EIGHTEEN
Zarek materialized into the main hall of the Vanguard’s Keep, where the smell of food from the morning meal hit like a punch. His stomach growled with a hunger that almost bordered on pain.
He strode into the Great Hall, which fell silent the moment he entered.
Dozens of warriors, new recruits, students, veterans, and officers looked up from their meals.
As rainwater dripped from his coat onto the hardwood floors, he felt their attention like pressure against his skin.
And beneath everything, a low, primal heat stirred in the depth of his chest. A presence, like a beast shifting in its cage, as every eye tracked him as he crossed the room toward the wide-open doors that led to the private dining room reserved for the Sworn Exarchs.
“Zarek!” Martar was on his feet, pushing past benches to reach him. His firm hands landed on Zarek’s shoulders, patting him down as if checking him over. “How are you?”
“Starving.” Zarek’s answer came rougher than he intended. He forced his voice smoother, because control kept the world from burning. “Good, my brother. No, better than good.” Zarek turned toward the nearest servant. “Food, Tamarr.”
“At once, Captain.” Tamarr bolted for the server like her life depended on it.
“Our brother returns.” Lord Gellar rose from his chair at the head of their dining table and clapped a hand to Zarek’s shoulder—only for his hand to ease back as if bitten by the heat. “You are strong.”
“Aye.”
“How?” Martar demanded. “The Poison Blade got you.”
“It did.” Zarek lifted his jacket, exposing the faint red line along his side. A scar that should have been a blackened, gaping wound, was already fading.
“But to heal so fast… how?” Martar’s brow pulled low. While Gellar’s eyes narrowed, as if zoning in on the details.
“I have no idea.” Zarek took his seat and greeted the others with curt nods.
Then the plates hit the table. He ate like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Meat. Bread. Eggs. Pancakes slick with butter.
Bacon. More meat. His body devoured it as if the food would disappear before he could satisfy this animalistic need.
“I see you have an appetite almost equal to Condorr’s there,” Gellar said, amused.
“Yeah.” Zarek just kept eating because if he stopped, he might be forced to think.
And then she would be there, invading his thoughts with memories of her scent, her green-and-blue eyes locking with his as her voice snapped at him like she owned the world.
But most of all, her small hands holding his, while asleep and at peace.
She reminded him of no one, and yet everything reminded him of her.
He was supposed to have built walls strong enough to keep everything out, to keep everyone away, because he was dangerous if he lost control for one second. And with her…
He swallowed hard and forced himself to focus on the table. On the woodgrain itself. “Did we work out why the Black Cloaks attacked like they did last night?”
Martar’s expression shifted. “Last night? Brother, you’ve been gone four days.”
But to Zarek it was only four hours. Just last night.
Helviti!
The Poison Blade should have had him broken and in bed for weeks.
“There is a new power.” Gellar scooped up his mug and took a swig. “It is weakening Katarra’s collective. Four of his Black Cloaks have not returned to him for the resurrection process.”
Zarek paused with his own cup halfway to his mouth. “How?” Sure he was there, but he needed to hear their side. He swallowed the black, bitter coffee, washing down his meal before refilling his plate with more food.
“Not sure. But neither Katarra nor our Seers can see it. We know they attacked us that night you were…” Gellar paused, his eyes dropping to Zarek’s chest, clear of any wound. “… to regain strength and numbers. And—”
“To capture one of us,” Zarek finished. “It had to be their reason for deploying the Poison Blade.”
He’d known the moment it had struck him. What surprised him wasn’t that they’d brought it out—it was how quickly it had worked, slicing through his armor as if it weren’t there at all.
Martar nodded. So did Condorr, who had never been one to soften a truth, with a mind that told Zarek everything.
They’d assumed he’d been taken.
And if he’d been taken… the next question would follow soon enough to know if he’d been compromised, especially as he’d returned healed. Zarek straightened slightly. “How many were killed?”
“Seven,” Martar replied. “At the warehouse. Didn’t you kill one?”
Zarek nodded.
Gellar leaned in slightly. “The Seer said one of the Black Cloaks died that night in pain. And not at the warehouse. It was some kind of burning. That after its death, it did not return to Katarra for the rebirth, and that somehow weakened the collective. The Seer believes it wasn’t killed by us. Did you see that death?”
Zarek’s knife and fork clattered onto the plate as he leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes.
His appetite vanished as the memory hit hard of the rain in that dark alley, the stench of his own blood, and the wrong black blade burning into his side.
Overshadowed by a Black Cloak that Death may finally win his hand in their game of life, only for her to arrive like a storm in a small car.
He felt it again, that low rumble in his chest. That heat building like a primitive wildfire spreading through his ribs, enough to make his hands curl into fists to control himself.
Zarek had to keep control, forcing the fire down.
“How?” Martar asked, while everyone listened.
“Salt.”
“Special salt?” Martar frowned as the others murmured in disbelief.
“No.” Zarek reached for the shaker and poured ordinary white crystals into his palm, letting them fall between his fingers and onto his plate. “Everyday kitchen salt.”
