“Let me go,” came the persuasive voice at his back. “Whatever grudge you hold against me, you know I can calm them.”

“No. Their panic will remain unaddressed by their savior. Seeing you discredited and ruined has always been my goal, no matter how much I like kissing you.”

The fervor outside the tent died down, but only because hurrying worshipers had frozen solid. Their attention was focused on the altar.

Tallis narrowed his eyes. A man stood where Kavya had delivered her morning benediction. He was tall, with a commanding presence. His hair was brown, his features sharp, his clothing black on black. Among those gathered in the valley, his layers of leather and protective plates of silver armor stood out like a burn on a child’s skin.

No matter Tallis’s grudge against the Sun and her cult, this stranger was pure violence.

“You were expecting someone else,” the man intoned, his words hypnotic. They echoed back across the valley in a one-two punch of spellbinding power. “You were expecting a savior. I’m here to say there is no such thing. And there’s no such thing as reconciliation between the Northern and Southern factions of Clan Indranan. There never will be.”

Tallis grabbed Kavya by her hair and dragged her to the tent’s opening. Her face went chalk white. The paleness looked sick and unnatural on a Dragon King, and especially eerie when it leeched the soft charisma of her beauty.

“Who is that?” Tallis was more disturbed than he would have liked, but the unexpected was always a threat.

“That.” She swallowed. “That is Pashkah of the Northern Indranan. My brother.”

♦   ♦   ♦

If skin could turn to ice, Kavya’s became as cold as the glaciers along the Himalaya’s Rohtang Pass.

She hadn’t seen Pashkah since she was twelve years old, but she would never mistake his stance, his face. Even as a boy, his expression had been freakishly blank. Devils and ghouls were nothing compared to his uncanny blankness. Had she been able to understand him, with telepathy or her senses, she might have been able to save their sister, Baile.

But in those final moments, Baile hadn’t wanted to be saved. Before Pashkah had taken her head, she’d wanted his just as much.

Every Indranan was born as a twin or, in Kavya’s case, as a triplet. Siblings grew up knowing that the Dragon had divvied up their true potential in the womb. Learn to share. So few did. By committing fratricide, an Indranan could unite the pieces of shattered potential. The ability to read another’s mind was the most intoxicating, terrifying gift among the Five Clans. To keep from wanting more was the ultimate responsibility.

The Heartless.

Kavya had never protested her clan’s derogatory nickname. She’d simply fought to rise above its hideous legacy.

Now, having reduced their family to a series of grim victories, Pashkah stood within a few hundred meters of success. He would take Kavya’s gift and add it to the power he’d stolen from Baile. He would become thrice-cursed with his true potential sewn together in violence—while the never-ending shrieks of two dead sisters destroyed his sanity.

Tallis shook her by the hair. “What is this, part of your big announcement? Bring in muscle to make sure everyone complies?”

“This is my brother having found me after decades of searching. This is . . . this is the brink of chaos.”

She jerked free. At least now she knew the identity of her captor.

Tallis of Pendray. The Heretic.

She still wasn’t able to read his mind, but his honed Norse seaxes held residual memories so strong that she’d caught flashes of his true self. His life on the run.

A man of myth. But still a man.

“You don’t need to be a telepath to sense the panic.” She tipped her chin toward where Pashkah owned the altar—the altar she’d hoped would be host to an evening of peaceful triumph. “Those are lambs being herded toward a butcher’s knife. Nothing I’ve done, no matter your delusions, will match the crimes Pashkah is capable of committing.”

“He’s your brother. I wouldn’t expect anything less than deceit and mind-warping delusions.”

Kavya’s heart was expanding with each beat, until it shoved against her trachea. Everything she’d worked for was at Pashkah’s mercy, while the notorious Heretic kept her from helping her people. “Do you hate me so much that you deny the obvious? Look at the men at his back. Each one of them is twice-cursed.”

“You can tell? You’re reading their minds?”

“I don’t need to. They’re Pashkah’s Black Guard. Whole communities have been rolled over by their arrival.”

“He kills Dragon Kings? The Five Clans would’ve heard about that.”

Kavya shook her head, her eyes filling. “Not killing. Trying to breed. The Black Guard were responsible for the Juvine forty years ago, when women were stolen from the South and held captive here in the mountains. Retaliation after retaliation followed, reviving the same hatreds that split our clan three thousand years ago. By trapping me, you’ve given him unchecked permission. The Black Guard will continue its spree.”

Tallis had fascinating skin—smooth except for those places where emotions pushed to the surface. So animated for a Dragon King, he frowned with his whole face until it took on the gravity of a pending typhoon. Finally he seemed to be taking her fear seriously.

“Unbind me,” she said, pressing her advantage.

“So you can flee? What do you think I am?”

“An idiotic, brainless Pendray thing. Always thinking with your cocks and your work-worn hands, if you think at all. All I want is to face my brother without ropes around my wrists.” She forced strength into her voice just as she’d forced calm into her body. “You wanted me discredited among my followers, not martyred. Remember?”

“That I can agree with.”

“First obeying me, now agreeing with me. You’ll be undone by dawn.”

“Suddenly you expect to live that long,” he said with an edge of a smile.

“You have no idea the consequences if I don’t. Forget martyrdom. I’ll be the dead soul that gives Pashkah what he’s always wanted: the powers of a thrice-cursed Indranan.”

Tallis shook his head. “Ancient myth.”

“No, fact. Just like how the Heretic seems to have graced me with his presence.”

That caught him off guard, but only for a moment. “So you admit it. You know who I am.”

“That doesn’t mean your accusations hold merit.”

He silenced her by dragging a seax nearer to her flesh. Although she shuddered, she appreciated the knife more than his kiss. She could endure pain. Life had taught her those lessons and the means of coping with what no one should have to endure. The surprise of pleasure, however, was still frothing in her veins. Every hair stood on end. Her skin pulled toward his touch and his Dragon-damned kisses.

The conflicting emotions were too much to process. As telepaths, the Indranan learned how to put emotions in boxes. Her own went in one box, separated and classified and memorized—the better to make sure they were really hers. Impressions and ideas from other people had boxes of their own, like quarantined contagions.

The tip of the seax was as fine as the point of a needle. Engraved scrollwork along the blade caught the last of the dying sunshine. Tallis slid the tip between her wrists and sliced the ropes with one swift cut. No wasted motion. Perfect mastery of his weapon.

“Members of the Sun Cult,” came the voice that sent hot dread up her spine and ghostly chills back down. “Your leader is no longer here. Because I am her brother, Pashkah, you can imagine the consequences if I take her life—or if I already have. Perhaps she’s merely fled, leaving you to my mercies.”

The Black Guard marched to the edge of the altar.

Pashkah didn’t smile, but contentment shimmered around him in a swirl of charcoal fog. “I have no mercy.”