“You hate your rage as much as you revel in it.” Conviction strengthened her voice when she should’ve been speaking in whispers, if at all. “Gifts come with tremendous benefits and terrible consequences. The humans have gained free will as they’ve matured. Our kind claimed that right centuries before. That meant and still means deciding how best to use one’s powers.”
“Fair point. You win. This is me exercising my free will.”
He stalked away. Again.
“You’re used to running,” she called. “That’s the solution to conflicts you can’t resolve. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll shout for Pashkah right now. I’ll bring him down on our heads and we’ll duke it out right here. Tell me I’m wrong, Tallis, that you travel the world because you want to.”
He stopped. Rather than reply or even turn, he bowed his head—just a fraction. He didn’t contradict her, but neither did he agree. She couldn’t have gone through with her threat, just like he couldn’t have replied. Both were obvious.
She jogged to catch up to him. The hem of her sari was soaking wet and coated in mud.
A breeze touched her face when she stood at his back. That breeze smelled of cold and earth and water—and Tallis. The leather coat made him look bulkier, more intimidating, but she knew what lay beneath those layers. Could she say the same about the mind she hid under layers of Masks?
“I know two things,” she said quietly. “First is that a berserker saved my life. No matter what you think of that side of yourself, or how you resist it, I won’t forget what you did for me.”
“And the second thing?” His voice was roughly seductive.
Kavya inhaled deeply and focused on the swatch of skin between his hairline and the coat’s collar. She wanted to touch him there. “To survive against Pashkah, I’m going to need your help.”
CHAPTER
NINE
Tallis stood at the northern outskirts of the city of Kullu, where the valley pass dipped sharply down along the course of the Beas. The sun angled over the eastern ridge of mountains and banished the shadows. Likely it would’ve appeared over a flat horizon several hours before, but it had to climb that rocky barrier before casting its rays over the river.
“The Valley of the Gods,” Kavya said reverently. She stood beside him, her eyes both sharp and somehow unfocused. She seemed to absorb the energy of that scene in a way he would never understand. Perhaps the same would be true of him if he again stood on the Highland moors and looked down over the North Sea. His homeland.
This was hers.
“Did the Indranan inspire the name?”
“Long ago, yes. Before the fracture. We roamed throughout the mountains and down to the Indian Ocean. Later, the Northerners came up this pass and continued on to China. The Mongols were quick learners. Many Indranan stayed with them. The Khan must’ve appreciated having telepaths among his number.” She smiled softly. “Historians get so much wrong.”
“Like Alexander and the Tigony,” Tallis said, matching her small smile. He’d wanted to see the real one again, genuine and full of joy, but this would suffice. A subtle truce. “The arrogant son of a bitch thought he’d done it on his own. The Tigony are a vengeful lot, despite their airs. When he got too full of himself, they made sure his conquests came to an end. Period.”
“How do you know so much about the Tigony? They’re like you said—full of airs.”
“You can’t imagine them telling war stories with a Pendray?”
“The clan that backed the Greeks and Romans, who tried to impose their beliefs on Pendray-backed victims—Celts and Norse and the like. Not the best recipe for heart-to-heart chats.”
“I have a Tigony friend in high places.” Probably an understatement, considering that he referred to the Honorable Giva, the leader of the Dragon Kings’ elected Council. Then again, to call Malnefoley a friend was an exaggeration. They tolerated each other because of shared family connections. Distrust meant they would never be close unless their ambitions aligned. Basically, Tallis was bragging. Idiot. “Let’s just say my brother married a hundred times better than he deserved.”
“You? With secrets? I’ll never recover from the shock.”
With a chuckle, Tallis turned away from her profile. Now that he knew the difference between the Sun and Kavya . . .
She was flesh and blood.
He’d been infatuated with a vision. The best scenario was that the vision was of his own making, but that would mean shouldering the blame for the damage he’d wrought. The worst case was that he’d played puppet to the likes of Pashkah. What he’d revealed in his dreams, what he’d done—Tallis didn’t want to think of sharing that with a vengeful stranger.
Kavya was different. Out here in the wilds of the Pir Panjal, she was well away from her people. She couldn’t read his mind. She was forced to be herself, and that was even more tempting than an image of perfection. He liked how he could unnerve her with his dry humor and even his silences. He’d needed to learn English sarcasm like another language, but it was useful when sparring with a woman who used thoughts more than speech.
His people, however, told stories. Huge, rambling, straightforward stories. Subtleties such as irony and sarcasm hadn’t made sense. Tallis had arrived in England as an exile, completely unprepared for the cultural difference of a few hundred miles.
“What about the Southerners?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“If you in the North managed to mingle with the Han and the Mongols, where did the Southerners go after the split?”
“The coastline and the islands—Indonesia and the like. Some even colonized Australia. Every religion in this region is so fractured. Tiny pockets of belief. We migrated and split and kept splitting. Pods became villages, and villages became cultures. And we’d split again, always so distrustful and willing to move on, start again, if it meant the chance of being safe.”
The Pendray way would’ve been to stand and fight, not run, hide, change, live in fear. He understood the desire to have one’s gift from the Dragon made whole, but the cost was a civilization that resembled a petri dish of bacteria dividing and dividing.
