I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, I’m confused by something. Actually a lot of somethings, but one at a time. Tam told me that A’Zahra Nuru was his teacher. I only ran into her a time or two last week, but she seemed to be a nice, rational sort of lady. Brave, noble, and all that. Definitely not a dark mage.”

“Primari Nuru was only one of Tam’s teachers,” Mychael told me, “and probably the only one he’d acknowledge now. Unfortunately, others were more influential in his early education. But when he left the queen’s service, Tam went straight to A’Zahra Nuru.”

My throat felt tight. “He knew she could help him.”

Mychael nodded. “He’s not the first that she’s helped. She does good work.”

Black-magic rehab. Just when I thought I’d heard it all.

I didn’t want to tell Mychael about Darshan thinking that Tam was in that alley to capture me for the Khrynsani, but he needed to know. Mychael was protecting me, and if I had any information that’d help him protect me and not get himself killed in the process, I owed it to him to be completely up-front. Tam didn’t hand me over to Darshan, but he’d clearly been blackmailed, coerced, threatened, or all of the above to do just that. Tam didn’t scare, so that left the first two. Whatever the Khrynsani were holding over Tam’s head had nearly been enough to put me in Khrynsani hands. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s past had come back to bite them in the ass. I just didn’t appreciate being there to share the teeth marks.

I told Mychael about Darshan.

Mychael listened, his expression grim. “What were the shaman’s exact words?”

“He said he was glad that Tam had come to his senses, and that he’d arrived just in time to keep his end of their bargain.” I left out the part where Darshan offered Tam a drug to use on me. Tam was in deep enough shit as it was, and Mychael got the picture without it. “I think the Khrynsani have something on Tam. And I was trying to get him to tell me what that something was when you came into the alley.” I knew what I was going to say next wasn’t going to go over well. “I’d like to ask him again.”

Mychael almost smiled. “Now what do you think my answer to that ill-considered request is going to be?”

“I asked you first.”

“No,” he said.

“No, what?”

Mychael leaned forward, until there were only inches between us. “No, you’re not going to question Tam. I am. It’s safer for you—and for everyone else.”

“To avoid temptation, avoid being tempted.”

“Exactly.”

I couldn’t blame Mychael. I wanted to disagree with him, but the truth was I just didn’t have the energy to argue. He must have sensed it; either that, or he read my tired little mind. I didn’t know and quite frankly I was too exhausted to care.

Mychael reached out and took one of my hands in both of his. It was warm. No liquid fire, no blazing heat. Just warm, and comforting, and nice. Really nice. Mychael was right. Tam was an apparently not-quite-recovered dark mage. I was a dark-mage magnet. We were a kaboom waiting to happen.

Mychael squeezed my hand. “And I promise I’ll tell you everything I find out.”

That was a surprise. “Everything?”

“Everything. For your continued safety, you need to know—and you deserve to know.”

“What’s Justinius going to have to say about this?”

“Nothing, because until I speak with Tam, I’m not going to report what happened. Justinius trusts my judgment. If anything happens on this island that he needs to officially act on, he knows that I’ll tell him. For now, we’re the only ones that know, and until I get an explanation from Tam, that’s the way it will stay.”

I was shocked, but mostly I was grateful. Regardless of what he’d just said, Mychael had to be going against a whole handful of regulations not to report Tam and me— and he was doing it for the same reason he’d done everything else since I’d met him.

To protect me.

Chapter 11

When I woke up the next morning I wasn’t on a cot in a containment room or a pallet in a jail cell.

I was in my soft bed in my luxurious guest room. Sure, the Khrynsani wanted to get their hands on me, the goblin lawyers wanted to extradite me, and Carnades Silvanus wanted a warrant for my arrest, but as of this glorious, sun-filled morning, not a one of them had gotten what they wanted. Bad guys temporarily thwarted.

I loved it when my day got off to a good start.

It’d probably go straight down the crapper the moment my feet hit the floor, but for now it was all good.

Except for Tam. What had happened last night and whatever agreement he’d made with the Khrynsani were definitely not good. Before last night, I would have said without hesitation that Tam would never betray me and that I would trust him with my life. I smiled. I’d never trusted him with the rest of me, but then I didn’t exactly trust me with the rest of him, either.

Tam was tall, lean, silvery skinned, black eyed, and wicked sexy. Though after last night, tall, silver, and sexy was consorting with the enemy. Not so sexy.

