“Then I must too. I don’t have days. Soon I’ll waken.”
The trees cleared around them as they neared a hill, upon which sat a small stone keep that looked to be in a state of disrepair. No soldiers manned its walls and no lights were present through the arrow slits. The only reason Kihrin could tell it was there was the outline it created—against varicolored lightning bolts that cracked the gray sky.
“What do you mean, you’ll waken?” Kihrin asked her.
The horse they rode tossed his head and made a snickering sound as she led it up to the keep walls. The woman pulled the spear from Kihrin’s grip. “I mean that I’m asleep. When morning comes, I’ll cross back through the Second Veil and wake up in the living world once more.”
She touched the tip of the spear to the door and, rather than disintegrate the wood, the great iron-clad door swung open. “This is as safe as we can be until we reach the Chasm,” she told him. “So, you may make your case to me here.”
“Elana—” he said.
She frowned at him, nudged the horse into a walk, and rode him inside the fort.
The place was long abandoned, now a home to spiders, rats, and whatever other creatures of the borderlands sheltered inside its walls. There was dust everywhere but nothing that spoke of large-scale destruction: no demons had breached the walls and looted the contents.
“What was this place?” Kihrin asked as he slid off the side of the massive horse.
“You don’t know? You said you were old.”
“Older than this,” he replied.
She stared at him. “That would be old indeed.” She gestured with a black hand. “This was a border fort. Once protecting the bridges across the Chasm, but now left behind as the Chasm shifts.” She too swung her leg over the horse and then led the beast over to the side. Kihrin couldn’t escape feeling the horse watched him for any signs of mischief.
“If the Chasm is moving, that’s—” He shook his head. “That’s not good.”
“Also, my name is not Elana,” the woman said as she whirled back to face him. “And I dislike the way you look at me. I want to know the price for this healing of yours and how you have accomplished it.” She brushed her hands together and a shower of red flaked off and fell away—demon blood, from those she’d ripped apart.
“I’m sorry,” Kihrin said. “Elana was the name I knew you by a long time ago.”
“It’s never been my name,” she insisted.
He chose not to argue. “Okay. So what is your name then?”
“Answer my questions first,” she replied. Her hand tightened on the spear, but then she set it aside.
He exhaled and tugged at his shirt, wincing at the large and obvious hole cut into the fabric. “There’s no price for your healing. Your healing was payment. Your injury was my mistake, one that would never have happened if I’d realized you were not my enemy.”
“But how? Such an injury—that was a dragon! I should have been destroyed. You’re not a god—if you were you would not be gaeshed, would not be missing your heart.” She paused. “Except you’re not missing it now. I remember what I saw when we first fought, the wound that gaped in your chest. How is it you are healed as well?”
Kihrin pulled the shirt from his back, wadded it, and tossed it to a chair. It dissolved before it landed, as if to underscore the unsubstantial nature of his current existence. “Since I was missing a heart, I needed a replacement. So I used Xalome’s heart.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, actually used it on us both.”
“You—what?”*
At her stunned look, he elaborated. “This would never work in the living realm, but here reality is malleable. And no, I don’t know what effect it will have. As far as I know, it has never been done before and perhaps could only be done because it was the Dragon of Souls, slain in the realm of Death.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You split a dragon’s heart between us,” she repeated. “A dragon. A monster of chaos and evil.”
Kihrin crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “But as a bonus, it seems to have worked.”
She blinked several times as if in disbelief and then rubbed her fingers through the stripe of hair on her head. She paced to the far end of the room and turned back. “A dragon’s heart?” Her voice was soft.
“Okay, we’re past that point. Also, there’s no way to reverse it.” He grinned. “You’re welcome.”
“You’re welcome?” Her voice cracked. “You arrogant mule.” Her nostrils flared with anger. “I only keep an advantage against my enemies because they do not realize my soul is untethered from my body and roams here while I sleep. But you—” She began sputtering. “You have ruined that. There is no way the presence of a dragon’s heart will not taint my aura, and once they notice, they will ask questions I do not want answered!”
Kihrin held up his hands. “Easy there. Try to remember that you would’ve died. Discorporated. Whatever happens to demons or baby demons or whatever you are when they die. How did Xaltorath manage that in your case, anyway?”
A second later her hand was around Kihrin’s throat, lifting him off the ground as she pressed him into dusty tapestries still hanging from the stone tower wall. **HOW DO YOU KNOW OF XALTORATH?**
Her hand collapsed on empty air as Kihrin vanished. She snarled and whirled around, but the tower was empty.
“Show yourself!” she screamed.
As she looked around the room, her eyes fell on the spear, and she rushed for it. Before her hands could close on Khoreval, it lifted to the far side, and Kihrin turned visible again, this time holding the spear pointed at her. She checked herself, hard, to keep from being impaled.
“Calm down,” he ordered, no longer smiling. “Because this spear will work on you, and I would never forgive myself.”
She paused, teeth still ground together, eyeing him like a crazed bull wanting to charge.
“In this last life, this one I lived most recently—when I was fifteen years old,” Kihrin said, “Xaltorath found me on the streets of the Capital City and raped my mind.”
The woman sucked in her breath. On her exhale, her anger ebbed.
“He showed me unpleasant things. Truthfully, I still don’t understand what the point was. Maybe there was no point but torture, but he showed me a woman. A woman I could never hurt.” He kept one hand on the spear while he pointed with the other. “He showed me you.”
Confusion muffled the rest of her rage. “Me? She showed you me? Why?”
Kihrin bit his lower lip. “I don’t know. So I would trust you? So I would never trust you? I think he’s trying to fulfill a prophecy, but I don’t know if the point was to bring us together or keep us apart.”
She rolled her eyes. “I am sick to death of prophecies.”