Kavya led the way into a seedy, run-down area of Kullu. The idea that she would assume another Mask turned Tallis’s stomach. He followed, with Chandrani at the rear. He knew they talked to each other. That shouldn’t have bothered him, because they’d taken to voicing important decisions about direction and timing. The remaining, unspoken little things did bother him. For the first time in longer than he could recall, he was keeping company with Dragon Kings. They challenged him. Kavya in particular. As if his mind had tipped sideways, he was confused, angry, and uncertain of his purpose.
Find Pashkah?
Run from him?
Worse, it had been nearly thirty-six hours since he’d eaten. Hunger tended to bring out his less desirable traits. He was irritable and prone to snap harsh phrases. The beast needed to be appeased. Now that he’d called it out of its cage, that dark and raging animal was making more of his decisions.
“What happens after?” he asked.
Her strides were short but quick. She’d had no trouble keeping up with his pace, probably due to her familiarity with these daunting mountains. “After what?”
He needed to stop admiring the way the morning sun turned her golden skin to bronze. She glowed as if she really were the Sun of his dreams. “After you take on another Mask. Can he find you at all? Will you go into hiding? We’ve had different goals from the start.”
“The start being when you kidnapped me among my own people for reasons that seem founded on madness?”
“Yes. That.”
“At least you can admit some of what took place yesterday.”
“What happened to how much you appreciated my saving your life?”
Kavya brushed long chocolate-brown hair back from her shoulders and used a sleeve of her sari to wipe her face. Only then did he realize that yes, she was rather a mess. He must look worse. “
I thanked you once,” she said, not breaking stride. “Don’t expect more gratitude until you do something new to deserve it.”
The October morning gave way to surprising warmth. Tallis unbuttoned his coat. He couldn’t imagine the snow and winds this place would withstand come winter. Already, preparations appeared to be under way. Chopped wood lined each building in great stacks. The faces of these hearty humans spoke of survival. Deep wrinkles were born of squinting against snow and ice made into beacons by the high mountain sunshine.
Kavya lead them deeper into the crumbling neighborhood, to a few rickety buildings. This city itself was a destination known for attracting adventurers who sought guidance up the valley toward the infamous Rohtang Pass. The natural wonder, which was so dangerous that humans closed it from November to May, was a temptation to those whose lives lacked mortal thrills.
Tallis resented them, pitied them, envied their innocent cares.
But this was no tourist area. They approached a small pine building. It was daubed with mud and listed toward where the valley continued its downward slope. Kavya closed her eyes. Although he heard nothing, Tallis felt a pulse of energy flow from her body. Why had no one ever talked about that facet of the Indranans’ gift? It didn’t have to be audible for him to know it was there.
A man appeared in the doorway of the listing little building. He matched the pine shelter that surrounded him, as if a rough wind would send him twirling into the sky. He had to be pushing the upward limit of a Dragon King’s life span.
“A Mask, eh?” He rubbed a chin covered in bristly gray hair. “That will cost you.”
Kavya nodded. “It always does.”
—
The man’s name was Nakul. Kavya had known of his existence in Kullu for several years, because she’d thought she might need him one day.
“You’re really going through with this?” Tallis asked.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather coat, so Dragon-damned handsome that she was dazzled. People called her the Sun, but nothing compared to how the dawn graced him. Pink and gold were blessings that washed over his features. His skin was luminous. The cold ocean blue of his eyes was lightened without dissipating any of his intensity. Even his lashes were tipped with a silver sheen that matched his thick hair.
The berserker rage had spun everything about him into a wild creature, ragged and worn, but with so much strength that his casual posture couldn’t disguise his vigilance in watching the trees, houses, and high mountaintops. He wore the weariness of a man who’d been at war for years. A man without faith. A man without allegiances or a home. A man who’d seen something terrible, unspeakable, and would never be the same again.
She wanted to hold his head to her body and stroke his hair until it was free of wild tangles and his mind was free of old, sad pains.
Frustrated by her capacity to be distracted by Tallis, she turned to face Nakul.
The old man scared her.
How many Masks had he dispensed through the decades? How many had he cleanly installed? Would age affect his work? Her mind already verged on having been soaked in too many artificial details. It would take a patient, skilled Masquerade to pick through those false touches and places new ones in between.
Pashkah would find her. She would never be able to reverse the damage to her people. Out there, women had been kidnapped. The Dragon only knew what was being done to them. The Dragon only knew what repercussions would come of their abuse.
“Yes, I’m really going through with this. You can step inside, or you can stand watch.”
“I don’t want to see any more witchcraft. I’ve had my fill for ten lifetimes.”
Head high, she walked the small distance to Nakul’s half-falling awning of tattered, dirty canvas. He’d bring it in before winter. Some internal sense of being in tune with her homeland said the snows would be soon in coming.
“I know who you are.” Nakul’s voice reminded her of his gnarled old bones. He was stringy with exposed tendons and veins. Whatever was left of his flesh hung in saggy pantomimes of a man’s muscles. “The whole of mankind and the Dragon Kings would lie here in the dark, confused and freezing to death, if the Sun abandoned us.”