“Impossible,” Condorr muttered.
“Did you throw the salt?” Gellar pressed.
“No.” Zarek’s fingers curled, crushing a few grains into his gloved hand like he could grind sense out of them. “I was injured. Paralyzed by the Poison Blade and lying on the ground.”
“What happened then?” Martar asked.
Zarek stared down at the table’s woodgrain, following the knots and lines—anything but the image of her face.
Don’t say her name.
He didn’t know why it mattered. Or why his throat tightened as if it were a secret he would die to keep.
“She showed up,” he said to Martar. “I thought I was going to die. I was calling out to you… instead she was there.”
“Who?” Gellar demanded.
Zarek’s jaw locked. He didn’t want to share her. He didn’t even want his brothers thinking her name, or to have their attention on her.
Which was ridiculous.
She was just a temporary complication. A mortal female who should never have known he existed. Just as she should not have been able to see or touch him.
She was—
His chest tightened again, and the heat in his lower chest surged like something was waking up.
He forced the words out, rough and clipped to keep control of them, because they needed to know he was not compromised. “She drove her car into the Black Cloak. Knocked it off balance, then she threw salt over it.”
His gloved hands flexed on the table. He could still hear its vile scream, but he smelled her fear more, and how she pushed through to save him. She put herself in harm’s way for him. A woman he’d only just met.
“Go on,” urged Martar. “What happened next?”
“I saw steam rise from its cloak like vapors. The pain was so severe its scream was like the ghostly wails of those tortured wraiths haunting the underworld.”
“Then what?” Gellar asked quietly.
Zarek’s teeth clenched. “She stabbed it with an athame, and it turned to stone, then ash. Like they always do.” From there, it’s soulless being should have returned to Katarra for resurrection, to then battle again the next night.
It was a battle that never ended, night after night, centuries after centuries.
The silence that surrounded him became deafening, which was rare from this table of warriors, while the sounds of the other soldiers eating in the Great Hall felt miles away.
But he knew what his brothers were thinking; he didn’t need to read their minds to hear their thoughts: a mortal woman killing a Black Cloak with salt and an unconsecrated blade was unthinkable.
Then the other questions floated loud enough for him to hear: How could she see them when they were cloaked? How did she know where to find him? Questions he hadn’t dared to ask. But he was also honor-bound by duty to answer them, even though he didn’t fully understand it all himself.
“So, what happened then?” Martar asked.
Zarek’s throat tightened again. The beast in his chest shifted restlessly, as if unhappy with how close their questions were getting.
“She…” He swallowed harshly. “Took me in her car, to her home, and tended to my wounds.”
“Who?” Gellar demanded. “A witch? An athame is a tool of their trade.”
“No. She’s not a witch. I’d know if she were.”
“Then what is she?” Gellar pushed.
Zarek shrugged because he didn’t know if she was a power or a curse dressed up with a sweet smile and different colored eyes.
All he knew was the way her hands shook as she tied the scarf around his ribs, and how she held the pressure against his wound like she could push death itself back into the ground—even while terrified, she did it for him.
“Who, Zarek?” Gellar demanded again.
Zarek stared at him. But refused to answer.
He couldn’t.
Martar said it instead, “Angela Duboise.”
That’s when the entire world tilted on its side and the dragon in Zarek’s chest exploded, fully awake.
It surged through him with a raw, violent, and ancient heat that filled his veins like molten liquid fire.
Not the controlled burn he wore like armor, or the disciplined restraint he’d carried for centuries; this was unleashed from the depth of the soul he didn’t know he had, and it ignited the staves etched into his armor to glow in warning.
Zarek rose so fast the chair scraped hard across the floor to hit the wall, unable to contain it, as the deeply etched staves on his suit glowed from red, orange to white.
“Leave her alone.” His voice didn’t sound like his own, but it was embedded with a warning. “She’s MINE.”
The power roared like a possessive dragon that was feral and uncontrolled; it spread like a shockwave of unseen heat and power across the room.
The heavy wheel chandeliers of flickering candles trembled on their chains, as dust rained from the beams and the air bristled with energy from his words that vibrated like an echo after an explosion.
Every brother at the table sat back, stunned—not by the words, but by the force behind them. Worse, every soldier in the Great Hall had fallen silent, too.
A Captain. Him. A Sworn Exarch. Not only was his armor glowing from the warning staves, but the flames and sparks that covered his leathers were flaring as if ready to battle each and every one of them.
Zarek stood with his chest heaving and fists clenched tight. He never lost control, but he had.
As the last echo of his roar bounced off the high stone ceiling, the horror punched through him for what he’d done.
He doused the flames, which silenced the staves on his armor, and without another word, he strode out of the Great Hall, with shame chasing him down the corridor like smoke.
But underneath his skin, the dragon paced like it could never be put back in its cage, now that the door was open.
It should have worried him, but it didn’t, because what bothered him more was that his brothers knew her name.