“Okay okay okay.” I lifted my hands in surrender. “Since I think it’s for a good cause, I’ll try to convince her.” I shook my head. “Not sure she’ll listen to me any more than to you though.”

Zack exhaled. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, thanks.”

“No problem.” Now for the last of the hot topics. “I have a new issue that’s bothering me, and I hope you can help me get some perspective.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“It’s Tessa. I think she’s been manipulated.”

Zack stopped tracing a sigil, dispersed it with a sweep of his hand and turned to face me. “Why do you think that?”

“Because we talked, and every time it came around to one particular subject it was like it hit reset on a game, and she backtracked a minute.” Frustration and helpless anger rose again. “Also, her memory of another event seems programmed. It’s fucked up.”

“That does sound like manipulation,” he said, face serious but revealing nothing of his thoughts. “What was the topic?”

“Weirdly enough, the reset was when I asked her if she’d ever been to the demon realm.” I folded my arms, watched him carefully for any reaction. “Which begs the question, why the hell would my aunt be manipulated about that if she hadn’t been there?”

Zack cleared his throat. “Do you have any working theories?”

“One is that she was in the demon realm at the end of her time with Katashi and, for whatever reason, was then manipulated to forget all about it,” I said. “But I’d really like another theory.” My outrage at the violation of Tessa flared again. “I’ll take anything that isn’t ‘someone fucked with my aunt’s head.’”

“Your current theory is very sound.” He said it with a disturbing contemplative calm.

Fucking shit. My blood pounded in my ears. “Has Tessa ever been in the demon realm?”

Zack shifted from one foot to the other and didn’t answer. Anger seethed like a ball of fire in my chest, and I took a step toward him. “You know. Fucking tell me, Zack. Now. Has Tessa been in the demon realm?”

He gave a barely perceptible nod.

“With which lord?” I demanded. “Whose realm?” A horrible dread suddenly coiled through me. What if he says Mzatal? Katashi had been his sworn summoner, which meant it was more than possible. No, Mzatal wouldn’t hide that from me, I thought, casting the worry aside. I knew that much.

Zack stood in infuriating silence, his eyes on mine as I moved to the next worst possibility. “Rhyzkahl?”

Another micro nod.

Rage clogged my throat for several seconds. “You’ve known this all along and you didn’t tell me?” I shouted when I could finally speak. “What the fuck? You’re supposed to be my friend.” It hit me then, and I stared at him in sick horror. “You’re his goddamn ptarl. Does ptarl trump friend? Or were you ever my friend at all?” I’d had a dozen lifetime’s worth of betrayal from Rhyzkahl, but the very thought of the same from Zack was a knife in my gut. Like lord, like ptarl? “I guess that means you didn’t tell me before so you could protect his sorry ass and won’t fucking tell me now either!”

He drew a breath. “It’s true. I can’t tell you what happened.”

“This is my aunt,” I snarled. “You know what happened to her, but you won’t tell me because you’re still loyal to him.”

“Kara.” His eyes sought mine, but I was too distraught to read the emotion that burned within them. “I am here,” he said. “Not there.”

“It doesn’t help that you’re here, in my goddamn house, if you’re still loyal to that chekkunden.” I bared my teeth. “Can I trust you? Or do you report everything you see and hear back to him? Will I wake one morning with a knife at my throat and enemies in the house? Is that why you refuse to free Szerain? Do you remain a good little jailer for your fucked up master?”

An aggrieved expression touched Zack’s face. “I loosen Szerain’s confinement as I can, offer him relief.” He shook his head. “And I do not contact Rhyzkahl,” he added.

“Whew! I feel better now,” I said, with heavy sarcasm. “But you’re not answering my goddamn question!” Yelling felt pretty damn good at the moment. “Where are your loyalties? To him? Or to us?”

His jaw tightened. “It is not as simple as that, not so black and white.”

“Then explain,” I said and threw my arms out wide. “I’m all ears! You know what he did to me. How can you have any loyalty to him and still pretend to be on my side?”

“Kara, there are ancient ties, ancient agreements, ancient oaths.” His hand trembled, and he tightened it into a fist. “It does not mean that I act against you.”

“Ancient ties!” I spat the words back at him. “Rhyzkahl tortured me! Carved me up! You know what he’d have done to me if it hadn’t been for Mzatal and Idris.” A sense of utter betrayal swept over me, and I clung to the anger like a lifeline. “If you still have any loyalty to him, if you can’t tell me what I need to know, then you are acting against me.”

Zack shifted his weight again. “No,” he said, voice weirdly hollow. “I’m not acting against you. I am . . . not.”

“Then tell me about my aunt and Rhyzkahl.”

He remained silent for several heartbeats, tension holding his body rigid. “I cannot.”

“You are completely full of shit,” I sneered. “You stand back and convince yourself you’re not doing any harm, that you’re not a threat to us. You have all these ‘ancient ties’ to excuse your behavior.” I firmed my mouth. “How about I clear some shit up for you right now. As long as you keep vital information back, you’re not on our side, and I can’t fucking trust you.” A dim part of me knew I was overreacting, pulled at me to stop and breathe, but I couldn’t stem the raging emotions. Instead I turned and fled down the trail and back to the house. I stormed through the kitchen, retreated to my room and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

Hands clenched in my lap, I sat on the edge of the bed and willed myself not to cry despite the near overwhelming need to do exactly that.

A moment later, Zack spoke softly from the other side of the door. “Kara.”

“What.”

“I’m sorry.”

No way could I say “It’s all right” or “I forgive you” or anything like that, because it wasn’t and I didn’t. But I didn’t want to twist the knife further either. Zack had been oathbound long before he met me. Desperate worry about Tessa wound through my gut, along with the beginnings of a horrible suspicion about who Idris’s daddy might be, yet the idea that I might lose the Zack I thought I knew added a nauseating veneer. “Look, I can’t talk about this anymore,” I said in a shaking voice. “I need to be alone.”

Silence, then, “Would it be easier for you if I stay away from here?”

I didn’t know what I wanted except for the sick ache to disappear. “No, you don’t have to leave.” Why did this shit have to hurt so much?

After a moment I heard a soft noise as though he’d lifted his hand from the door. “All right,” he finally said. “I’m heading back to the office.” When he spoke after another moment of silence, his voice held no luster. “Kara, I’m really sorry you’re hurting.”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer as I fought to hold back tears. When I heard the front door close I finally buried my face in my pillow and gave in.

Eventually the hurt, betrayal, and worry coalesced into a more comfortable and familiar anger and general upset. I sat up and scrubbed my hand over my face. Enough unproductive bawling. I needed to get my ass up and move, lose myself in sweat and exhaustion. A perfect time to try out the obstacle course.

The fed-boys had done a good job with it, I decided with grudging respect. Without removing any living trees, they’d managed to create a clever and circuitous route through the woods, and had installed a dozen obstacles in existing natural clearings along it—walls of various heights, rope climbs, low crawls, wobbly log bridges, and more—all challenging without being ridiculous.