A shiver turned her skin into a field of goose bumps. She didn’t know which sun he meant.
“I will give you anything you like.” Her peripheral vision found Tallis edging slowly closer. Skepticism tainted the air around his lithe body. “Just name the price.”
“Come inside.”
The interior of the shack was no surprise. It matched the slumping, resigned way the outside seemed ready to tumble down the mountain, consequences be damned. A tiny cookstove was all he had to fend off the chill. Behind the stove, in the scant space between it and the far corner, were blankets and stuffed burlap. Puffs of wool and cotton poked out from the rough stitching like a seeping wound. There was no order to his living space. Even aligning her knuckles did nothing to alleviate the tension festering along the path of Kavya’s spine.
I shouldn’t be here.
No choice.
“My price is, I want to leave this world.”
Kavya’s heart picked up speed. Tallis entered through the only door. Negative judgment was written over his face, shadowed by the shack’s grim, slimy darkness and obscured by the floating dander of neglect.
“I can’t do that,” Kavya said. “I have no Dragon-forged sword, and I have no intention of taking a life.”
“You have other ways. We have other ways. You’re the first Dragon King to seek my aid in more than ten years. That’s ten winters of a chill I can’t get out of my blood. I face another ten at least.” His voice grew more impassioned. “I’ll be a madman. A telepath alone with one’s thoughts is a pathetic thing.”
“Hey, now,” Tallis said. “What does he mean that you have other means?”
Nakul looked as if he were already dead inside. He only needed a means of making it happen.
“We’re Indranan, and we have our ways. I want Kavya to turn off my mind. Leave me uncaring. Let the elements ravage my body, but without the faculties to drive a Dragon King mad. I’ll live out the rest of my life with frostbitten limbs and a stomach begging for food, but I won’t be of this earth.” He nodded firmly. “That, Kavya of the Indranan, is the payment you will give to me.”
CHAPTER
TEN
Tallis grabbed Kavya’s arm, which was honed of slender, resilient muscles beneath the sleeves of her sari. “Especially now, you can’t consider this. A Mask is one thing. Lobotomizing a fellow Dragon King is repulsive.”
With a sour mouth and rebellious amber eyes, she looked him up and down. “Better to kill them outright, Heretic? Your sins precede you.”
“Sins that haven’t been of my making.”
“Bathatéi.”
The worst curse a Dragon King could spit sounded particularly vicious when coming from a soul as placid as Kavya. Part of him was glad she possessed that much fire. They would both need it.
The Chasm isn’t fixed.
He banked a shudder. He hadn’t been reminded of that warning in months. Only his dream of the Sun had brought it back to mind. At least that much of her prophecy rang true, although he couldn’t begin to know why.
“You can curse all you like, goddess,” he said. “It won’t change what you’re contemplating. It’s sick.”
Nakul pinned him with eyes made watery and colorless by age. “Determine your own fate, Heretic. You’re able-bodied enough to make that possible. I want the privilege of determining mine.”
“Why not leave the mountain? The Punjabi plains are within reach. Instead you want to stay where the elements will maul your body? It’s wasteful.”
“Determine your own fate,” Nakul said again. “Let this woman determine hers and me, mine.”
“Tallis, tell me what you’d do in my situation. Risk death by Pashkah—”
“Or risk insanity.” He smacked a fist against his palm, then turned s
harply to jab an angry finger at her face. “You have more choices than that. Tell me you didn’t have to fight your way free as a kid.”
Kavya bowed her head as if it were an unbearable weight. “I did,” she whispered. “You’d have me go back there?”
“At least then you had some control. There’s no control in giving yourself over to this man. He’s begging you for death, and you’d let him apply another Mask?”
Tilting her head, she assessed him so intently that he suppressed the need to look away. The Sun could be persuasive. She had that much in common with the beautiful demon in his head. He hadn’t realized how many variations persuasion could take. He’d only been privy to what appealed to his sense of chivalry, reverence, and quite frankly, his lust.
“Why does it matter to you?” she asked.
Tallis flared his nostrils on a long, tense inhale. “I want Pashkah to give me answers. Worm, remember? Bait. He won’t find you if you’re some other person.”
She’d be another person.
That thought ricocheted through his insides like a bullet, hitting vital places along the way: his accelerating heart, his struggling lungs, his closed fists that wanted to open and take hold of her—or remain fists and pummel anyone who tried to do her harm.
“Great.” She shook her head with sharp movements. “The only time you defend me with words rather than weapons and bare teeth, and it’s to use me as a means of getting back at Pashkah. When was the last time you did anything because it felt right?”
“When was the last time you did what you wanted? You’ve been guided by your cult’s needs for so long.”
She turned away from him and settled more firmly into her seat. “I’ll do it,” she said to Nakul. “I’ll release your mind from this world. All I need is another Mask.”
As Tallis watched, he pondered something despicable. What would be the harm in letting her wear another Mask? Her madness would mean a permanent split among the Indranan. She’d never be able to affect a new peace. The dreams would end. The prophecy would be undone.
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