She’s nothing but a fool, a vindictive, selfish treacherous fool, the voice in his mind purred. He heard it clearly now. Not his voice, nor Ylandra’s. Someone…or something…else.
Shan closed his eyes, trying to still himself. “Untie me,” he told the Sect Mother in his most calm and confident voice. “I’ll get us out of here.”
“We can’t get out. We can’t leave. The children… They’ve still got the children.”
“Devyn? The others?”
She scowled and her voice turned vicious. “No. Our children. Feyna children. Those Holt-whelps fled the moment the Fellna appeared. They probably brought us to them, probably made a deal.”
No. They’d merely done what he’d asked them to. But there was no point in telling Ylandra that. Hatred consumed her. So much hatred. Had he sounded like this? And not so long ago, before he met Jeren, had he spoken of Holters the same way? Part of him feared he had. Knew he had. And he hated the thought and the sound of the venom in such words now.
“Listen to yourself, Ylandra.”
“They’re everywhere, all around us.” She leaned in close, her lips only a hair’s breadth away from his. “They’re watching us even now. And when we aren’t expecting it, they pounce. They take what they want, Shan, whatever they want. They…they fed on me…their lips, dry and rasping, their hands… They poured inside me, through me, and dragged out part of me…”
“Ylandra,” he repeated, keeping his voice low, “untie me. Let me go.”
She shook from head to toe, her battered body curling in on itself. But then, quick as a cat, she began to tug at the leather bands securing him to the floor. She’d already freed his hands and he’d started to rise to help with his legs when something black smashed her to one side, lifting her bodily as it did so, and bore her into the darkness.
Ylandra screamed and the sound was suddenly muffled. It faded to whimpers. Then…nothing.
Shan snatched his sect knife from his side and sliced through the ropes at his feet. His body protested as he rolled upright and crouched there, waiting in the darkness.
“So pretty a show of defiance,” a familiar voice hissed at him. “And so pointless. I told you I would have you, Shanith Al-Fallion. And here you are. Ready to be mine.”
Light flowed up from the cave floor, the wavering, unnatural light of magic, and the Enchassa stepped from its midst, beautiful and terrible. Too late he recognised her, the same one from the mountains, the jagged line of the wound Jeren had given her marring the skin of her arm. He’d thought she had gone, fool that he was. He’d thought Jeren had driven her off.
Jeren…
At the thought of her, his heart beat a little more firmly. They had been after Jeren. He needed to escape this place and get to her side. No matter what else happened now, that was where he belonged. Especially now, knowing that this same Enchassa had not fled.
Shifting his stance, Shan faced her. She maintained her own face this time, the need for illusions past. Beautiful didn’t do her justice, though that beauty was a shadowy reflection of the high bones and tilted eyes of the Feyna women.
And yet lacking. For him, at least.
“I will never be yours,” he snarled.
The Enchassa tipped her head to one side, her lips curving to a smile. “So determined. I warned you about blood, didn’t I? About the blood to come? You should have given in there and then. It all would have been so much easier.”
“Never.”
“You will be mine, and so will she… and all the others.” Her voice was a song, lilting and sighing, captivating. “Don’t believe me?”
She snapped her fingers and three of the Fellna dragged a struggling figure into the pool of wavering light surrounding them. A boy, a human boy, his face white with terror, his eyes huge, but he fought them every step of the way, his body beaten and bloody. Yet still he tried to tear himself free. And from the other side of the chamber, another pair pulled the narrow form of a Feyna woman. She sobbed, her body limp between their grasping claw-like hands. She didn’t fight. She didn’t know how to fight.
“I will give you a choice, a favour, as it were. Because I can be a kindly mistress.”
“You are not my mistress!”
Shadows burst from the ground around him, coiling about his limbs like vines. They tore his feet from under him and slammed him to the ground. Breath burst from his chest and the knife skittered across the wet stones. Lost. Just as he was lost. Lost across the wet stones.
No, not just wet. Blood-slicked.
“Choose between them.”
“You cannot ask this. I will not…” He gazed from one to the other. How could he condemn one? How could he…?
Another voice rang out. Terrible with determination. “I will choose!”
“Ylandra! No!”
But she didn’t listen. From the darkness, from the fatal embrace of the Fell, she scrambled free and pulled the Feyna woman away from her captors.
“I choose her. I choose my people, even if he will not. I will always choose my own people!”
The woman fell to her knees, weeping silently, her shoulders shaking as she huddled on the floor at Ylandra’s feet.
“Always?” The Enchassa’s smile broadened even further, the danger lurking beneath it even more apparent. “Prove it to me, Sect Mother. I will give you them all, if you but prove it to me.”
“How?” Ylandra cradled the woman against her, stroking her silvery hair. “What would you have of me?”
“Give me Jeren, Scion of Jern. Bring her to us.”
“She won’t come with me.”
“But she will.” The Enchassa laughed and knelt at Shan’s side, running her icy fingertips up the side of his face. Reaching out, she flexed her fingers and the knife flew to her hand. His own knife. And the Enchassa offered it to Ylandra.
“Ylandra, don’t do this,” Shan begged, heedless of his pride or his dignity. “Ylandra, Sect Mother, don’t do this!”
Grabbing the blade, she tucked it into her belt, her hands so deft, so fast. Her silver hair tumbled over her face and when she pushed it back, she trailed smears of blood through it.
“I must, Shan. For our people. Please forgive me, but the Feyna must always come first.” She moved like a shadow herself, swift and fluid, like one of the Fellna. One brief glance back at him and she was gone on her mission of betrayal.
“Let her pass,” called the Enchassa. “Let her go. She is mine and will be for the rest of her days now. She is our way.”
The Fellna holding their captive released her and the Feyna woman rose to her feet, all tears gone now. To Shan’s horror, the illusion dissolved. The Fellna had offered only others of their own kind.
And they laughed.
The Enchassa bent over him, studying him, the glint of amusement in her eyes mocking him. Her dark tresses trailed against his cheeks, the scent of death lingering after them. Everything reeked of death.
“Now where were we?” Her lips descended, brushing against him, light as butterfly’s wings, but demanding in their dark sensuality. “Submit to me, Shan. There’s nothing else to be done now. I will feed. And if you fight me, it will hurt.”
He couldn’t help himself. Shan fought.
“There, look. He moved.”
A man’s voice reached him. Shan groaned, his body and mind dull with agony. He’d passed out at some point amid the torture of the Enchassa’s kiss.
“Stay back from him,” said a second. “He’s one of them, pale as he is. You can see it. Just…don’t get too close.