“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 sharply 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.

Then what?

He’d have left Kavya to an abyss—the same abyss he was trying to escape.

A surge of primal instinct said his future was bound with this woman. This was Kavya. She was still his prize, and his baser nature still wanted her. He was beginning to agree with the animal in his soul.

—

Kavya yelped when two strong arms grabbed her out of the chair. Tallis’s force and the rotting wood combined to splinter the chair into shards.

“What are you doing?”

“The old man said as much. This is me determining my fate. It involves you. I could apologize for that, but I won’t. I’m being selfish.”

She struggled against the hard, muscled forearm that wedged between her diaphragm and lowest ribs. “What are you talking about, being selfish?”

His mouth nuzzled the shell of her ear. “Remember what the animal wants.”

A shiver of dread and, Dragon help her, unchecked desire was absorbed by his firm hold. “Are you about to go berserker?”

“No. I’m as clearheaded now as I’ve ever been.”

He pulled her into the sunlight. The heels of her slippers shredded against the wood floor of the makeshift porch. Kavya used her nails to flay small strips of skin from the backs of his hands, but nothing stopped the frightening, arousing power of his demand.

Arousing.

No, no, no.

She twisted her torso and kicked her feet. “You want Pashkah to kill me, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t care. I really am some dangling piece of meat. A worm. You wanted revenge when you thought I’d infested your dreams. Turns out it wasn’t me. Instead you’ll settle your grudge on the woman who’s the best fit.”

“You weren’t listening.” He dragged her down the alley and pushed her against the wall of a weatherworn trailer. “I may be a Pendray dressed up in an English accent with too much knowledge of the world, but I am able to multitask. That means wanting you, no matter how else I’m occupied.”

Chandrani’s shout manifested as adrenaline-fueled fear at the front of Kavya’s skull. It was all the warning she offered. Kavya twisted, slipped, slid—onto her knees, rolling away from Tallis.