Lyon glanced across the room. "Shaman?"
The Shaman's air of excitement made him look even younger than fifteen. "I knew something was up, but I could never have imagined this." He rose and walked toward the window and Ariana slowly, cautiously.
Ariana watched him approach with equal wariness.
The Shaman, little taller than Ariana, stopped just shy of arm's reach in front of her and held his hands out as if she were a fire he meant to warm them with.
Ariana stiffened and cocked her head with warning, but the Shaman didn't seem to notice. Backing up a few steps, he motioned her to follow, pulling her away from the window, then closed his eyes and began to circle her, his hands still up as if warding off a blow.
The Shaman frowned. "It's Mage magic. An abundance of it, thick and powerful, yet it doesn't seem to be harming her." He opened his eyes and stared at her. "How long have you held it like this?"
Ariana glanced at Kougar, her stance open as if she prepared to defend herself, her gaze wary. She clenched her jaw, turning back to the Shaman as he continued to circle her slowly, his face a mask of patience and concentration. "A millennium, though it's grown stronger in the past couple of years."
The Shaman nodded. "No doubt because the Mage have acquired dark magic. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say the change occurred when your sorcerer lost his soul and acquired that dark magic for himself. If his magic is connected to you, and it seems to be, it's been growing stronger."
The Shaman's mouth pursed, and he turned abruptly to Brielle. "Now you." With a flick of his hand, he motioned the other Ilina to him, but Kougar quickly intervened, not wanting Brielle anywhere near Ariana.
"No, Shaman. Go to her." With swift strides, Kougar reached Ariana, clamping a hand around her arm, unwilling to take any more chances that Brielle would whisk her away before he could stop her.
Ariana threw him a disgusted look but didn't fight him.
The Shaman's examination of Brielle took less than a minute. When he was done, he was frowning.
"Tell me everything." He lowered himself slowly onto one of the chairs, his brows knit in thought.
At first, Ariana said nothing, her stance guarded and defensive. But the Shaman was infinitely patient and waited in calm silence as her gaze met Kougar's, then slowly returned to him.
"At first only a couple of my maidens became infected. At least, I thought it was only a couple. I thought they'd come in contact with dark spirit. Those infected turned from seeking the pleasure of others to craving their pain. They attacked humans, torturing and killing for days, possibly weeks, before they died. Those residing in the corporeal world showed the symptoms far earlier, though I didn't know it at the time. But the deaths came all at once. By the time I realized what was happening, more than half my maidens were in their death throes."
"They attacked only humans?"
"No." She explained how Kougar had called her to the battlefield that day after several of her maidens had attacked his shifters. "I returned to the Crystal Realm to find all of my warriors showing signs of the darkness. Brielle was the first to suspect it was a Mage attack, and as soon as she said the words, I knew she was right. Every few days for weeks I'd dreamed of a pair of copper-ringed Mage eyes floating before me, one with an oddly shaped pupil. I called him Hookeye, and I believe he's the one who attacked us."
She glanced at Kougar, and in her eyes he glimpsed the horror of that day.
"My maidens were dying. All were infected. I didn't think, I simply acted, willing the poison into me instead of them. And it worked. At first. Until I took too much. The moment I turned to mist, the poison rushed back into them. Several dozen more died before I was able to reclaim the poison."
Kougar heard the anguish in her words, the fear that it was all going to happen again, and he felt the edges of his anger soften. Listening to her tell the tale, he could see it all happening. He could feel her terror, her confusion. He'd known the Ilinas were in trouble that day; but as always, she'd insisted on handling the situation on her own. And when the worst had happened, she'd shut him out.
But why had she severed the mating bond? That was the part he couldn't understand. Why hadn't she at least told him what had happened? Why had she made him believe she was dead?
The Shaman's expression softened with compassion. "It's a miracle you were able to retrieve the magic to save as many of your maidens as you did."
"My maidens are no longer saved."
