Despite her confusion and the impulse to defend herself, Kavya refrained. “What truth is that?”

“You’re a liar and a user. Your plan for the future of our people is the worst sort of insult. Unite the Dragon Kings through selective murder? It’s a beautiful idea cloaked in blood. No more. I’m walking away. Everything between us ends tonight.”

With a voice barely strong enough to be heard, she cast a parting sentence toward his back as he walked away. “If I can reach you in dream, Tallis, why can’t I read your mind?”

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Tallis slept a fitful night on his own. The wooded terrain provided little protection from the frigid wind. He used supplies from his pack to fashion a makeshift shelter, which was mostly additional layers of clothing. His tent was gone. His reason for setting up that tent in the first place . . .

He’d never see her again.

Unless he slept.

Nothing had ever scared him, except for the night when obeying the Sun’s first command meant leaving his family behind. He’d never see them again either. That was enough to strike hot jolts of fear into the bravest man. To be alone. No family. Not ever.

He wasn’t scared of falling asleep, but he never looked forward to it. Months would pass, until he began to think he was free. Maybe . . . finally. But she haunted him like a peripheral shadow. Some night, when Tallis nodded off—too exhausted to wonder if she’d really left him for good—she would appear. The Sun. Kavya. She had a real name, a real face, a real body that he’d touched and kissed.

A woman’s whose life he’d saved. A woman who’d wiped his face clean of blood.

Tallis reclined on his pack, propped against an evergreen, protected from the worst of the wind whipping down the mountain.

He’d walked away, just as he’d said he would. Now he would sleep alone in a forest that bordered the Beas River in the Valley of the Gods. Why did he feel dissatisfied, as if so much remained unresolved? Shouldn’t he experience some sense of closure? He hadn’t expected her to apologize, beg, justify, thank him—all in the span of twelve hours. In fact, he hadn’t imagined what she might do. She and the completion of his goal had been too nebulous. All he’d wanted was to find her. Discredit her somehow. And rid her from his dreams forever.

Huddling into himself for warmth, with the sherpa-lined leather coat buttoned to his neck, he searched through memories and half-remembered visions. Some were so blatantly erotic that recalling them twined with the teeth-grinding, unspent passion he’d unleashed while kissing Kavya. He shifted on the lichen-laced ground, shutting his eyes.

Her scent and her skin were indescribably soft, as was her touch when she’d cupped his bloodied cheeks. Those were real. Images of her naked body on display, her hair long and loose . . . Those were fake, planted by a seductress who’d led him along by his dick and his naiveté for too long.

She blocked out every woman he’d known. None could compare to his fantasies.

Now, the fantasy couldn’t compare to the woman he’d kissed.

Why can’t I read your mind?

There had to be a reason. She was lying when she said she couldn’t. Or she couldn’t access his mind when he was conscious. Or, or, or . . .

He’d lived among the Indranan for months, all in anticipation of the previous day. He’d learned about their family pods—how children ran away as soon as their gifts manifested, escaping their twins, severing all ties with their biological families. Refugee Indranan grew up alone, slowly constructing new families, called pods, from genuine strangers. Strangers meant safety. They bonded over a shared need to protect against brothers and sisters intent on collecting the other halves of their fractured gift from the Dragon.

Their ingrained techniques for self-preservation made Tallis’s exile from his family seem insignificant.

Nothing he’d learned could explain what it meant with regard to Kavya.

No, he thought angrily. She is the Sun.

He was hungry and growing more furious with himself by the minute. He was rid of her. He’d walked away when staying with her would’ve meant protecting her, kissing her again. Or worse yet—believing her.

Why can’t I read your mind?

He’d thought her inability to be a quirk of luck, a useful aid in finding her. Now that question was the nucleus of a mystery he couldn’t solve.

Fuck it.

He’d lived as a human in England for long enough to know that was the perfect expression for what he felt. Angered resignation.

The wind kept howling. His nose and ears were frozen. He had a terrible headache, from the cold and the aftereffects of the rage he’d indulged. There were consequences for dropping that deeply into one’s black soul. Returning again was like using slippery vines to climb out of a mud-slicked pit. It always left the slimy feeling of having done something disgusting, as if he’d masturbated in public.

The burden of the Pendray was to live with such power and a disgracefully low opinion of it. Where was the glory in succumbing to one’s gift when it meant tapping into the worst, basest impulses? Where was the contentment of a fight well won if an animal won it on one’s behalf?

Tallis had bit Pashkah like the rabid dog he’d been accused of being. Years of practicing techniques in hand-to-hand combat and in the use of his seaxes—didn’t matter. Just teeth and fury.

He saw her.

Kavya.

No . . .

This was the Sun. She was the woman he’d come to expect in his dreams. This time, she appeared on the back of the Great Dragon without preamble. Normally the Dragon appeared when Tallis most needed convincing, as if the Sun brought their Father into the discussion to ensure cooperation. How could anyone deny her commanding beauty and the unearthly power of their Creator?

Tallis held very still. Somewhere higher up on the plane of his consciousness, he knew he had fallen asleep. He didn’t want to wake. He wanted to know what the Sun had to say for herself, now that he’d left her to her own resources, stripped of authority, with two slices from his seax on her neck.

He’d tasted those slight wounds, letting his tongue offer the apology he’d never voice.

“You did well,” she said, as softly as the magical swish of the Dragon’s wide wings and long tail. “This was how I intended events to proceed.”

She was swathed in the turquoise of the North, when she was usually clad in the same golden silk sari that Kavya had worn. The gold accentuated her warm coloring. By contrast, the vibrant blue made her features appear careworn. She was voluptuous, but not with Kavya’s innocent sexuality. The Sun’s innocence was petulant, like the greed of an insatiable two-year-old. Pleading, then coercing. Coercing, then pleading. He hadn’t been able to resist that potent cocktail.

Now he could.

“I didn’t do anything to please you,” he said. “Your cult is in ruins. You’ll only be welcomed into the most warlike pods in the North. Go take shelter with them and watch the last of your reputation rip in the wind.”

Amber eyes glowed strong and true, as a corona of light large enough to obscure the Dragon gained strength at her back. Soon her features were cast in shadows. Her body was a silhouette behind layers of flowing blue. Tallis could only sense the Dragon’s watchful presence and smell the brimstone smoke of its exhalations.

“It was time,” she said. “You killed a priest to unify your clan. That was how the Pendray could become most powerful and lasting.”

“It worked. I know that. Other selective murders have had the same effect—bringing peace where none had been. But strengthening individual clans has never been your goal. ‘The Chasm isn’t fixed,’ you said. Unify the Dragon Kings.”