“What!”
“She’s the perfect candidate,” Phane said with a shrug.
“What are you talking about?” Isabel said, cold seeping into her bones.
“You love her. She’s innocent, vulnerable, and completely defenseless in the face of your power. Once you kill her, your spirit will break. You’ll no longer be able to look into the light, and if you do, all you will see is condemnation. And in that condemnation, you’ll discover the truth of the light … its empty promises will be revealed and you will come to understand that all the light has to offer is judgment.
“You’ll struggle against it, but in the end, you’ll turn to the darkness and all of your guilt and shame will be washed away. The darkness will never judge you, it will never condemn you. Only then will you truly be free.”
“You’re insane. I will never hurt Wren, and there’s nothing you can do to make me.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Phane said smugly. “Azugorath is tenacious. Eventually, she will succeed and you will kill your young friend.”
“If your pet demon manages to take control of me, I’ll just be the weapon, not the murderer.”
“You miss the point. The memory of her murder at your hands will live in your mind. You will, no doubt, relive it over and over again until you see it in your sleep. The real question is: Will you ever be able to forgive yourself?
“Ah, it looks like she’s waking up. Dierdra, attend to her injuries,” Phane said, standing up. He motioned to the dead soldier and his fellow guard carried him from the room.
Dierdra knelt next to Wren and gently inspected her face.
“It doesn’t look broken, dear, but you’re going to have a nasty bruise. Let’s get you over to the couch so I can attend to this properly.”
Phane stopped at the door. “Everyone in this fortress belongs to you, Isabel, except me, of course. If anyone displeases you for any reason, feel free to kill them.” He left laughing.
***
“I don’t understand why he hit me,” Wren said.
“Phane’s using you to get to me,” Isabel said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. After she and Wren had returned to her bedroom, she’d dismissed her servants and sat down next to Wren on the edge of the bed.
“But why? I don’t understand any of this,” she said, struggling to keep from crying again. “I’m so scared,” she whispered, closing her eyes, squeezing tears from each.
“I know, I’m scared, too.”
“Really? You didn’t act scared. I remember thinking how brave you were standing up to Prince Phane like that.”
“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t feel fear, it just means you choose a rational course of action in the face of it. Wren, I need you to be brave and I need you to grow up much faster than I would like.”
She opened her deep blue eyes and nodded. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
Isabel shook her head sadly. “No, Wren, I need you to do more than that. I need you to think for yourself. That’s the first step. You need to be aware that you’re in danger here and you need to be willing and able to make difficult decisions even when you’re afraid … especially when you’re afraid.”
Wren blinked, then swallowed, nodding timidly.
“I wish I could shield you from all of this, but the truth is, you’re the only ally I have here and I need your help. There’s so much more at stake than just you and me.”
“What can I do?”
“First, you need to understand the situation we’re in, so listen carefully. Phane has a very powerful demon, probably buried under that black tower in the center of town, and that demon is trying to get into my mind, trying to control me-and she’s winning. She almost made me kill Alexander. That’s why I left him and came here, so I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone I love, and that’s why Phane brought you here. He wants me to kill you.”
“Why would you do that?” Wren asked, more tears slipping from her eyes.
“I wouldn’t,” Isabel said, wiping a tear from her own cheek. “But if I lose control, this demon will make me hurt you.”
“But why does Prince Phane care about me?”
“He doesn’t,” Isabel said. “He wants me to turn against everything I believe in and join him. He thinks I’ll do that if he can make me do something so horrible that I would never be able to forgive myself, and he might be right. I don’t know how I could live with myself if I killed you.”
Wren sniffed back her tears and frowned. “I don’t think I really understood what you’ve been fighting for until right now. I’ve always thought of evil as something you hear about in stories-make-believe. But it’s not, is it? It’s real.”
Isabel nodded sadly, another tear slipping down her cheek. “This is part of growing up that I didn’t want you to have to do, but I’m proud of you. Some people can stare into the face of evil all their lives and never really understand what they’re looking at.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I came here to kill Phane. I got a knife into his belly, just not deeply enough. I have a plan to finish the job but I can’t do it alone, so I’m trying to call for help. Failing that, we need to escape, and that means we need to find a way out. Since the guards will be watching me carefully, I need you to explore the city for me.”
“But won’t the guards stop me?”
“No, Phane wants me to kill you; it’s an important part of his plan, so he’s ordered his men to leave you alone.”
“Except when he’s ordering them to hit me,” she said, touching her cheek tenderly.
“He did that to provoke me, and it worked,” Isabel said, shaking her head. “I have to be more careful, I can’t let him force my hand like that.”
“If you say they won’t hurt me, then I believe you, but I’m still afraid of them.”
“Good, that fear will keep your mind alert and help you spot danger before it gets too close. I want you to avoid Phane whenever you can, but I need you to explore this place and find a way out of here if there is one. Also, if you can find a knife or two, it would be good to have a weapon.”
Wren nodded.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go out and look around a bit, both of us. After that, I’ll start sending you on errands to get you out of this house and onto the streets.”
She nodded again.
“This next thing is going to be hard,” Isabel said. “If I don’t seem like myself, you need to run away from me and hide until I can regain control. In fact, that’s something else I want you to look for, hiding places, both in the house and out in the city.”
Wren nodded again.
“You get some rest now. We’ll talk more later,” she said, offering Wren a reassuring smile.
Isabel went to the balcony and reached out to Slyder. He was perched atop a tree watching the Karth encampment. She sent him into the air, circling higher and wider in an effort to pick up the trail, but the jungle was too thick and the skills of Karth’s soldiers were too good to find any trace of their passage. After an hour of searching, she told Slyder to remain in the area, then she returned to her body.
She was sitting on the balcony thinking through her options when Wren joined her.
“I’m not that tired and my face hurts just as much when I lie down as it does when I sit. What’re you doing?”
“I was trying to send a message with Slyder, but I can’t find my friends.”
“When I was in the boat, Lord Reishi came to me and told me he was sending help. Was that just a dream?”
“No, that was him,” Isabel said, smiling to mask the lump suddenly welling up in her throat.
“Then why doesn’t he come to you now?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel whispered. “I’m terrified that something horrible has happened.”
“Isabel,” Wren said, squeezing her hand, “he’s Lord Reishi. He’s probably just really busy.”
Isabel nodded, struggling to keep from crying because she knew that something was wrong. He would have come to her if he could have. The thought of losing him was something she fled from within her own mind. Despair capable of claiming her sanity accompanied that thought-yet another pathway to victory for Azugorath.