“You used the Claim to open the Conference,” he pointed out.
Daniyar nodded. “A ritual.” No ritual without purpose. “Just as the dawn rite is a ritual.”
“Wherein lies its power?”
A question that cut to the heart of things. One for which he had the answer.
“In the strength you have to wield it. In the use you would make of it.” His silver eyes shone, his words deadly as a blade. “Can you think of a suitable use?”
Eyes of midnight glittered in response.
A KNOCK ON THE DOOR TO THE CHAMBER. THIS TIME ONE OF THE Zhayedan’s runners came to bring news of the Talisman’s maneuvers and of Arsalan’s response.
The Black Khan excused himself—no closer to retrieving his power—leaving Daniyar and Ilea alone in the room. The closing of the maghrebi doors cut off the cries of battle as suddenly as a blade thrown at an unprotected throat.
The High Companion reached for Daniyar’s hands. Silent and watchful, he let her hold them. The act reinforced their mutual power; otherwise he wouldn’t have permitted her touch.
“You still don’t trust me.” His hands clenched on hers, a betraying gesture. He eased the pressure of his grip, but not before they both felt the rise of their magic. In a few more hours, it would be dawn, and the dawn rite would be possible. That was all that was holding him in Ashfall. Were it not for his commitment to the Conference, he would have been on Arian’s trail.
That didn’t mean he needed to respond to the High Companion with anything other than the truth. “Why would I trust you, Ilea? You’ve stood between me and Arian from the first.”
She looked into eyes like frozen silver lakes, eyes that had gazed into the void. But what was the void to Daniyar? The Talisman’s desolation of his city? Or the loss of the woman he wanted for his own? Her fingers stroked his callused palms, the touch deliberately careful to contrast with pitiless words.
“One man’s desires cannot undo centuries of tradition. There is no place for a man at the side of a Companion of Hira.”
“Liar.” Her hands jerked at the accusation. “How long after you arrived at the Citadel did you take the Black Khan as your lover?”
“He is a tool I use to further the Citadel’s aims; he means nothing to me beyond that. What you seek from Arian is something else entirely.”
She studied the flawless arrangement of his bones, wondering how to unsettle a man as dangerous as he was beautiful. One who had every reason to oppose her.
He proved that with his response. “You seem to have forgotten my gift.”
Ilea had forgotten. For the Silver Mage possessed the ability to discern the lies she told from the truth, a gift given to those who held the title of Authenticate.
“You tore her from me,” he said now. “With no thought to her needs when she’d already suffered such loss. Your duty as High Companion is to serve the Companions of Hira.”
“You need not teach me a duty I have never failed to honor.”
“How can you claim to honor it, when your actions serve only yourself?”
“Oh? And what of you, Daniyar? When I sent Arian to Candour more than a decade ago, your duty was to teach her of the manuscripts of Candour. Not to train her in war. Nor to take her as your own. It was you who betrayed my trust, before I raised a hand against you.”
A contemptuous glance from eyes silvered over with frost. “My commitment to Arian was never a threat to Hira.”
“Your seduction of Arian was meant to sever her from the Council—you knew our traditions; you swore to defend her honor. Instead, you took her, claimed her, kept her.”
“No man keeps the First Oralist. She followed your dictates to the end. She gave me up to do so.”
There was a primal beauty to his rage, to the dark brows that slashed down over eyes of arctic fire. And Ilea was not insensible to it. So she marshaled her words against him.
“You only think you know her.” Her head tilted toward the sound of the Black Khan’s voice beyond the door. She was gathering information, another tool to exploit. Despite the warmth that pulsed through their linked hands, she felt the chill of his response in her bones. “You think you know a history even Arian doesn’t know. But as I warned you when you asked for dispensation, Arian is First Oralist. I will not cede her powers to your base desires.”
She made sure he heard the truth in her words. A rawer form of her magic raced along her arms, rippling through her veins to flare around the center of her power, vibrating with fire. But she knew he was too arrogant, too certain of his claim to be deflected.
“Your insults cannot diminish the loyalty that binds Arian to me.” His shrug was careless. “Besides which, you no longer have the power to command her. You dismissed her from the Council.”
She gave a crystal-edged laugh.
“What future are you imagining, Daniyar? That the two of you will leave this war and flee to a place of safety, so you might finally have the chance to prove to her your devotion?” A mocking reproof. “Are you no longer Guardian of Candour? Have you no other obligations beyond your undisciplined desires?”
His thoughts flashed to the Damson Vale.
When it was done … when he had passed on the trust of the Guardian of Candour, he would take Arian to his secret valley in the mountains.
She caught the thought from his mind with a hissed incantation of the Claim.
“So the limit of your ambition is the vale you deem an earthly paradise?” She laced the words with contempt, her nails digging into his palms. “What a parochial fate you would choose.”
“Only for someone who doesn’t know how to love.”
He felt her stillness in his own bones, knew the words had found their mark. The doors to the chamber opened, the Black Khan stepping inside. He perceived the tension between them without a word being said.
Ilea released one of Daniyar’s hands to raise a palm in invitation. Rukh moved to take it.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
She made her voice low and inviting as Rukh pulled his stool to the table, leaning over the fragrant copper bowl. “How fortunate that you differ so greatly from the Silver Mage.”
“Oh?”
A sensual smile on her lips as she scored her nails against his palm.
“His pledge keeps him here at your side, when in truth he is longing to chase through the night after his beloved.” Her gaze moved between the two
