It repulsed her beyond bearing, and she tried to push him away. But he was too strong and either indifferent to her unwillingness or too intent on his own satisfaction to notice. She spoke a word of power.
Flame exploded between them, breaking his grip, flinging him backward, but incapable of actually harming a red dragon. That was why she’d chosen that particular magic.
But then he started screaming and thrashing on the floor, and it wasn’t just clothing blazing but his hair. He was Gaedynn once again.
His agony was hers, yet it wasn’t the only thing she was feeling. A part of her rejoiced simply because flames were leaping and crackling. Maybe that was the reason that no matter how she strained, she couldn’t remember the words to put them out. Gaedynn’s face blackened, the fire gnawing it away-
With a gasp, Jhesrhi jerked awake, and her eyes flew open. Tchazzar was standing over her bed. Even in the gloom, she recognized his tall, muscular frame and the long head with the tapered chin and pointed ears.
She drew a ragged breath and let it out. “Majesty,” she said. “No one told me you were here.”
“That’s because I sent your maids away.”
Jhesrhi assumed that meant he’d grown impatient with waiting for her to overcome her dread of intimacy. Heart pounding, she told herself she could put him off as she had before.
“If Your Majesty will excuse me for a moment,” she said, “I can put on proper clothing.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, and with the nightmare fading, she caught the strangeness in his voice. Maybe it wasn’t lust that had brought him to her apartments, or at least, not lust alone.
“Well, then.” Half expecting him to stop her but unwilling to keep lying supine, she tried to sit up. And when he permitted that, she rose and moved to pick up a robe to pull on over her nightdress. In so doing, she also positioned herself close to her staff. “Is there something urgent? Something wrong?”
“You could say that. I’ve learned that Aoth Fezim betrayed me. It was his duplicity that made it impossible for Chessenta to march on Tymanther.”
“Majesty, with all respect, that’s absurd. Aoth’s a sellsword. He earns his living-”
“Don’t!” Tchazzar snapped. “I know he’s guilty. I suggest you devote your energy to convincing me you weren’t involved.”
If there was no hope of persuading the Red Dragon of Aoth’s innocence, that might indeed be the wiser course. For after all, Jhesrhi couldn’t help her comrades if she was dead or locked up herself.
“I truly don’t believe,” she said, “that Aoth would ever do anything disloyal. But even if he has, I’m not a part of the Brotherhood anymore, and I haven’t been with them. I’ve been here with you.”
“Yes, here in Luthcheq. Where some agency helped your friend Skulldark escape and a prodigious wind ruined the supplies. Where you looked me in the eye and urged me to consider my position in a game.”
Trying not to be obvious about it, Jhesrhi swallowed. “Majesty, we’ve already talked about the escape and what happened to the supplies, and I don’t understand why it was wrong for me to talk about war and statecraft in terms of a game. It’s common for people to talk that way.”
Tchazzar scowled. “I know that! And I don’t want you to be guilty. I want you to be my consort and my luck, like I imagined.”
“Then allow me to be those things,” Jhesrhi said. “Allow it by trusting me.”
“It isn’t that easy. You have to prove yourself, and do it before Alasklerbanbastos arrives. Otherwise-”
“Alasklerbanbastos?” She’d heard how the Great Bone Wyrm had escaped but, like her friends, had assumed the dracolich had simply gone to ground somewhere. Obviously not. “Now I understand! Majesty, that foul thing is your enemy! You can’t believe anything he says!”
“Yet I do. I believe I’ve been mired in lies since the day of my return, and now I’m free at last, which is bad luck for the liars. They’re about to find out the punishment for trying to trick a god.”
“Majesty, whatever you suspect, surely you’ll at least give them a trial.”
“When will you insects understand that I’m a god? I can judge and punish as I please, without the mortal rigmarole of courts and laws. In other words, your friends are already as good as dead. The only question left is whether you’ll join them in the Hells.”
“You said I could prove myself. How?” She assumed she knew and wondered if she could endure it any better in reality than she had in dream.
But Tchazzar surprised her by laughing at whatever he’d seen come into her face or heard in her voice. “Do you think I’m that besotted? That it will be that easy?”
Bewildered and, crazily, a little hurt in spite of everything, she said, “Majesty, I believe I’ve explained that it wouldn’t be easy for me.”
“Or perhaps you’ve just tantalized me endlessly because you judged that would be the best way to keep me obsessed and distracted.”
“I swear that isn’t so.”
“Well, you’ll have to prove it as worshipers have always proved themselves to the gods. By sacrifice. Your friend Ulraes is in the fortress. Now, I told Alasklerbanbastos that I wouldn’t move against any of you until he arrived. But I had to figure you out, and the archer is no wizard, just an insolent man-at-arms. Surely you can dispose of him without making enough fuss to rouse Captain Fezim, and then you and I will make love beside the corpse. That will make our first time all the more special.”
“Gaedynn helped rescue you. He had as much to do with it as I did.”
The world exploded into senselessness. When her shattered thoughts came partly back together, her head was ringing, her mouth tasted of blood, and she had her back against the wall. She realized that the dragon had lashed her across the jaw with the back of his hand, his arm whipping so fast that she hadn’t had time to react.
“I told you not to mention that again!” Tchazzar snarled. “I’m a god! I was never a prisoner, never bound in the dark, and never needed any mortal’s help! It’s blasphemy to say otherwise! And blasphemy’s the foulest treason of all!”
“Forgive me, Majesty,” Jhesrhi said. “I… don’t know why I said it. Some devil must have prompted me. Because I love and worship you and will do whatever I have to to prove it. Even kill my friend if that’s what you require.”
“I do.”
“Then I’ll get my staff.”
As before, she thought he might stop her, but he didn’t. Probably he rightly assumed he had little to fear from the instrument. He was largely impervious to the fire that had become her greatest weapon, and no other single spell in her arsenal was likely to hit him so hard that he’d be unable to retaliate.
It was late. But the corridors of the War College were seldom entirely deserted, and startled sentries and servants hastily saluted or bowed to their ruler, then no doubt eyed him and his companion curiously once they passed by. Jhesrhi’s nightclothes and bare feet probably made them think Tchazzar had whisked her out of her bed for some madcap escapade or tryst. Which, in a ghastly way, wasn’t far from the truth.
Tchazzar stopped in front of one carved, brassbound door in a row of them. He removed a silver key from the inside of his doublet, slid it into the keyhole, and twisted it. The lock yielded with a tiny click. He smirked, laid his finger across his lips, swung open the door, and ushered Jhesrhi into the dark room beyond.
At which point, she felt a pang of hope because Gaedynn wasn’t there. But when Tchazzar eased open a second door, they found the Aglarondan sprawled, snoring softly, in his bed. Despite everything, Jhesrhi’s mouth tightened when she made out the second shape all but hidden under the covers.
“See?” Tchazzar whispered, a hint of laughter in his tone. “He doesn’t care anything about you. So this shouldn’t be so difficult after all.”