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I understood that and yet, I was worried.

I told her that I thought I finally knew who our enemy was.

“The Governor?”

I nodded.

“He won’t rest until both of us are out of the way. For different reasons, though. In my case, he wants control of the company. In your case, it is slightly more complicated.”

“I think I am supposed to kill him,” Kaya said quietly.

“What?”

Kaya sat up, her voice serious. “I have had this dream ever since I was a child of a huge bear wanting to kill me. As I grew up, the bear became bigger, the forest darker and more dangerous but it was always the same, I had to confront it and I had to kill it.”

She said she’d told the healer in the desert about the dream but he could not explain it to her.

“Sometimes in the dream I can’t see the bear but I can see his eyes in the darkness, glowing red. It’s like he is there but not there.”

I asked, “Do you ever fight him?”

Kaya nodded. “I do. Sometimes I win, and sometimes…I wake up before I know the outcome.”

“I think he knows I have the occillite and the ability to kill him. Perhaps that is why he went after my family, to get to me?”

I didn’t like the direction this was going in.

“You can’t go after Da Salle, it is too dangerous!”

“That is why I have to go,” Kaya said. “He is not expecting me and I will have the element of surprise.”

“For the breadth of a second,” I countered.

She jumped up and fetched something from the other side of the room.

“Enough time for me to cut him with this,” she said, holding out the occillite towards me.

I had to avert my eyes, it was like staring into black fire.

“Take… it … away,” I said and she hid it again.

I closed my eyes but I could still see it, the malevolent glint in the stone, the promise of death. I knew that Kaya could kill me at any moment, over a whim or a tantrum. Anyone else picking up that stone would be able to snuff out my life with a flick of the wrist. I couldn’t be in the same house as it. I got up and started getting dressed.

Kaya seemed to know what I was getting at.

“I will only use it on Da Salle, ok? Then I will lock it away somewhere safe. I would never expose you to it.”

I looked at her, wanting to believe her.

“I love you,” she said, coming close to me, whispering the words I so very much wanted to hear. But I was concerned now.

“I love you too,” I said. “That is why I am worried for you.”

“We can’t be together until we have removed this threat,” she said. “I will wear the pendant and charge it to maximum strength. I will rub myself with it before I enter his house. My hands will be weapons of death.”

I was still not convinced.

“This is what I was trained to do,” Kaya reminded me. “I’m out of practice and I have slipped in my skills but the occillite gives me the edge I need. Don’t you see?”