EVAIN
“He didn’t see what hit him.” Shae lets go of the canvas bundle and rises to his feet. He leans against Arthur, and the paladin’s divine aura shimmers around them both. “All he could tell me was that he was a Dravan before he died, and there’s a woman in Ostaris who should know that he loved her.”
Evain waits with Freya at the entrance of the cave, standing guard as Shae and Arthur inspect the sacrificial corpse. Freya mostly watches the tree line, even though the most disturbing part is over: Shae using his necromancy to gather fragments of flesh and bone into a canvas tarp. The shape on the ground is far too soft and undefined.
At least the smell has dissipated into winter’s chill.
“Let’s go, then.” Waiting and uncertainty grate on Evain’s nerves. One day since the hedgewitch confirmed Anton ka Tariel is searching for the summoning chapel. Almost two days since Leth rode off alone into the woods. Helplessness unmoors Evain. For all he knows, Leth is well away from all of this. He could have ridden Daziroth south, to another village. But every moment without Leth in sight fuels Evain’s anxiety.
“We should lay him to rest,” Arthur says.
Before Evain can snap at him for suggesting a delay, Shae shakes his head. “I sent his soul onward already. His body can wait. This array is dangerously unstable—we need to find the ones responsible.”
“Can any of you track him?” Evain asks.
Freya says, “Vara’s given us all we’re going to get.”
Shae separates from Arthur’s grasp by about an inch. “There’s nothing in range of my detection spells.”
“Then we keep moving,” Evain says, just before the magic strikes him, and the world rattles around him.
Desperate yearning claws into his soul and twists its thorns around his limbs. Evain’s first instinct is to struggle against the summons. Rebel against the command. Then he recognizes the taste of the soul calling to him—the precise timbre of the voice in his ear, pleading across however many miles:
“Aevendaris.”
Pure joy ignites under Evain’s skin, burning away all his enchantments and control. His fingernails sharpen under his gloves, and a crimson mist blurs his vision. He hears distant shouts from the paladins as red and black smoke billows around him.
He stops fighting, as if his resistance would make a difference against the summoning’s overwhelming power. No demon could resist this call. In a blaze of blood-red shadow, Evain vanishes—
—a moment of pure nothing, riding the edge of the veil, no reality to latch onto, his only anchor his trust the witch’s magic will guide him true—
—and emerges in a blast of power. Shrapnel explodes from his point of apparition, and a column of luminous smoke spirals around him. Past the swirling clouds, Evain sees mountains, crumpled tents, fleeing figures. Jagged walls of familiar ruins. Human voices vanish in the roar of magic, the hurricane of dark desire.
And in the eye of the storm waits Leth.
Evain drinks in the sight of him, but concern quickly tempers his joy. Leth’s hair whips back from his face to reveal ashen skin and red-rimmed eyes. Blood soaks his left sleeve, dripping onto the stone and scraps of canvas beneath his feet. More scraps of canvas are staked into the cracks between stones. This must have been a tent, before Leth summoned him.
Encircling Evain, the summoning array glows a deep, dull red, its runes burned deep into the stone.
“You came.” Leth’s voice is clear and quiet, like a blade in the storm. “That really was your name. Why did you give it to me?”
“So you can do whatever you wish with me, of course.” The force of the magic echoes through Evain. He clenches his fists, claws pricking his palms through his gloves. “Why did you summon me, Leth?”
As delighted as he is to see Leth, he knows the position he’s in. When a witch binds a demon with his true name, it rarely ends well for the demon, unless the witch makes a mistake. And Leth doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to magic. Evain is quite possibly about to die, or return to the dark wasteland of his birth realm.
More magic ripples under his skin. The familiar taste of Leth’s desire.
“I suppose,” Leth answers, “it’s so you can do whatever you wish with me too.”
The heat in his voice drives Evain forward, but he stops himself before he hits the edge of the array. Then he looks down, and his breath catches.
The array shouldn’t be this simple. It’s a step above the plain circle Evain once used to seal a rift, but hardly sufficient to safely summon a demon. There are no runes of binding or compulsion. Nothing to hold or command Evain. The spell began and ended with his arrival.
Evain doesn’t know what changed. Something must have—there’s a desperation in Leth’s eyes that has nothing to do with desire. Leth is afraid, but not of Evain.
Whatever it is, Evain knows in his bones they can face it together. He doesn’t know what’s changed, but he’ll seize the chance wholeheartedly.
“This was reckless of you,” Evain says. “Whatever I wish?”
