Touch of the Demon

before we passed through and to a door immediately inside. My anxiety rose as the demon continued to escort me down a short hallway and finally through a door into darkness.

With a quick motion, the reyza set a sigil alight above. It bathed the room in a warm golden glow, revealing a small circular chamber devoid of all furnishings. He released my arm in the center, but before I could move, he traced six sigils and spread them to hover a couple of feet from me in each direction. I didn’t recognize the sigils, but I had no doubt I didn’t want to even try touching them.

“What are you doing?” I asked, seriously freaked out at this point.

“Shielding,” the reyza replied with implacable calm. He crouched by the wall and went still, watching me.

The door burst open. I jerked and had to catch myself from taking a step back. Rhyzkahl stood with his left hand on the door, beautiful face hard, radiating intensity like heat from desert stones. His white-blond hair stirred in an unseen wind, and his crystal-blue eyes seemed to bore deep into my essence. He was barefoot, wearing black pants and an unbuttoned black shirt that revealed a well-muscled torso and rock-hard abs.

A smear of blood from his palm marred the pale wood of the door. He lifted his other hand in an upward spinning motion, and an instant later a cylinder of bluish potency sprang into existence around me within the circle of sigils. He moved fully into the room, gaze never wavering from me. The door closed soundly without him touching it.

“Rhyzkahl? What’s going on?” I asked, voice shaking. “I escaped Mzatal and came right here—”

“Silence!” he ordered through clenched teeth. Slowly, he circled around, eyes traveling methodically over me. I’d reached one hundred percent freakout at this point, but I did my best to stay as still as possible, though I couldn’t keep my knees from shaking.

Rhyzkahl finally completed the circle, keen and inscrutable eyes on my face. He lifted a hand, and the binding on my wrists dissipated. Before I could twitch, he reached through the shield and removed the collar, blue glow coating his arm like a glove. He flicked the collar aside to skitter to the wall, then seized my left wrist and dragged my arm toward him, exposing the mark. He dropped his gaze to it, grip hard.

“Mzatal…he tried to get it off,” I told him, breath coming raggedly. “I stopped him—”

“I said silence!” He bared his teeth in a feral manner and raised his eyes to mine. I shrank under his hard gaze, a shiver of dread going through me. He was so not fucking around. His grip tightened painfully. I clenched my teeth together to stay quiet. He laid his bloody left hand over the mark, and I bit back a whimper as pain seared up my arm, the blood actually sizzling as it touched the tracings. Coming here had been a horrible mistake. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked furiously to hold them back.

Rhyzkahl locked his gaze on the mark for nearly a full minute, still and silent. He finally looked back up to my face, lip curling. “Tell me what he did.”

I took a gulping breath. “H-he had me in a diagram—locked me down with potency. He called his essence blade and…started to unwind the mark.”

“Why did he not finish?”

I sucked my breath in as his eyes penetrated mine. I could feel him reading it from me, as if someone was literally moving through my head. It took me a couple of seconds to find my voice before answering. “I pushed him away, scattered the diagram,” I managed. “He said I used grove potency.”

Rhyzkahl continued to read deeply, eyes narrowing. “How did you get here?”

“I asked the grove to bring me here,” I told him. And boy, was I ever regretting that decision right now.

He let my wrist drop. The burning eased without the full contact, but the lingering blood still stung, like lemon juice on a sunburn. He began to trace sigils on the cylindrical shield. With the collar off I could see them clearly, but I didn’t have the faintest clue as to their meaning or purpose.

A tingling began behind my sternum, in the same place I’d felt the cramping at the grove. I lifted my hand to rub the spot, but Rhyzkahl let out a low hiss and reached toward me. His fingers grazed my skin as he closed his hand into a fist. I sucked in my breath as the strange tingle shifted to a deeply uncomfortable pulling sensation, as if he was tugging at the muscles of my chest. A dim arcane glow seeped from between his fingers, and a thread of potency trailed from his hand to my sternum.

