She’d just killed him.

“No!” The word ripped from my throat. I could hardly process it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “You—you just—”

“Too late.” Nashira let go of his head. It flopped. “You could have done it, 40. Painlessly. If only you’d done as I asked.”

It was her smile that did it. She was smiling. I ran at her, raw heat writhing in my blood. Warden and Alsafi grabbed my arms, hauling me back. I kicked and thrashed and struggled until my hair was lank with sweat. “You bitch,” I screamed. “You bitch, you evil bitch! He wasn’t even voyant!”

“True. He was not.” Nashira walked around behind the chair. “But amaurotic spirits make the best servants. Don’t you think?”

Alsafi was about to dislocate my shoulder. I clawed at Warden’s arm, the bad one, the one I’d treated. He stiffened. I didn’t care. “I’ll kill you,” I said, and I aimed it at all of them. I could hardly breathe, but I said it. “I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you.”

“No need to swear, 40. Let us swear for you.”

Alsafi threw me to the floor. My skull cracked against hard marble. My vision flashed. I tried to move, but something pinned me down. A knee on my back. My fingers dragged on the marble floor. Then a blinding pain in my shoulder, the most agonizing pain I’d ever felt. Hot, too hot. The smell of roasted meat. I couldn’t help but scream.

“We swear your undying allegiance to the Rephaim.” Nashira never took her eyes off me. “We swear it with the mark of fire. XX-59-40, you are bound forever to the Warden of the Mesarthim. You will renounce your true name, as long as you shall live. Your life is ours.”

The fire was in my skin. I couldn’t think of anything but the pain. This was it. They’d killed Seb, and now they were killing me. A needle caught the light.

8

Of My Name

There was too much flux in my blood.

I ran in circles through my dreamscape. Flux had deformed it, made the shapes and the colors rupture. I heard my heart pounding, the air burning up my throat, through my nose.

They’re killing me. I thought this as I fought against my mind, watching it crumble like wood in a furnace. This was it. Nashira knew what I was. She’d poisoned me and now I was dying. It wouldn’t be long, after all, a dreamscape couldn’t keep its shape in a dead body. Then the thought unraveled and slipped away, and I was left wandering through the dark parts of my head.

Then I found it. My sunlit zone, where beauty lived. Safety. Warmth. I ran toward it, but it was like running through wet sand. The dark clouds clung to me, hauling me back into cloud and shadow. I struggled against the flux, kicking and twisting myself free of its hold, and tumbled like a seed into the sunlight, into the field of flowers.