Beneath his fingers, he felt her tremble, a faint shudder that echoed inside him, reminding him of the powerful need he'd once felt to protect her. A need that wasn't entirely gone.
"Hookeye knows I'm alive."
"How?" Lyon demanded.
Ariana glanced at Kougar, their gazes clashing briefly before she turned toward the front of the war room and told his chief what had happened in her living room, how Kougar had removed her cuff, and she'd seen the eyes again.
"He won't be able to reach you." Kougar's grip on her tightened protectively. "Not here."
"It's not the man I'm worried about. It's his poison. And he can absolutely reach me here. He can reach me anywhere."
"Shaman?" Lyon asked.
"I have to concur," the Shaman said. "It appears to me that your hook-eyed sorcerer snared you with a connector spell. Extraordinary, really."
"What's a connector spell?" Jag asked.
"Think of it as a valve inserted into the middle of the tube of the mating bond. A valve controlled by the creator. Anytime he wishes, he can open that valve and pump more poison in."
Kougar looked at Ariana, though she didn't meet his gaze. "Is that why you severed the mating bond?" He felt as if he'd been lashed to a rack and was being slowly pulled apart as he struggled to make sense of that day, of why she'd turned her back on him and everything they'd meant to one another. "Did you sever the bond to break the Mage's connection, Ariana? To keep him from pumping more poison into it?"
She refused to turn to him, her gaze falling to the floor, the air thickening with tension around her.
"The bond was only severed on your end, Kougar, not hers," Brielle said, earning a sharp look from her queen. "She was still connected to the source of the poison. Hookeye could have attacked her anyway, which was why it was so important he not learn the truth when he thought we were extinct. Ariana is barely holding on to the poison she has. Melisande reconnected the bond a few days ago because . . ."
"Brielle." The name escaped Ariana's mouth through clenched teeth.
Hell, the poison . . .
Brielle turned to Ariana, then back to him, her fingers twined, her hands pressing against her waist. "I'm sorry, Kougar. Ariana didn't know. I tried to talk Mel out of reconnecting it, but Ariana's been struggling so much, and Mel hoped you could ease her burden."
"Is she saying what I think she's saying?" Lyon demanded. "That poison . . . ?"
The Shaman nodded. "Was Melisande aware that the poison would kill Kougar?" he asked Brielle quietly.
Kougar heard the words as if from a distance.
"Yes." Brielle flinched. "Melisande knew."
Jag's fists landed on the table. "That bitch."
Brielle turned to Jag. "If Ariana loses control of the poison, we all die. Her entire race. Would you not sacrifice one of us if it might save all of your own people?"
Jag snarled. "In a heartbeat, sister. I might do it anyway."
"Jag," Lyon warned.
As his Feral brothers' eyes turned toward him with dismay and shock, Kougar remembered that moment three days ago when Melisande reconnected the bond. He'd been caught in a Mage sensory-deprivation trap with several other Ferals and a pair of wraith Daemons with no way out. Melisande had come to him in that darkness and offered to save him, to give him a chance to save them all in exchange for the reconnecting of the mating bond. He hadn't wanted to do it. Not because of the poison--he hadn't known about it. No, it had been his soulless mate he hadn't wanted anything to do with. But he'd let Melisande reconnect that bond because he'd had no choice. Without the Ilina's interference, they'd have died.
Now it looked like his death had only been delayed.
Lyon met his gaze, barely banked emotion gleaming in his chief's eyes. "Explain, Shaman. How is the poison harming Kougar?"
The Shaman dipped his head. "The mating bond is woven directly into Kougar's heart. And where the threads connect, the poison flows like acid, eating away at the flesh. Literally. His immortal physiology fights to renew the decaying heart, but eventually the magic will win. And he'll die."
The room went quiet, the silence deafening, ringing in Kougar's ears. In that silence, another memory nudged him, a memory from long ago. He'd felt pain like the Shaman described, pain centered right where his heart sat, a long, long time ago. A thousand years, to be precise--that day on the battlefield that he last saw Ariana. He'd rubbed his chest against the discomfort, and she'd remarked on it.
