She looked at him—it was as if she was trying to tell him something, trying to speak to him with her eyes. Her hands still gripped the vines. She hadn’t given up, despite the blood, despite the pain. She was Cordelia; she would never give up.

Fight on, he told himself, but he couldn’t rise: his body was shutting down. Shadows had begun to creep in at the edge of his vision. The Mandikhor hovered above him, waiting for a word, a gesture from Belial. Belial, who ruled over all this place, who bent this realm to his will.

James stretched out his right arm. The slash made by the Mandikhor’s claw was still bleeding freely: drops struck the ground, and the sand drank them up. He thought he could hear the sand whispering, a soft murmur of sound, but perhaps it was only the poison in his body.

Shadows, the sand whispered, and James thought of all the things Jem had ever taught him. Focus. Clarity. Breathing. You must build a fortress of control around yourself. You must come to know this power so that you may master it.

Belial had mastered this world. He had bent everything in it to his will—every tree, every rock, every grain of sand is under my command. Each part of this realm responded to that which made Belial himself.

Are you not my heir, my own flesh and blood?

James focused. He drew all his concentration down like light drawn through a magnifying glass. He bore down with his will, with his resolve, with the blood in his veins. He felt the ground shift and change beneath him; he reached out for the substance of this realm itself: the petrified wood of the gnarled trees, the teetering piles of bones, the dunes of sand, the shadow of the Mandikhor.

Belial cried out: the Mandikhor demon surged upward. James bolted to his feet. He was funneling his own strength into the realm around him, and it responded with alacrity: the earth roared under his feet; the air exploded like dark fire from his hands, his fingers. The Mandikhor staggered toward James, but the wind was full of swirling sand, creating a dark tornado.

Belial shouted, but the Mandikhor could no longer hear him: his voice was lost in the tearing wind. James stood with his arms flung wide to either side, wind and sand tearing around him like a storm in the desert. The Mandikhor was howling and howling now: the whole substance of the realm had turned against it. Branches sheared free of trees, flying through the air like knives; bones became missiles. The demon gave one last howl as the dark, churning air rose up in a circle around it before plunging inward, crushing and tearing.