I turned back to the fire demon. “Azar-at, I accept your offer.”
Immediately, I felt a strange tugging sensation somewhere around my navel. Or heart—it was hard to be certain. I gasped, stumbling forward. In the same moment, the fire demon disappeared, melting into a column of liquid flame that crackled and sparked. I bit back a cry as the cloud drifted toward me. Little bolts shivered off, striking the snow, which melted with a sizzle. I thought, for a moment, that I saw a terrible, grinning face at the center of the column, with a gaping mouth of fangs and eyes as black as emptiness. But then it was gone, and the cloud had enveloped me. The tugging sensation dissolved into wrenching pain—but before I could even draw breath to scream, it was gone, leaving me half in doubt that it had ever been. When the light faded, I found myself hunched over in the snow, my hand pressed against my chest. Azar-at sat in the same place, tail still wagging, as if nothing had happened.
But I knew it had.
I stood slowly, trying to judge where this new feeling of strangeness, of imbalance, emanated from. But I couldn’t place it. Biter croaked softly.
“I’m all right,” I said, “I think.” I turned to Azar-at. “I don’t want the others to know.”
Azar-at seemed to ponder this. As you wish, Kamzin.
I took a deep breath, gazing at the landscape before me, the snowy slopes touched with fire from the newly risen sun. Somewhere, in the still-shadowed curve of Mount Raksha, Lusha and Tem waited for me. And somewhere in the distance, in an equally shadowy and terrible corner of the land, the witches were awakening to a new day. A new world.
“All right,” I said, setting my jaw. “Let’s go home.”