Sassa, their keeper, was dead, and now they were my responsibility.
“What am I going to do with you?” I approached Alliana’s cell and peered into the gloom. “I can’t leave you here to rot, but I can’t let you out unless I know for sure you won’t hurt anyone. Sassa said you’d been tamed enough to work with the devouring force, but obviously not enough or you wouldn’t be in cells…”
“We’ll have to leave them,” Kalani said. “We can’t risk?—”
A gruff, broken voice cut her off. “Where Sassa?” A revenant detached itself from the dark recesses of its cell, stepping toward us and the bars.
“Did it just speak?” Kalani whispered.
“Oh, yes…” C’ael said softly.
Was this Alliana, the revenant who’d tried to attack me last time I’d been here? Sassa had obviously learned to tell them apart, despite their lack of distinguishing features.
There was only one way to find out. “Alliana?”
The revenant inclined its massive head. “Yes. Me.”
A soft, sticky, tearing sound filled the silence, and twin slanted slits opened on Alliana’s face. Bright green eyes blinked and fixed on me.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my pulse pounding hard in my throat.
“What the…” Kalani trailed off.
“Where Sassa?” Alliana asked again.
The worry in her tone drew me a step closer to the bars.
“Leela.” Dhoona matched my stride, his arm coming out like a barrier to stop me.
“It’s okay. She won’t hurt me, will you?” She was different. More lucid than the others. More in control of her primal urges. I met her gaze, waiting for her to agree. There were bars between us, so technically she couldn’t get to me, but I needed to know that the intention to harm me was also absent. So I waited, watching as she shifted from foot to foot, muscles rippling across her powerful body. Her chest heaved a couple of times, and then she nodded slowly, as if coming to a decision.
“I not harm you,” she said, each word stilted and spoken with effort as if it was painful to articulate.
Twin low snarls erupted behind her, and her head whipped around, a low clicking pulsing from her throat that made everyhair on my body stand to attention. Beside me, Kalani let loose a soft curse. Dhoona and Yudh moved to flank us.
The revenants at the back of Alliana’s cell shut up.
She swung her massive head my way, her gaze burning a path over me like jade fire. “Tell me where Sassa,” she asked, tone low with urgency.
I swallowed past the pinch in my throat. “She’s dead. All the warriors are dead.”
Her eyes widened. “Dead?”
“Yes. Poisoned.” I filled her in on the primordial evil and what he’d done. “I have to protect these people and get them to safety. We’ll be leaving here soon. But I…I can’t leave you locked up here, and I don’t know if it’s safe to let you out.”
“You let me out,” she said. “Not others. Not yet. You not be here when others let out.”
Goosebumps pinched at my skin. “Why not? What do you mean?”
“You reek of godhood.”
“I’m just a demigod.”
“No. We see it. The glow.”
“What glow? You fight alongside made gods all the time.”
“You have old glow.”
