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“The ravens were its master,” Lachlan added, then shook his head, looking confounded at the words he’d just spoken.

“Master?” Nix frowned.

“It broke the imprint,” Mattias said. “Some spell.”

“Please tell me, Tomas, that this voice wasn’t the infamoushimwe’ve heard about.”

Tarley turned to look at her father, who looked down at his feet, but didn’t say anything.

“We need to get back to Sevens.” Nixus’s tone urgent. “Auri doesn’t have her ribbon.”

Tarley looked at her wrist, empty of its ribbon.

“You promised me a darkling, not a reunion, Nix.”

The forest seemed to disintegrate around them, the whole of the meadow like dripping clay under the weight of water. Nixus and his sister stood at the center of it, arguing, and with a strange sensation that was a cross between floating and falling, Tarley grabbed hold of Lachlan and squeezed her eyes shut. When she blinked them open a moment later, the whole of the encampment, the tents, the soldiers, the horses, the prisoners, the freed women, and children stood stunned at the center of Sevens. Tarley watched Nixus—the dragon-woman no longer with him—walking toward the inn.

“Am I alive?” Mattias asked, his voice uneven and uncharacteristically subdued. “Because I think I’ve died, and I’m in some afterlife where there are dragons, and talking birds, and feral creatures with sharp teeth after my sister.”

“Then we must all be in the same place,” Lachlan said.

“Why doesn’t that bring me comfort?” Mattias asked.

40

In a great burst of power, the wizard, now whole, along with the darkling in tow, landed in the room. With a shout, the wizard swiped the nearest table with both hands, and everything on it flew off with a great crash against the stone wall.

“You!” He turned on the darkling huddled in the corner and pointed, a spell on the edge of his mind to destroy it. “You nearly ruined everything!”

“Master,” it hissed. “It was so shiny.”

“Silence,” the wizard raged, and the creature curled into a tighter version of itself.

He hated it, longing to destroy it to put the accursed thing out of its misery. Only they were bound, and he needed the pitiful thing for its tracking abilities and magical sight. For now, anyway.

The darkling hissed. “So hungry.”

The wizard sighed. The creature had accomplished its task: find the girl from the woods, only the monster had exceeded the wizard’s hopes, leading him to Tomas. Where Tomas was, Azleah was nearby. The wizard couldn’t undo his bond to the darkling yet; he might need the creature still.

“I did promise you a plaything, didn’t I?” He had made it a promise.

“Blood,” the darkling moaned and sniffed the air.

With a sigh, the wizard muttered, and the wreckage from the table rolled across the floor collecting into a pile of refuse. Next, he muttered another spell and burned the offal with a snap of his fingers.

The darkling screeched in terror at the small flame.

“It isn’t for you,” the wizard said, glancing at the pitiful darkling once more. “Up,” he commanded.

The darkling unfolded, rose to its full height taking up the room from floor to ceiling, and hovered in its grotesque form.

“Change,” the wizard ordered. “I hate looking at you like that.”

“Yes master,” the creature rasped, and its form morphed. The wispy black tendrils of its outline smoothed into a clear line as it shrank. A body formed—one of a woman—clothed in a black dress. Its skin was pale, eyes black until it blinked, and the eyes shifted to a bright, clear blue.

“Better.”

“Does this please you, master?” the darkling asked, its voice sweet and lilting now. Alluring if the wizard was interested, but he wasn’t. He had another purpose and that would remain his focus.