I felt a lump under my pillow. Rudra Muralin’s books. I couldn’t believe I’d actually slept with those things under my pillow, but even here in the supposed safety of the citadel, I wasn’t about to take any chances of them walking away. I pulled them out. They were written a thousand years apart, both by the same sicko shaman, and both were creepy. Definitely not first-thing-in-the-morning reading material.

The bag with the kidnapped girls’ hairbrush and locket was on my bedside table where I’d left it. Last night I’d tried to use the brush to link with Megan Jacobs. I didn’t know if my tangle of emotions from Tam had interfered, or if I’d simply been too tired. Either way, contact didn’t happen. I sat up in bed and pulled the wrapped hairbrush out of the bag. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths and tried not to think about Tam. I peeled back the cloth and took the brush in both hands.

Once again my contact was immediate and crystal clear.

Megan was still scared, but now she was almost too exhausted to care. Ailia Aurillac was wide-awake and looked furious. Good for her. The candle in their cell had been exchanged for a small lightglobe. It gave off a little more light, but it didn’t show me anything new about where they were being held.

Someone walked in front of Megan, then out of her line of vision, then back into view again. A new prisoner, and not female. He also wasn’t blond or petite. He was young, dark haired, and muscular. Banan Ryce had kidnapped another student and, judging from the bruises on the kid’s face, he’d fought back.

Megan whimpered and then started to cry. Ailia put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. The boy knelt in front of Megan and took one of her hands. It gave me a better look at him. Hazel eyes, good bone structure under the bruises, dark hair cropped short, athletic build. Enough to give Sedge Rinker a good description.

Their comforting just made Megan cry harder. Dammit. I could be inside someone’s head and see, hear, feel, and smell what they did, but I couldn’t do a thing to help a terrified girl. No seeker could do that.

Or could I? Just how much of a boost had the Saghred given me? Only one way to find out.

I felt Megan’s slender body shaking with sobs. I started taking deep, long, soothing breaths. I kept breathing, and the girl kept right on sobbing. Then she drew a shuddering breath. The next one was definitely calmer, and she wiped her eyes. The boy squeezed her hand and smiled encouragingly. That kid was a keeper.

“Come on, sweetie,” I whispered to Megan, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me, at least not with her ears. “Work with me.”

Soon her shaking stopped, and her breathing and my breathing became our breathing. I continued taking slow, deep breaths and felt Megan doing the same. The boy traded places with Ailia, and put his arms around Megan. With a contented little sound, she nestled her head against his shoulder. Soon she slipped into an exhausted sleep.

I released the link with her as carefully as you’d tiptoe out of a sleeping child’s room and close the door silently behind you.

I snuggled down into my pillows with a satisfied little smile. I did it. Now that’s a new talent worth keeping. I could use a couple of more gifts like that from the Saghred.

I got up, pulled a robe on over my gown, and started reading Rudra Muralin’s more recent literary effort. Usually I curled up in a chair with a good book. Neither Muralin nor his book was good, so I felt safer reading it standing up. As I read, I started to pace.

Okon Nusair—as Muralin was calling himself in the last century—had uncanny insight into the Saghred’s use for someone who’d supposedly lived hundreds of years after the stone had done its worst. No wonder Nusair’s work had been filed in the fiction section under myths and legends.

But to all legends there is a grain of truth.

From what I had read already, this little book had enough grains to fill a silo. It also explained how my father was able to keep the Saghred dormant for hundreds of years.

He starved it.

The Saghred fed on life essence, the living souls of those who were sacrificed to it. Rudra Muralin sacrificed victims to the Saghred before he wanted to use it. My father didn’t give the rock a damned thing—no wonder it took him the first chance it got. That was last year. Last week, to save Piaras and myself, I tricked Sarad Nukpana into lowering his shields and touching the stone with his bloody hand. Nukpana had taken the bait, and the Saghred had taken Nukpana.

Yesterday Piaras had sung the Saghred to sleep, but from what I was reading, I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t dormant or even fully asleep. The peace and quiet we were enjoying was a catnap. A cat eats, dozes off, and wakes up when it expects to be fed again. The Saghred had been fed only twice in the past thousand years.

It was going to wake up—and when it did, it was going to be really hungry.

“You must be reading the dirty part,” said a voice from behind me.