Piaras grinned slowly. “I’ve got it, but obviously you don’t.”

“What?”

“From what I hear, he ordered you to stay in your room, and here you are.”

I gave him a big smile. “I got news for you kid. Mychael ain’t my commander.”

Vegard and I were leaving the gym when I saw Dad standing in the doorway watching me. Beside him stood a complete surprise and I wasn’t sure it was a good one.

Nachtmagus Vidor Kalta.

They made no move to come in, so Vegard and I crossed over to them.

“Arlyn, Nachtmagus Kalta,” I greeted them. Kalta knew my dad’s soul was living in Arlyn Ravide’s body, but every other Guardian in the gym thought Arlyn was just a young knight. They weren’t going to find out any different from me.

“We were told that we would find you here, Miss Benares,” Dad said. “Nachtmagus Kalta needed to speak with you.”

I felt his unease. Dad and I didn’t have a bond, at least not of the magical variety, but I guess sometimes a father and daughter can know what the other’s thinking, no words needed.

Dad didn’t want to be here. But I was here, so he came regardless of his fear.

Fear. That was what I felt from him.

I knew why.

He had died here.

Arlyn Ravide, the young Guardian in whose body my dad’s soul lived, had died at the hands of the demon queen only a few yards from where we were standing, the Scythe of Nen plunged through his heart. She’d wet the blade with his sacrificial blood, then stabbed the Saghred with equal ease. My dad’s soul had escaped the Saghred and occupied Arlyn Ravide’s lifeless body.

“Let’s go out into the hall,” I suggested.

Dad nodded once, wordlessly.

“Do you remember any of it?” I asked him quietly. He knew what I was talking about.

“Flashes of memory, nothing more.”

He was lying. But considering he had bled and died in the room we’d just left, he deserved a little lie. Hell, he deserved all the lies he wanted to tell.

“Vegard, is there anywhere around here that’s private?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said solemnly. “Follow me.”

Vegard led the way, Vidor Kalta and I followed, and my dad, as Arlyn Ravide, brought up the rear as a young Guardian should in the presence of a high-ranking guest and a superior officer. That would be Kalta and Vegard. I had no clue where I fell on the Guardian scale of military etiquette.

Kalta broke the uncomfortable silence, bless him. “Sir Arlyn and I were on our way out into the city, and we wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Very well,” I replied. “No thanks to my own foolishness.”

“Bravery, Mistress Benares,” Kalta corrected me. “Attacking in the face of certain death to save others is bravery.”

Or stupid, if your dad was a super mage and didn’t need your help. But I didn’t need to say that out loud; Kalta knew. He was just making conversation for anyone who might hear.

Vegard led us down a side hallway, opened a door, and stepped aside for the three of us to enter. He followed and closed the door.

“No one can hear us in here,” he told me. “You may speak freely.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you certain?”

“Positive.”

I glanced at Dad, then spoke to Vidor Kalta. “Mychael said that you and he spoke and that you understand the need for discretion.”

Kalta flashed a quick smile. “I’ve always been discreet, even in the face of the most cryptic of comments.”

Dad chuckled. “Raine wants to know if you’re going to expose me for who I am, but she doesn’t want to come right out and say it. She’s trying to protect me again. Raine, Vidor knew the moment he saw me with those Reapers that I was an old soul.”

“Paladin Eiliesor has explained the situation,” Kalta told me. “It’s my belief that a man’s past, regardless of how extensive, is his own business. I am interested in Sir Arlyn’s specialized knowledge in solving your problem.”

I bit back a snort. “I have so many. Which problem would that be?”

“My intention was to research a way to break your link to the Saghred,” Dad said. “But I believe the continued existence of Sarad Nukpana is a greater danger to you right now.”

I felt a chill of apprehension. I knew where he was going with this, or more to the point, who he was going after.

“No,” I told him.

“No, what?”

“No, you’re not going after him.”

Dad grinned boyishly. “I can hardly go after that which I have not found—a situation I hope to change very soon. Raine, I was here nine hundred years ago. The city is only a century older than me. You said you smelled stale air, damp, and mold.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like something old, just like me.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. You’re my daughter. I came close to losing you yesterday. I’m doing this so that you’ll be safe tomorrow and every day after that.”

I met him with silence.

