Malden gasped for breath, but every ounce of air he inhaled felt like he was swallowing knives. His arms curled around his chest, constricted by pain, but still he could see the magician staring down into his eyes.

So he could see it very clearly when a red blotch appeared on Hazoth’s cheek and burst through the skin as an ugly boil.

It was such a surprise he almost forgot the pain. Almost.

“Your spells are . . . slipping,” he wheezed.

“You know nothing of magic. Save your breath for the screams you are about to utter,” Hazoth told him.

Yet even as the wizard spoke, pimples erupted near his hairline. Hazoth reached up to feel the bumpy skin there and something miraculous happened.

The expression on his face changed. He started to show real fear. He even cried out as one of his eyes grew thick with cataracts.

On the ground, Malden wanted to laugh. He wanted to crow for joy. The pain he’d felt disappeared as Hazoth reared back and clutched at his ear, which had begun to drip blood. “What is this?” Hazoth demanded. He turned to stare at Cythera.

“The link between us is fading, Father,” she said. The vines and flowers on her face writhed and bloomed wildly. “He did it. The thief did it—Coruth must be free. When the house came down it must have broken your magic circle. She has undone the connection she once made between you and I.” Cythera looked like she could hardly believe it herself. As if she didn’t dare believe what was happening.

But it was real. The curses Hazoth had avoided so long, the inimical magics cast on him by the demons of the pit in revenge for all he’d done to them, were getting through. Instead of being deposited on Cythera’s skin as painted flowers, they were appearing on his own skin as blossoms of blood and corruption.

“Damn that woman,” Hazoth said, his voice thick with phlegm. He shook himself and spoke a few words in some ancient language. Instantly, the sores on his face stopped weeping and closed again, until his countenance was as unblemished as before. “She’s weak, though. Too weak to resist. I’ll find her and prison her again.”

“No, I don’t think you will,” Cythera said.

Then she grabbed him by the arms and mashed her lips against his cheek in a brutal kiss. “Farewell, Father.”

Hazoth’s eyes went wide. Green sparks lit up his hair and his chest.

On Cythera’s left hand an oleander flower curled up and withered. A vine retracted around her wrist, shrinking back on itself.

“Malden,” Cythera said, quite calmly, “you should go now.”

The thief scrambled to his feet and ran. Behind him he heard Hazoth start to scream as the skin of his back split open and demonic arms reached out to grasp at him with shredding claws.