“We are here to see the Oracle.” Taran rumbled with an echo of his old authority.
The impressive Gryphon dipped his head. “My mate and the Watchers are working on him.” He exchanged a glance with Tyrez then looked back to the Emperor and Taran. “If your highnesses will come with me?”
Razir stayed close to Taran as they entered the maze of tunnels. The two older Legion Dragons brought up the rear.
Tyrez kept a few strides back from his father. His presence would only add tension to the interview, but he didn’t trust that either Taran or Razir could ride herd on the Emperor. News that the Watchers were with Ash was a good thing—Cara was a force to be reckoned with. She wouldn’t let his father upset her patient.
The perpetual knot in Tyrez’s gut tightened. Because he secretly doubted that the Dragons would get what they’d come for. The reports on Ash’s progress were not promising. The Watchers were healing his body, but his mind was another matter.
Rindek had done a good job of messing up the Oracle. It made a twisted kind of sense. After all, the Archmage had left him behind.
And the Torshin was too smart to leave the Dragons anything they could actually use against him.
* * *
Ash sat in the chamber deep within the Gryphons’ mountain and stared at the stone walls as Cara and Bess worked on his collar. Aphostra crouched near his head, her cool fingers resting against his temples.
His instinct was to pull away from her. From infancy onward, Orena had touched him only when absolutely necessary, with a brisk efficiency that lacked any empathy. As he aged and developed independent thoughts, she progressed from indifferent to cruel. He learned fast and young that not only could her hands hurt, but dodging them only made it much, much worse.
For Ash, hands had always been used to inflict pain. Orena seldom used energy to discipline, she tended to go straight to physical abuse. As did her adolescent sons, until their father taught them how to wield their power.
The shift from physical abuse to the use of energy, although painful and potentially destructive, was a welcome relief. It wasn’t as intensely personal as a fist or a kick. The psychological impact associated with someone physically striking him was more difficult to deal with than a pulse of energy frying his brain.
Through some perversion of fate, the differences in Torshin and Dragon growth rates had synched their puberties. That was when Demeti started demonstrating new ways that touch could tear holes in his soul.
His mind shied away from what the past insisted on showing him. Gentle energy flowed from Aphostra and the Watchers. It unlocked something else inside him. A memory, or a dream? Of a woman, leaning in to kiss him. Her lips warm against his own. Urgent too. Pulling him back from the abyss.
Dani.Dani had kissed him. When had she done that? He struggled to remember. It had been good. A new type of touch.
The Gryphon’s fingers were soothing against his temples. He closed his eyes as the warmth radiated from them and through his tortured mind.
It didn’t surprise him that the collar was a conundrum. They’d already tried so many things. The nearby table was filled with huge old reference books.
Every time he opened his eyes, the scene around him flickered. The Watchers, the books on the table, and the Gryphon came and went in a dizzying rotation as Ash’s brain bounced from past, to present, to future without any rhythm or structure.
It was so bad that he could barely see his surroundings as he walked. Only by focusing very deliberately at the ground beneath his feet could he function at all.
He hadn’t confessed this to anyone. The Watchers had removed his parasites and were now focused on the collar. Aphostra might suspect his quandary, as she’d spent hours sending her healing energy through his damaged mind. It helped repair the tissues, but his psychic talent was running wild.
Unhindered, the Oracle power roved the timelines, feeding Ash with data that he struggled, and failed, to interpret. It overwhelmed him.
“Are you feeling anything?”
The Gryphon’s question bounced around in his brain for far longer than it should have before his synapses connected the dots. He was so lost in the timelines, he couldn’t even maintain a conversation. He opened his eyes and managed, “What should I be feeling?”
The Gryphon sighed. “We are trying to extricate the energy paths the collar has placed in your brain. You might feel it when we remove one, but I am not certain.”
“Oh. No, I haven’t felt anything.”
“Okay. Let us know if you do.” Cara, this time.
Ash closed his eyes again. At least with them closed, he knew what he foresaw wasn’t likely in real time. Although there were no guarantees. When he first heard the footsteps, his brain supplied images of five large men pacing toward him.
Behind them was Tyrez.
Ash flinched when Cara said, “I didn’t tell you to come. He isn’t ready for visitors.”
Dammit.They were real.
