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Chapter

Eighteen

Loren

Loren watches as she falls apart.

Horrifyingly, her neck is the first thing to break.

It snaps off with a clean click as the back of her head connects with a green crystal jutting out from the wall behind her.

Her head cranes forward, as if bending toward him, before rolling away into the sand.

Her arms go next, each one shattering as her stone elbows crack against the wall.

He sees one thick fracture run through her torso from her right shoulder to her left foot.

It widens suddenly, and that’s when what’s left of her crumbles.

For the span of three heartbeats, everyone is silent.

Then Loren is kneeling, careful not to further crush any of her broken pieces.

I’ve done puzzles like this before, he thinks numbly.

It’s like when I was a kid. If I can just figure out what goes where, I can put her back together.

He reaches for her sandaled foot and the biggest piece of her polished marble calf that he can find and places them together.

The break is smooth, so the pieces fit seamlessly.

Next, her knee. Where’s her other foot? She’s missing toes…

“Loren.”

He doesn’t register the voice. He’s too busy crawling toward where Jaylie’s head rolled away. At least it hasn’t broken entirely. Her features are beautifully intact, her curls captured in masterful little spirals and her lips parted in a small “O” of surprise.

“Loren.” The tone is so gentle. It’s unexpected, spoken through the fanged mouth of Kain. “She’s gone.”

“She’s right here.” Obviously. “This would go much quicker if you lot would help me.”

Silently Morgana kneels beside him and begins to gather what pieces of the cleric she can recover.

Her touch is reverent as she works alongside Loren to fit all the shards of marble back together.

In time, they have Jaylie’s body laid out, all the shards approximately in the places that they should be.

The hands are the hardest part—all that’s left of her fingers is dust.

“Loren, this isn’t Jaylie anymore,” Kain says. Loren shudders to feel the giant tiefling lay his broad palm on his shoulder. It’s still slick with the beholder’s blood.

“There’s nothing we can do?” Morgana’s voice is small, but in the silence following Kain’s statement, her words seem to echo in the chamber. For a moment, the only sound is the trickle of water where it continues to flow from the ceiling.

“She’s just a pile of stones now,” Kain says thickly. “I don’t know what we could do.”

Loren gently sets Jaylie’s head back in the sand before his hands erupt into flame.

He calls the magic to him in a burst of emotion, in a rush of rage.

He feels the heat of the magic flow through his veins like lava, and his teeth grind near to breaking in the effort to hold back a scream.

Instead, he fuels it all into the flames, flames that crawl up his arms and wreathe his shoulders in a mantle of fire.

And it’s the flames that give him the idea.

“I want to speak with your father,” he demands.

Kain blinks a few times as the words take time to register. The black orbs of his eyes narrow to slits. “Like Hell you do,” he snarls.

“Summon him. Let me talk to him.”

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, bard. You may think you’ve got a silver tongue, that you can bargain with the likes of him, but you don’t know the price. You don’t know the cost. ”

“So then you ask, you make a deal with him.” Loren bites off each word. “It would be better than admitting defeat, that this—that this is it. When we first met, I didn’t think you had a cowardly bone in your body.” Loren knows the words will hurt. It’s why he says them. “Now I’m not so sure.”

The tiefling still isn’t moving, and Loren’s hands clench into fists at his sides.

He points to a cluster of crystals buried in the sand.

At his beckoning, flames rush down his arm and follow his extended finger toward the rocks.

Surprisingly, the fire catches, burning as hot and bright as if it were kindling.

The quartz crackles with tongues of blue and green.

Loren turns back to Kain, who is breathing heavily through flared nostrils. “Well?” the bard asks sharply.

Kain bares his teeth. “I’ll do it. But you must know—he takes advantage of people in this state. Your emotions are high. You feel like you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you let him, he’ll take everything from you.”

Loren’s lips press into a grim smirk. “You wound me, Kain.” He dramatically lays his palm on his vest even as his grin stretches dangerously wide. “I’ve always had a way with words.”

Kain shakes his head, kneels next to the fire, and begins to speak the infernal tongue.