shade of ruddy purple. Sagging before me, he slumped in the chair. Chest heaving for breath, spittle misting the narrow space between us, the general’s hand fell away as his eyes grew round. The whites speckled with tiny dots of blood-red.
“My turn.”
I heard the words before their meaning registered. Before the eerie echo could take root and give warning of an attack.
Cool hands slipped over my collarbones, framing my shoulders and throat.
“Release him,empath,” the Head Priestess spat, fitting me with a noose of blinding, white priestess magic. The sort of purity I was forbidden to wield.
And it was then, as I felt her energy slip through my wide-open defenses, that I realized my colossal error—in taking from the general, I’d given Sasha leverage. A window to shut, energy Asher had taken with the intent to leave her with nothing to work with.
Nothing that might get me killed.
“Let me do this,” I hissed, caught in an easy thrall of a master. “I can beat him, Sasha. I can be the weapon we need.”
“They’ll execute you for this,and I should let them.”
“Sasha—”
She forced me back. Took a liberal helping of the general’s energy and built a wall around the ravenous beast that couldn’t be reasoned with. “You think to embody both sides of the spectrum?” She laughed, low and cruel. “To be the hero we need in this war? You’re nothing more than a delusional little girl. A child playing with forces she cannot possibly understand.”
With both hands, she sent me staggering back. Crashing into the desk before I hit the floor in a disoriented heap of bare legs and an oversized shirt. The towel fallen, tangled between my ankles.
“Go,” she snapped. “Now, before they realize what you’ve done here.”
I blinked, trying to banish the encroaching fog. “Sasha—”
“I saidgo!” Whirling, she turned back to the fallen general and set her hands to his face. The hands of a healer, working to revive a destroyer.
I stood on legs that trembled, staggering toward the door. Haunted by the image of the Head Priestess stooping over a man who’d taken so much from our people. Fromher.
“And Mila?” she said, not bothering to look up from her rotten work. “Pray.”