Understanding hit him in a silent blast, the piece that had been eluding him--the reason she'd severed the mating bond.
"You knew."
Ariana flinched.
Kougar jerked her around to face him, searching those blue eyes for the truth. "You knew the poison was going to kill me. That's why you severed the mating bond."
He gripped her shoulders and felt her body shaking beneath his hands. By the set of her mouth, he could tell she wanted to deny it. But the truth was in her eyes, glistening in her unshed tears.
She hadn't severed the bond, as she'd claimed, because she was done with him. Not because she hadn't loved him. Not even to save her maidens.
She'd done it to save him.
"Tell me."
"Yes."
He stared at her, his world flipping end over end all over again. In some part of his mind he knew that this should make a difference, that it should quell his anger at her.
But deep inside, anger churned and grew, rising like lava about to explode. Because knowing she'd done it to save him just made her betrayal cut all the deeper. She'd saved him, carved out his heart, then walked away, leaving him to choke in a pool of his own blood. Not once in a thousand years had she contacted him to let him know she was still alive. Not once had she sought him out.
If she'd shared her burden with him, if she'd told him what she was up against, he'd have found that damned Mage. He'd have protected her. He'd have ended this!
"I was right the first time," he said, his voice low and cold. "When I thought you soulless."
She flinched, and he didn't give a damn.
"If we kill the sorcerer, can we kill the poison?" Lyon asked.
The Shaman took a long, slow breath. "You might destroy the magic. But it's equally possible that killing the one who created the poison will keep you from ever disabling it."
With a low growl, Kougar released her, needing distance. And perspective.
How dare she claim she'd done all this to save him!
He spun away, stalking to the window, while behind him, the Shaman addressed Ariana.
"The Ilinas have always known far more than most, given the memories you're able to pass down from queen to queen. I'm surprised you've nothing in your knowledge arsenal to battle this magic and its effect on you, Queen Ariana."
"Believe me, I've looked," she replied softly. "We tried everything I could come up with, and nothing worked. Melisande has been working tirelessly to track down Hookeye, but she's never been able to find him. To this day, we don't know who he is or what he looks like other than his eyes."
"We have contacts within the Mage," Lyon said. "We'll find him. In the meantime, since that mating bond was severed once, can it be severed again?"
"Kougar?" The Shaman's query had him turning away from the window.
With a low growl, he returned to the spot he'd stood moments before and allowed the Shaman to grip both his and Ariana's wrists at once. The Therian closed his eyes, tipping his head back as if sending a prayer directly heavenward.
He released them, shaking his head, and stepped away. "Whatever magic kept the bond from fully attaching the last time is gone. The attachment is complete this time. Permanent, though somewhat of a mess--twisted and collapsed in on itself. The flow of poison is very slow at the moment, little more than a trickle. Even so, it's quite deadly."
Dammit. To. Hell.
On one level, Kougar didn't entirely care. He'd lived a long, long time, the last thousand years in a numb, colorless wasteland of an existence. But the Ferals needed him. They couldn't afford to be down yet another warrior in the months it might take his cougar to mark another.
No, he wasn't about to give up this fight.
"How long does Kougar have?" Lyon asked.
The Shaman met Kougar's gaze. "The way it is, a few months at best. If the bond opens fully, and the poison flows freely, possibly as little as a week. I'm sorry, warrior."
A week.
Kougar's teeth ground together as he dipped his head in acknowledgment, a furious quaking setting up deep in his muscles. A week was all he needed. Because if he hadn't found a way to stop the poison and allow Ariana to turn to mist by then, Hawke and Tighe would be dead.
But he'd have more than that week. The bond wasn't going to open because he'd have to care for that to happen.
He was going to kill that Mage, disable his magic once and for all, and save his friends. Then, mating bond be damned, he wanted Ariana out of his life. For good.