Without warning, he yanked his hand back. Pain ripped through my chest, and I cried out, dropping to my knees within the cylinder. Shaking, I hugged my arms around myself as the pain dulled to a lingering, pulled-muscle discomfort. The whole process reminded me way too much of the horrible purification ritual. I was supposed to be safe here, I thought in deep misery.

“He failed to recall you,” Rhyzkahl snarled. “And now he has no chance of it.” I dragged my gaze up to see him grasping a complex sigil, tendrils twitching as if he held a mass of dying snakes.

He flicked the fingers of his other hand. The potency around me dropped, and the sigils vanished in a brief flare of arcane sparkles. He reached down and grasped my arm to draw me to my feet, then steadied me as I swayed.

“Mzatal,” he said with venom, “is devious and he is cunning. This—” He held his right hand before me and slowly closed his fist over the twisted, faintly pulsing sigil until there was no more light. “—would have destroyed you within minutes if it had not been extricated.” He opened his now empty hand and shook it, as if ridding himself of the detritus. “It had been activated very recently. He was most determined that you not come to me.”

I tried to work some moisture into my mouth. “Kill me?” I echoed. It didn’t surprise me at all that Mzatal would try to do so, but that he’d almost succeeded, even after my escape, was pretty damn unnerving.

Rhyzkahl’s expression softened as he pulled me into an embrace. “Yes, dear one. He likely triggered that implant when he pursued you here. It was in the process of unwinding to implode, and was very nearly complete. He…” Rhyzkahl hesitated a breath. “He would stop at nothing to use you toward his own ends, and to keep you from being with me.” He put a finger under my chin and gently tipped my head up, smiled down at me. “Where you belong.”

I put my arms around him, but uncertainty lingered. “Why did you have me tied up?”

He lifted a silky eyebrow. “You, a summoner of some skill, had just come from Mzatal.” He stroked the back of his fingers over my cheek, a frown touching his mouth. “Until I made assessments, I could not risk even a single tracing from you, for the welfare of all who reside in my domain.”

“Oh. Right.” It made perfect sense too, damn it, and annoyance curled through me that I hadn’t realized it. That sort of thing was standard procedure for any released hostage. Well, not the arcane assessment part, but the don’t-trust-them-until-they’re-checked-for-weapons-or traps part.

“You sent him a demand,” I said. “What would you have done if I hadn’t escaped?”

“I would have come for you, of course,” Rhyzkahl replied without hesitation. He lifted his bloody hand. “And was in final preparation to do so.”

I didn’t know what that meant and, frankly, right then, didn’t care. A shiver raced over my skin. “I just want to go home.”

“And you will as soon as it is possible,” he reassured me. “There is no summoner in my realm to accomplish it. I must confer with others about what method is most feasible.”

“All right.” I let out a shaky sigh. “I’ve had an amazingly shitty couple of days. Are you going to keep me locked up in here?”

“Here?” He stepped back and waved a hand dismissively toward the room. “No, you will be taken to chambers I have put at your disposal.”

I dared to feel a sliver of relief. “Thanks.”

“You need rest,” Rhyzkahl said, holding his hand out to the reyza without looking. “We can speak more on the morrow.” The reyza pressed something into Rhyzkahl’s hand, and a breath later the lord slipped the collar back around my neck and sealed it.

I recoiled in shock. “Wait! Why are you putting this back on me?”

“All is not secure yet,” he said in a soothing tone. “It must remain in place for now.”

“For how long?” I asked in dismay.

“Until it is safe to remove it.” His eyes were steady on mine. “Regrettably, it must chafe a time longer. Go and rest now. Pyrenth will escort you to your chambers.”

I couldn’t even manage a smile for Rhyzkahl as he leaned in and kissed my forehead. He turned and departed, and as soon as he was gone, the reyza stepped to my side.