Stay? I hadn’t moved. The shadow brightened and clarified into the vision of Rhyzkahl in his bed over the backdrop of my living room.
“You still have a fucking link to me?” My voice shook with anger and visceral terror. “You worthless son of a bitch.” I should have known he’d find a way. Had he made this link as part of the rakkuhr virus? I squeezed my eyes closed in an attempt to shake the connection. Though I no longer saw the physical aspects of the living room, potency strands and my protective wards shimmered in othersight as expected. Yet the vision of Rhyzkahl intensified—vibrant and textured and real.
My eyes flew open, and I sucked in a breath as my living room returned with only a ghost of Rhyzkahl. I’m seeing him with othersight? That was different. In other dream sendings, I’d been fully asleep while he manipulated my experience to feel like reality.
“Kara!” He lifted a shaking hand toward me.
Heart hammering, I closed my eyes again. Slipped out of othersight. My wards dimmed. Rhyzkahl solidified more. A reyza bellowed in the distance. The heady fragrance of flowers mingled with an acrid tang of sweat and pain.
The cushions of the sofa pressed against my back, yet at the same time I stood beneath a domed ceiling with Rhyzkahl before me. This is beyond weird. His usual dream projections were nothing like this.
Opening my eyes, I withdrew to the living room. Then twice more. With each shift, my control of how much I saw and felt increased.
Weird . . . and cool. Concentrating, I called forth Rhyzkahl’s shadowed chamber. Heavy drapes hung over the windows with only the faintest hint of daylight at the edges. The sigil in the ceiling cast a sluggish illumination onto the bed and little more.
I stood near the bed with my chin up and my gut churning. His silky white-blond hair had been cropped to finger length, and he currently had a serious case of bed head. The faas had probably cut it since several feet of hair would be a stone bitch to keep tidy on a bed-bound patient. His beautiful face was haggard and drawn, and he looked as if he’d lost a solid thirty pounds since the plantation battle.
Breathing unsteadily, he fought to sit upright but could only manage to prop on an elbow. “What is it . . . you want?” he croaked.
Delicious shock coursed through my veins. He wasn’t controlling this. His reactions were too natural—unmeasured and unscripted. I was in his dreamspace, not the other way around. And that meant that what I saw here was his reality—the weight loss, the cropped hair, the shadowed room.
This had the potential to be very interesting. I finished my perusal of the chamber before answering. “Want? From you?” I snorted and raked my gaze over him. “Seeing you like this is a damn good start.” My tormenter helpless and in pain. A decent and noble person would have at least a whisper of sympathy for Rhyzkahl. Not me. The asshole had willfully duped, used, and tortured me, had been party to submerging Szerain in his horrific imprisonment as Ryan, and had sponsored human trafficking. And that was only what I knew of.
Frowning, I sauntered to the side of the bed. He followed my movement warily, trembling as though in pain. I paused to test the dual awareness, saw my living room, felt the afghan. It really did seem too good to be true, which meant I needed to stay on my toes. I wouldn’t put it past one of the Mraztur to set an elaborate trap using Rhyzkahl as bait.
“What are you playing at now?” I asked him, wary. Testing. “Why did you call me to your dreamspace?” Experimenting, I pictured butterflies erupting from the cushion beside him. To my surprise and delight, dozens streamed forth in an iridescent flutter to circle and float in the dome. Verrrrrrrry interesting. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Your dreamspace?”
Disbelief widened his eyes as he stared at the spectacle. “No . . . no!” He swallowed noisily and turned his head toward the door. “Rega,” he called out in little more than a hoarse whisper. “Rega!”
I laughed as the door stayed firmly closed. “The faas can’t save you from yourself, Rhyzkahl,” I told him. “No one is going to answer your call.”
His gaze skittered around the room in wild panic. “This cannot be,” he rasped in distress. His fingers plucked feebly at the sheet. “No. It cannot.”
His dream sendings to me had felt utterly real. Was that how he perceived this? “What cannot be?” I asked with a tilt of my head. “That I’m in your crib? That you can’t read me?” I sidled closer and regarded him. “Damn, you look like shit.”