It’s like a flood. Like he’s just tapped the edge of the vortex in me and somehow brought it into center. Why he didn’t do this in any of our training I don’t know, but there’s a spark in her energy and it’s as if a dam just broke. Surging. Roaring. Roiling around inside her, slowly gathering in her veins to become mine. A drip of blood oozes from her nose.
“Tell her,” Myles growls.
Lady Isobel begins to blink, then sags into the wall.
“He needs the Uathúil kings’ life forces—” She emits another cry, this time of anguish more than fury, as her breath becomes ragged. “He can’t become human again until he gains them.”
“Human?”
“He’s stuck in his Draewulf form.”
“Draewulf’s living on borrowed time,” Rasha says, her airy voice now laced with horror. I’m not sure whether her tone is because of me or Lady Isobel’s admission, but she’s staring at Isobel now, her eyes reddening. “He morphed into wolf form during that experiment when he was nineteen and found it protected him from aging. It also enabled him to absorb others’ energy. However . . . each time he’s changed back to his normal body, the years and magic have caught up with him, until now.” She looks at me. “He can’t become human anymore. He’s surviving off others.”
There it is.
His weakness. No wonder he inhabits others’ bodies.
I press harder. “How will the blood of kings help?” And for a moment I swear her power flows from her mouth to swirl around us in a black mist before it touches down on my skin to float into my veins.
Rasha looks at me. “The blood of the kings is tied to their land and their abilities—making it powerful enough to give him back his life. But it’s also more powerful than he can handle without Eogan’s block.” Rasha’s gaze widens. Her voice falls to a whisper. “Nym, he has to kill them. He’s going to take the rest of the Hidden Lands’ monarchs.”
Lady Isobel is glaring at me alone now—as if she can’t even hear our conversation. She’s just trying to get my hand away from her, but her energy is failing. “I need . . . I need—”
Her words stop. Her face pales. And she tips backward with a sigh, sliding down the door to the carpet.
“Nym!”
I don’t move as Rasha bends to check Lady Isobel’s heartpulse. I simply stare at her in amusement for how weak she is and at what I’ve done. At what my ability’s done. “Wisdom would suggest we kill her right now.”
Rasha whips a shocked expression up at me. “Are you jesting? Do you—?”
“I’m not saying I like it, but this is our chance.” Except even as I say it, something within me wonders if I do like it. If the part of me that hates her does want it. My chest curls and for a second it’s as if the ice in my veins surges over the space in me that has always detested becoming a weapon. That has always feared hurting others.
“You think we should murder an incapacitated woman? Nym—”
I glance at Myles for help. “Isn’t this what we’ve been talking about? Stopping Lady Isobel and Draewulf?” How hard can it be to connect the lines?
He’s studying Lady Isobel. “If we kill her off now, we’ll not only show our hand to Draewulf and her army, but we’ll bring down their wrath on usss as well. And it’s too soon for that. Until we land, they have the upper hand on these shipsss. I hate to say it, but we need to keep her alive a little longer.”
Rasha removes her fingers from Lady Isobel’s neck. “Still alive, but—” She looks up at me. “Barely.”
“And when she wakes? She’ll have us killed for what we’ve just done.” I look at both of them like they’re insane.
“Not if we keep her bound and hidden. No one else knowsss we have her—they’ll busy themselves with searching for her but won’t be able to directly accuse usss.”
I stare at Myles and Rasha, a feeling of digust for both of them building. “Mark my words, if we don’t kill her now, she’s going to do a lot worse to others. She’s already done worse.”
“So have you.”
It’s hardly a whisper, Rasha’s statement. But it lifts in the air to land like a slap on my face.
I bat it away as if it were a hornet just as the door to the dining area bursts open, and one of the guards is standing there, looking confused.
Without thinking I press my hand out and imagine his lungs, his soul, his blood, and just as with Lady Isobel, I draw the breath inside him toward me. I can feel it enter my hand from five paces away. His fingers go to the door frame as his eyes find Lady Isobel slumped on the floor. He rips his gaze up to Myles-who-is-still-Draewulf, then to me, as if unsure whether to step away, or charge us, or run. The next moment he’s holding on to the wall for support.