Blood Warrior

sugar and taste velocity. It was all wrong.

Because, head bowed, Pashkah was kneeling in front of Kavya.

His neck was exposed. And a Black Guardsman had forced Pashkah’s Dragon-forged sword into her hands.

The surreal situation didn’t stop there. His kinsmen had laid down their weapons. They stood entranced, but he knew the Pendray didn’t do so by choice. They were victims of the Guardsmen’s telepathic process. Even Tallis could sense it. They formed a ring like Stonehenge made out of bloodied, armored, panting Dragon Kings, all of whom had been stopped mid-motion. Weapons littered the ground. Even Rill, with her indomitable spirit and forgiving heart, didn’t seem . . . awake. He wanted a touch of Kavya’s powers.

Wake up!

The only change was when another Guardsman stood over Tallis with his own sword poised for a cutting blow.

Kavya darted her eyes between Pashkah’s exposed neck and Tallis’s eyes.

More than anything, he wanted to talk to Kavya’s mind. He wouldn’t tell her to wake up, because he’d never seen her more alert. Every emotion a woman could wear across such beautiful, dear features was there to see. Her outrage and fear, her heartsick mourning and her love. He wouldn’t tell her to wake up; he’d show her what was in his heart, especially how he’d changed himself for the better, freeing himself, reclaiming his free will and his hope for a better future. Maybe then she’d have the courage to do what needed to be done.

But he had no telepathy. He’d only ever had words—when he was lucky and the berserker gave him leave to speak. Kavya’s love had taught him how to bring both halves together. Oh, he was raging and he was speaking. Pashkah didn’t stand a chance

“Don’t do it, goddess. Don’t you dare. Dragon damn you if you do.”

“No! I can’t let them kill you!” She swallowed, tightening her hands on the hilt of that deadly weapon. “I’m stronger than them. I’d use their powers to make people trust me again. Make them see how good peace will be.”

“Yes,” Pashkah said, his voice slinky and soft. “What’s right. Make them see.”

“Make them?” Tallis’s voice, by contrast, was a bellow. Rage clawed out from his throat. He lay on the ground, stomach pressed flat. Fury built beneath his skin, pressing his bones against the solid, unforgiving coastal rock like a volcano about to burst. “Kavya, you’ve made yourself ill whenever you’ve needed to use your powers selfishly. That clerk in the hotel. The customs agent in Istanbul. Afterward I held your hair back as you threw up.”

“Enough!” Pashkah sounded like a demon.

Tallis wasn’t close to being finished. “One-third, Kavya. Remember? The rest has been your conviction and conscience. Peace is not yours to make. They want it bathed in blood, not earned through trust.”

“Shut him up!”

Obeying his master, the Black Guardsman drove the pommel of the Dragon-forged sword into the base of Tallis’s neck. A human would’ve been crippled. Paralyzed forever. Tallis only boiled. That was where Kavya had promised to kiss him.

He locked eyes with his wife. They held each other’s hearts for a second—one second of the lifetime they had yet to share.

She smiled.

“Shut him up?” Kavya backed away from her insane brother. “No, my berserker is just getting started.”

Tallis roared. He threw off pairs of binding hands as if he’d been held down by toddlers. After spinning onto his back, he kicked up toward the looming Guardsman’s shin. His boot connected sideways against the man’s tibia, breaking the limb in two. A compound fracture. Tallis wanted to do more damage, but he didn’t need to. The man crumpled onto his ass, bellowing and clutching his ruined leg.

Kavya whirled on the man holding her in place, ready for the kill, and kicked him in the chest. She grabbed the seax Tallis had given her, stabbing the long blade through the Guardsman’s shoulder. He was pinned to the ground. His screams ended when Kavya decapitated him with the Dragon-forged sword. She yanked the seax free and wiped the blood against her skirts.

The flurry of surprise shocked the Pendray to life. Guardsmen did their best to get up to speed.

Tallis snatched up his family’s Dragon-forged sword along with his other seax. It was a hard test of his control to keep from knocking heads off the men who’d nearly allowed Pashkah to get his way. To kill Tallis’s family. To force Kavya into unending madness.

Kavya!

The hand-to-hand battle had resumed its bloody fury, but he caught sight of her across the wind-strewn clearing. She was an avenging angel. Her colorful skirts whipped around her legs. She held two swords, as he did, and was wearing the red proof of her victory. She sprinted forward to where Chandrani remained captive.

Tallis didn’t like it. Something wasn’t right.

Because Pashkah was nowhere to be seen.

“No!” he shouted.

His spring was fast, exceptionally fast in the midst of his rage, but it wasn’t fast enough. Pashkah snatched a hand out from the ground where he’d fallen. He grabbed Kavya’s ankle and twisted. She spun in a half rotation before landing hard on her back. Her head bounced off a broad, flat rock. More blood, this time from the woman Tallis loved.

Pashkah struggled to wrest the sword from her hand. Her grip was surprisingly unforgiving. She snarled and fought—a genuine warrior now, with rage to compensate for a lack of skill. She used her left hand to stab upward with the seax. Pashkah was forced to relinquish his fight for the Dragon-forged sword. Instead he defended himself with the only shield he had—the bare palm of his right hand. The seax cut through skin, bone, and tendon with such strength that the blade slammed into his collarbone. Kavya abandoned that weapon, scrambling away, unable to catch her balance and stand.

A scream of rage shot through the clearing. Rocks rumbled. Loose gravel and even a few smaller boulders toppled down from the Mother. It was Pashkah. A rage born of madness and a gift that literally shook the world.

Kavya matched his scream, but she didn’t do so to destroy. She cried out in pain. The sword dropped from her hand as she buckled. She clutched her skull. Her whole body shook, twitching, kicking out in all directions.

More screams, as the Guardsmen again turned their telepathy on Tallis’s family—with the intent to cripple. Tallis bounded over bodies and past pairs of growling Pendray who fought on, despite what must be agony daring them to give in.

Tallis knew they wouldn’t.

Another boulder shook loose from the Mother, right above Chandrani’s bound, helpless body. Tallis was nearest her. By instinct he grabbed the large woman and hauled hard under her arms. The huge sandstone rock crashed down where her chest would’ve been. A crushing blow. The kind a Dragon King would never recover from.

He pushed the hilt of his seax into Chandrani’s hand. She’d fight free.

He turned to find Pashkah straddling Kavya. The point of the Indranan’s Dragon-forged sword was aimed directly at the hollow at the base of her throat. “Is this collar some Pendray bauble? How long will it withstand just how angry you’ve made me?”

“Don’t do this,” she whispered.

Pashkah shook his head. “Even now you can’t use the gift you were given. Are you afraid of talking to me on my turf? Because that’s what this mind is, Kavya. Mine. Just as yours will be.”

“What happened to wanting my body instead of yours?”

“Doesn’t matter now. She’ll control us both, no matter the physical form.” Pashkah’s rigid hold on the sword slipped. A resigned sadness infused his voice—that of a regular man. A man who was so very tired. “Kavya, sister, you have no idea . . .”

“And she never will.” Tallis swung with all his might. The sideways arc of his blade parted Pashkah’s head from his body in a bloody gush.

In the next instant, Tallis heard Kavya’s voice in his mind for the first time.