“I know every crypt, ruin, and dark and dank hiding place on this island. I used more than a few of them myself before I escaped the island with the Saghred. Sarad Nukpana needs seclusion. The cha’nescu ritual takes over an hour, and once begun, it cannot be stopped. Sarad cannot risk discovery. He’s gone to ground.” My dad’s smile was fierce. “So I’m going to search every square inch of it.”

“Please tell me Mychael assigned some Guardians to go with—”

Dad held up his hand. He knew what I was thinking.

“I’ll have a few Guardians with me.” He paused meaningfully. “Men he trusts enough to take orders from a junior knight and not ask questions or spread rumors.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Good.”

Sarad Nukpana knew that my dad had escaped the Saghred and whose body he was living in. There was no statute of limitations on Saghred stealing. If anyone discovered that Arlyn Ravide was my father, Eamaliel Anguis, he would be arrested and tried, with execution being a foregone conclusion.

I closed the distance between us and hugged him, tightly. “Be careful.”

“Whenever possible. I know I’m probably wasting my words, but would you please do the same?”

I smiled and glanced at Vegard. “Whenever possible.”

Dad’s expression was stern. “Raine, souls came out of you and went into Reapers; those same Reapers damned near killed you to get more. And Mychael told me what happened with the mage’s specter in the bordello.”

“Nothing happened. I stopped it.”

“Did you? You are strong, incredibly so, but—”

I knew where he was going. Strong, but not strong enough. “Mychael calls me stubborn,” I said to lighten the mood.

“Raine, the Saghred and those Reapers have existed for untold millennia. They know how to get what they want. Have a care, daughter. Please. I didn’t fight my way out of the Saghred to watch you be consumed by it—or by those who hunt it.” He paused, his solemn eyes on mine. “Those Reapers were coming for you. Yes, they took the sorcerer’s specter first. It was easier prey. But what attracted them was you.”

Kalta tactfully cleared his throat. “Miss Benares, if I may ask a question.”

A question from a nachtmagus probably wasn’t a question I wanted to think about, let alone answer. “Go ahead.”

“When the souls came out of you, were they struggling against the Reapers . . . or were they struggling against you?”

Kalta knew the answer just as well as I did.

“They were struggling to get out of me.” I took a deep, steadying breath. “Nothing’s ever hurt me that bad in my life.”

He regarded me somberly. “It is the nature of spirits to cross over. Most not only want to; they need to. Only the most angry or confused spirits refuse to go—they either want revenge, or they won’t admit, or simply don’t know, that they’re dead. Crossing over completes the cycle of life into death. It is the natural way of things.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Pardon me for disputing the natural order, but what happened sure as hell didn’t feel natural to me.”

“No doubt. You are the vessel that holds them prisoner.” He paused. “You and the Saghred are virtually one.”

He didn’t need to spell it out for me. I knew. I knew it to the point that I’d given up trying to deny or forget it. The closer the Saghred and I became, the more often the Reapers would appear. Like Sarad Nukpana, they wouldn’t stop until they got what they wanted.

Death had all the time in the world.

Mine was running out.

Chapter 6

Mychael wanted me to stay in the citadel. I had to leave the citadel, and I had a good reason.

Like Piaras, I had lessons.

I was learning how to kill Sarad Nukpana.

And today those lessons would have the added bonus of giving me a much-needed outlet for my growing fear, frustration, and rage. Yes, I could have taken it out on a Guardian in their gym, but that wasn’t the kind of workout I needed. Well, it was, but I required a specialist. No Guardian was a master swordsman with the long, curved blades favored by goblins.

Tamnais Nathrach was.

So was Sarad Nukpana.

Since Nukpana had oozed his way out of the Saghred, I’d made it my goal to not only know every way that Nukpana, his Khrynsani, or any other goblin could possibly come after me, but have a lethal response ready for each and every one of them.

Tam could help. He’d known Sarad Nukpana at the goblin court, and fenced with him on numerous occasions. Not with deadly intent, but when goblin courtiers crossed blades, blood was spilled. Naturally, it was always an unfortunate accident.

Mychael didn’t like it. Not the lethal response part; he didn’t like me being anywhere near Tam. Tam was a dark mage; my connection with the Saghred made me a dark mage magnet. The two of us together with the Saghred wasn’t just trouble for us; it could be trouble for every living creature, period, not to mention civilization, such that it was.