What if he tried to take more? To use her? To confuse her?
“She’s safe,” the flame version of Leela says. “She broke connection to him…to you…”
I reach for the golden thread, wanting to test that for myself, but Leela slaps me hard across the face.
It doesn’t hurt. But it does surprise me. “Why did you do that?”
“Stop thinking as Araz and start thinking as Iblees becausethatis who you must be now in order to survive. Focus.”
I settle into my ancient bones, allowing the divine knowledge to course through me. The answer rises like a gentle wave, lapping at the shores of my consciousness. If I reach for Leela, unfiltered, if I tug on the thread that binds us, then the parasite who has latched on to the connection will feel it. He will be summoned. But in that moment when her lips were on his, he was…distracted.
His mind wholly focused on her.
Fuck. “He wants her.”
“And for that, he will kill her,” Leela says. “There is a way for us to reach her.” She steps closer. “You know there is. You must remember it.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
Her eyes darken, mouth turning down slightly. “You know why. You just don’t remember. Yet. But you will. Once we get to the core.”
Yes, the core… “Then we keep moving. No more stops. No more detours.”
Because the strange tingle at the base of my skull warns that I’m running out of time.
Part Two
They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but what if you’ve never had much of either before?
Chapter 16
SECRETS AND PLANS
CHANDRA
The days are permanently tainted crimson. Only the nights give an illusion of free skies. The shield that the primordial evil placed around the domain is impregnable so far. But the tests continue. There must be a way through it. A weak spot. His power is not infinite, and the way that he’s stretching it, the way that he’s siphoning from the throne…there will be moments of weakness, and we will find them. We will wait and exploit them.
Arpita joins me on the balcony of the Danava palace. “How are you feeling this morning?”
My hand goes to the bandage at my side. “Better. The wounds have almost healed.”
The skirmish with the Asura in the primordial evil’s control left me severely wounded and weakened, but I escaped and made it to the Danava domain and sanctuary.
The primordial evil may have locked down Aakash Sansaar and taken the royal domain, but he has yet to exert his influence over the other domains fully, and it seems his mind controldoesn’t work too well on the Danava. The few that reside in the royal domain escaped back to the Danava domain and took refuge in the lower city.
But there is no guarantee that the primordial evil’s influence won’t grow to grip their minds also. We need to find a way out of the skies and onto land because the more minds he absorbs, the more power he’ll have to complete his true purpose.
“The scouting party returned with news,” Arpita says. “It seems he has control of the ankh. He sent them to search for Leela. He now controls the nagrata, who he sent after her also.”
My stomach squeezes, and I curse softly.
“Don’t worry, she’s alive. My spies around the palace witnessed his anger on that fact. But I don’t understand why he would want to find her. He has the throne. The power. The whole of the sky world.” Arpita shakes her head. “It seems counterintuitive for him to waste resources on one woman, even if she does have a claim to the throne. It’s unlikely that she could take it from him.”
“Unlikely but not impossible.”
“I can’t believe we thought he was a myth.”
I press my lips together, guilt curdling in my belly. There is so much that I could share, but sharing would risk distrust, and if we are to stop this creature, then I must have the Danava on my side. “We may have believed him to be myth, but the stories of how to stop him must be real. They are part of the myth, after all.”
