The King's Challenge #280

TKC 280

The Glonu woman rears back and snarls, but she cannot break from Damin’s hold.

“You will die!” she screams.

“No,” Damin responds with amazing equanimity, “you will.”

I shove my face into hers. “Leffandir,” I whisper.

She slumps then and the ghostly host vanishes into thin air as if they were merely figments of the imagination. It is a truth the host depends on the mind-set of the controller, which has now been circumvented.

Sliding through Damin’s hold, the woman falls to her knees in the dirt. Damin releases her to stand braced before her, gazing down. Gennerin marches up and takes up position behind her.

“You are Iniri,’ she whispers, lifting her eyes to me. “This world will be the ending for both of us now.”

I kneel as well. “I will return.”

Her head lowers until her chin almost touches her breast. “I will not. The Delver is right. I will die.”

“Empress, why?” I blurt. “Why this world? Why wait so terribly long for it?”

Leffandir. Empress Eternal of the Glonu Empire, raises her head. “To unmask Enris here, where he cannot escape me.”

By the stars. “Why?”

“To join with him, to create a hybrid royal house.”

I swallow. This is a far-ranging goal. “Massin will be your seat?”

“Our seat. For me and for Enris.”

I blink at her, hearing something added in her tone. “You have known Enris in a past life.”

Her sigh moves through me, into the well of compassion I have inside me. In another time she loved Enris; she loves him still.

“He denied you,” I state.

“When he discovered who I am, yes.”

“And thus you drew him to an empty world. The Glonu ideal of slavery was merely the means to draw him in.” I stare at her. “Leffandir, Enris will never change for you.”

She stares back at me. “I simply wanted to see him one more time.”