My vision cleared to see Inara lying on the ground, a man bent over her, his mouth on her neck, his hands trapping her arms against the stone floor, and blood—so much blood—
I screamed her name and ran to her. I was fury reborn as muscle and bone and flesh, and all my training finally came to use when I kicked him so hard he lost his grip on her. I kicked him again and he rolled away and then I was on top of him and my fists were flying and I punched and punched and punched—
But he looked up at me and—his eyes—his eyes stopped me for just a moment, long enough for him to shove me in the chest. I landed on my back on the ground with a thud, my head slamming into the stone.
“Zuhra!”
I blinked and tried to sit up, in time to see my father lifting his hand, his power coursing through his veins, gathering in his hand—he was aiming at the man—
“Master Barloc!”
Another shout, this from behind us—a voice I thought I’d never hear again. Halvor was alive?
The man with the glowing blue eyes—the one who had attacked Inara—turned toward Halvor and bared his teeth at him. “Stay back—or I take you with me,” he snarled and Halvor slammed to a halt, his own eyes wide with horror as he took in the entire scene: his master’s glowing eyes, his blood-rimmed lips, and Inara lying on the ground, her neck ripped open and her chest barely moving.
I didn’t understand—I couldn’t make the images make sense. I only knew my sister had been alive and now—now I was back and she was dying.
“No—Inara!” I rushed to her side and put one hand to her neck, pressing it against the wound, and the other to her chest, feeling for breath. “I’m back, Inara. I’m back. So you can’t leave me. You hear me? You can’t leave me!”
“Don’t move or I will dispense with you.” My father’s threat rang out in the room and I glanced up to see his hand glowing with one of his Paladin fireballs, aimed directly at Barloc.
But rather than cowering, Barloc merely laughed. “Oh, you can try. But you know as well as I do that I will just absorb all that power and add it to my stores if you hit me with it right now.”
My father blanched. And then, to my ever-escalating horror, he slowly lowered his hand.
No! What was he doing? Why wasn’t he attacking?
And Inara remained unmoving, her lips bloodless, her chest barely rising and falling.
“She can heal herself. She’ll be all right—she can heal herself,” Halvor repeated, dropping to his knees on her other side, pale and trembling.
“No … she can’t,” my father said quietly, tears streaking down his face, backing toward us as Barloc lifted both his hands in the air with an unhinged laugh. “She’s powerless now. He stole it.”
And suddenly, a horrific story came back to me—another story that hadn’t seemed quite real to me until that moment—of how Anael, my father’s sister, had died.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no!”
Raidyn.
My head jerked up and I stared at the gateway that was still open. He could heal her. He had to heal her. I couldn’t lose Inara now—not after everything we’d been through.
“Thank you for doing her job for me, by the by,” Barloc spoke as he moved toward the gateway. “It was kind of you to open that gateway so she didn’t have to use up so much of her power to do it first. It left so much more for me.”
“You wish to go through the gateway to Visimperum?” My father had backed up to stand in front of us, his arms outstretched as though he were trying to protect us from Barloc. “Why?”
Barloc paused, and a shudder went through him, his veins flashing blue—a blinding pulse—and then going back to normal again. “Because it is my rightful home—just as this power is my rightful inheritance.”
“That is not your power—you stole it.” My father’s voice was low and furious.
“It is mine now,” he snarled. “I took back what should have been mine to begin with.”
“What are you talking about?” When Halvor spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. He, too, pressed his hands to Inara’s still chest. His fingers trembled and the look on his face when he gazed at her … I recognized it, I knew it—he loved my sister. And now, because of his uncle, she was dying.
“Do you still think the Five who came here all those years ago were truly the first to do so since the original closing?” Barloc laughed, his glowing eyes on my father. “My grandfather was a Paladin—one of the last who came through the gateway with a small group over a hundred years ago. He was eventually murdered for what he was, just as so many have been murdered again this time. But I am going to change that. It’s time the weak, pathetic people of Vamala learn what the true might of the Paladin unleashed feels like—and I will be the one to bring it upon them.”
We all stared at Barloc, in varying degrees of shock.
“You might be immensely powerful right now—but it won’t last. And then they will merely hunt you down and kill you as they have so many Paladin before you.” My father’s hands were clenched into fists at his side, but he still didn’t attack. Why didn’t he attack?
“Which is why I needed the gateway opened before I acted.” Barloc edged closer to it, his veins pulsing blue over and over again. “When I come back, it will be with an army ready to take their place as masters and lords over all Vamala.”
