“Kihrin? Where’d that boy get off to…?” Ola’s brows drew together in confusion. “Oh hells. The General. If he—” Without another word, Ola grabbed Morea’s arm and half-pushed, half-dragged the slave girl back to Ola’s apartment.
Ola marched inside and stopped as she saw the candles, the overturned furniture, and the gooey mass of something wet and bloody that might once have been a person. Blood covered the back wall and the curtain of jade beads. Someone had been murdered here. Recently murdered in a particularly messy fashion. She fought down bile. It wasn’t Kihrin. It couldn’t be Kihrin. Who then?
“Morea, what happened—” She turned just in time to catch a punch to her jaw that flung her against a cabinet.
Morea examined her knuckles. “Late again. You’re always late, Ola. I haven’t quite ever been able to forgive you for that. Don’t think I didn’t try.”
“Morea?” Ola wiped the blood from her face and stared at the dancing girl, aghast.
“Not exactly.” Morea’s shape flowed in front of Ola’s eyes, until she looked like a beautiful woman with honey-gold skin and lovely, long brown hair.
“Lily?” Ola shook her head. “Lyrilyn? No, you can’t be! I saw you—”
“Die?” Talon smiled. “Oh, I died all right. And yet … here we are. Let me explain. Oh, better yet: let me show you.”
Ola tried to run, but Talon was on her in seconds. She forced Ola against the wall, hands trapping her own. Even though her attacker was shorter than Ola and looked weaker, Ola couldn’t free herself. Talon clamped her mouth over Ola’s—a terrible kiss that drew all the strength from Ola’s body.
Ola looked at her attacker and flinched. The face kissing her changed. It wasn’t Lyrilyn’s heart-shaped flower, but a black-skinned Zheriaso, wild and untamed. It was her face; the face Ola had worn twenty years ago before age and easy living had stolen her appeal. It was the face that in some part of her mind she remembered still, whenever she looked back at her reflection in a mirror or reminisced about the “good old days.”
Ola tried to break away, but the hands holding her in place were strong as iron. Ola tried to scream, but this monster’s kiss was a metal vise, crushing her.
A flowing, rushing torrent of memories, thoughts, feelings, and sins overtook her and left Ola drowning. She felt a terrible sense of violation and shame, as if every secret in her soul had been plucked from the darkest corners of her mind and tossed onto the sidewalk outside. She felt this monster who wore her face dig inside her mind.
Then the sensation stopped. Ola was released, lifted into the air, and thrown. She landed like an overstuffed pillow on a throw rug. Ola moaned and tried to crawl away, but strong hands grabbed her by her hair and threw her onto her back. The figure standing above her was once again Lyrilyn.
Her attacker smiled. “You see?”
“You’re a mimic?” Ola whispered. She had heard of them, dark rumors told in darker dens of iniquity. Creatures who stole the forms of loved ones to stalk their victims. Demons of flesh who sold their services to the highest bidder as spies and assassins.
Talon winked at her. “It’s not what we call ourselves, but close enough.”
“This isn’t happening. Lyrilyn was human—”
“Yes, that’s true, lover. I was once. But you were LATE,” Talon snarled. She crouched over Ola, grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her onto her feet. She pulled Ola over to one of the chairs in the room and forced her to sit in it. “Now I am what the Stone of Shackles made me, something you helped create. But you’re right. This isn’t happening. This is just a dreadful nightmare where Lyrilyn shows up to remind you of your past sins. You know. The part where you did nothing; where you just stood there and watched as that monster murdered your precious Lyrilyn.”
Fear choked Ola. This was worse than a nightmare, worse than she could imagine. “Please! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I forgive you,” Talon said.
Ola blinked. “You do?”
“Yup. Fortunately, since I was wearing the Stone of Shackles—and how lucky was that? Taja loves me, doesn’t she? So when the mimic murdered me, I swapped bodies with my killer, which makes me…” She put a hand to her chest. “… the mimic. I’ll admit, it took a little while to get used to it. Mimics are disgusting. You have no idea.”
The fear in Ola’s eyes deepened to terror. “What could I do?” she whispered. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t know—” Ola screamed as Talon hit her in the face several times.
Talon’s expression was sedate, even calm, as she showed Ola the blood staining her knuckles. She wiped her hand off on Ola’s face. Then, holding the weaker woman down so she couldn’t move, Talon licked the blood off Ola’s skin. Ola tried to shake her head, squirm, do anything, but she couldn’t move.
Talon said in a conversational tone of voice, “You knew, Ola. You’ve always known, but you’ve always been too busy protecting yourself to protect anyone else, least of all me. Remember what we promised each other, late at night in our beds? True love forever? Yet when you had the means to buy your freedom did you even think of me? No. You let me rot.”
Ola shook her head. “Therin didn’t own you, or I might have had a chance. Pedron did, degenerate Pedron. There was no chance of getting you free from him.”
Talon’s expression turned sympathetic and understanding. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, love? I was so na?ve. I didn’t just trust you once, I trusted you twice. I loved you. And where were you when I needed you?”
Ola licked her lips nervously. “I didn’t—”
“I am very disappointed in you, ducky. Very disappointed.”
Ola whimpered. “You’re insane.”
Talon looked at the older woman as if she had just said something profound. “You know, lover, I’ve often wondered that myself. Am I crazy? It’s possible the experience drove me quite out of my mind.”
She smiled and shrugged as if she accepted the question was beyond her ability to answer. “Of course, suddenly absorbing 5,372 separate and distinct lifetimes in a matter of minutes is bound to put a little fuzz around the edges of any person’s mental faculties.” Talon smiled.
“You—” Ola started again. “You’ve killed that many people?”
“Me?” Talon laughed. “No, of course not. I can only account for 738 personally. Ooo, 741. I completely forgot to add tonight’s tally.” She made little circling motions in the air as if she were adding figures on a chalkboard. “The mimic who murdered me on the other hand … well, he was very old.” She turned back to Ola and squatted next to her chair. “Do you know I used to be vané?” She caressed a hand over her hip. “Not me personally. I was born over in the Copper Quarter. This body, I mean, started out life as vané. I would never have thought that. I always assumed mimics were some kind of demon, but it turns out they’re some kind of vané. Do you think Miya would laugh at the joke?”
“Please,” Ola whispered. “Kihrin? Where is he? What have you done with him?”
“He’s safe. The very finest healers in the Empire are seeing to that.”