Then the wings over my shoulders expanded, and bright purple feathers sprouted from them.
Iskar,I protested.
A few feathers never hurt,was his strained reply.
As lightning hit me again, raw energy pulsed through my brain. The demon’s rage hammered at me, looking for an elusive focus.
This was all very informative.Iskar sounded more than a bit panicked. Now let’s put him back in the box, shall we?
I breathed out steam. It didn’t want to go back. It wanted to live and breathe and throw lightning at its enemies. But I negotiated, promising that it could come out again. That I wouldn’t strangle it any longer.
Since when are you such a diplomat? Okay, breathe. Think of Marcus. Big guy. Kinda stubborn.
If I don’t think equine, it’s a long walk back,I pointed out.
All right then! Think horse.
Not horse. Equine.
Just anything other than this,he grumbled.
The monster snarled through my mind as we focused on putting it back. It spun unhappy circles inside me, and lightning ripped across the sky.
And then, Iskar began to sing.
It startled me, but it also caused the demon to pause and listen. I picked up the beat, and began to hum to it. Then my Centaur love of music took over, turning Iskar’s Gryphon healing chant into a war ballad.
The heavier rhythm seemed to pacify the demon, and I sensed its anger diminish, until it reluctantly curled up and relinquished its hold. Iskar guided me back to my equine form.
Can we go back now?He sounded tired.
I stared up at the stars. My equine body shook like I had the plague, but my heart soared. For the first time, I believed that I could do this. That I could let loose what lay deep inside and make it do my bidding.
Well, we are a ways from doing that. But this was progress, no doubt about it.
I turned, trotted off the plateau, and headed back to the academy with the war ballad still echoing through my head.
14
Rafael
Aurora and Finn arrived at the dungeon for recharging.
I’d concluded that Finn was vicious shortly after meeting him, and nothing I’d seen or experienced since then had shown me one bit of anything redeemable about him. If he was an example of a typical Torshin, it was no wonder the Dragon Legion had worked so hard to eliminate the species.
The Torshin directed the Bellatis to string me up in the chains, and as usual, I debated trying to kill them. That it would be entirely pointless, considering that Aurora, Finn, and Laila were right there, stopped me.
After the last round with Isobel, I was done with pointless rebellions. I now concentrated on hanging on to whatever bits of me I had left.
Then Finn pulled out the icefire whip and started dancing it over my skin. The cursed whip instantly sliced my tunic to shreds, and my skin along with it. He seldom used it directly on me, preferring to torture helpless prisoners and feed my Satyr their pain instead. But after Brock and Isobel had finished with me, Brock had killed the victim strapped to the apparatus. He’d left the body where it lay, and the Bellatis had not yet disposed of it.
So, I was Finn’s only source of entertainment for tonight. Oh, joy.
“Let me,” Aurora purred.
Finn grinned as he handed the whip over. He was all about pain. But Aurora preferred finesse.
She dialed the whip down to its lowest setting and gestured to Laila. “Get him revved.”