And then he turned and plunged through the gateway, disappearing from sight.
A little sigh escaped from Inara and I looked down at her, my eyesight blurred from tears. And then I remembered—my father was a healer. “You have to heal her,” I whispered, then repeated myself again, louder. “You have to heal her!”
“Why did you let him go?” Halvor accused, his face ashen.
“There are hundreds of Paladin on the other side of that gateway. The council will recognize him for what he is immediately—and he will be executed. Not even a jakla can absorb the might of a hundred Paladin at once.”
“Father—you have to heal her—now!” I jumped to my feet, to grab his hand and pull him to Inara.
“If she’s had her power ripped out … that is not something that can be healed.” My father turned to face Inara, and his hand tightened on mine. “Her only hope is if you stopped him in time, before he drained her entirely.” He stepped toward her and then knelt by her head, reaching out to stroke her cheek once, softly, his hand trembling. “Inara,” he whispered. “My little girl. My sweet little girl.” He gently pressed his hand to her chest, his power flowing down his arms, into his fingers and out into her body. There was a pause and then he glanced up at me and shook his head once, stricken.
I stood there, staring, cold with shock. There was nothing we could do? I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe him. He didn’t know—he was wrong. If he couldn’t do it, then Raidyn could. He had to heal her. Someone had to save her.
“Adelric?”
The gasped name was followed by a thud. I looked up to see my mother at the doorway on her knees, staring at my father, her eyes wide and her face white.
“Cinnia.” When he uttered her name, it sounded like a prayer.
“Where were you—how are you—” Her voice was choked. She lifted shaking hands to her mouth to press them against her lips, holding back a sudden, violent sob that rent through her. But then her gaze dropped and her eyes widened even further. “Inara!” she cried, and that was finally what induced her to scramble to her feet and rush forward. “What happened? Inara! Adelric? I … I…”
My father crawled over to where she knelt at Inara’s side and took her in his arms, holding her so gently, so tenderly, it made my heart constrict.
But I didn’t have time to watch their reunion—Inara was almost gone, and I had to do something. Taking advantage of their distraction, I turned and ran for the gateway—and Raidyn.
“Zuhra—no!”
I was on the second stair, the third … I hit the landing and stretched forward—but instead of me going through the gateway, someone else barreled out of it, directly into me, knocking me backward. We tumbled down the stairs, a tangle of bodies and legs and arms. I landed on my back with another crack of my head on the stone floor, the Paladin on top of me. I stared up at him, the pain receding as my eyes met his familiar blue-fire ones.
“Zuhra?”
“Raidyn?”
“Raidyn?” His name was echoed from behind me, but my father sounded furious—not relieved.
Raidyn scrambled off of me, and jumped to his feet. “Sir, there is a jakla—he attacked your mother—I tried to stop him, but—”
Before he could say anything else, the gateway flared and Barloc burst through it again, running full speed down the stairs to leap over me. And right behind him were my grandfather and Loukas on foot. Then Sachiel, her long braid swinging behind her, one side of her shaved head bloody, rode through it on her gryphon, followed by Sharmaine on hers. Then Taavi, bursting through the doorway and immediately letting loose a screech of fury. Naiki followed right behind.
“Stop him!” someone shouted as I jumped to my feet, ignoring the pounding in my head.
Barloc’s entire body flashed blue, his skin lighting up from head to toe, then went back to normal, as he sprinted across the Hall of Miracles and out the door.
“Sachiel—go through the window!” My father shouted the command. “Cut him off—but be careful! Taavi and Naiki, go with them!”
The gryphons cawed again, a roar of sound that vibrated through the hall, and then they wheeled and headed toward the window—the broken window, followed by Sachiel and Sharmaine.
I didn’t understand fully what was happening, only that Barloc had to be stopped and the Paladin couldn’t use their power against him, or he’d merely absorb it. I glanced to the wall where a huge assortment of weapons hung.
But surely, cold, hard steel would work on anyone, even a jakla.
I rushed to the nearest weapon—a long handle with a chain attached to it and a ball covered in spikes at the end of the chain—and pulled it from the wall. The weight of it was a shock, but I hefted it back up and then took off after Barloc.
“Zuhra, are you out of your mind?” Raidyn’s shout in my language almost made me pause—but not quite.
“Heal my sister!” I yelled back as I ran after the man who had done this to her—the man who was going to pay for stealing her power.