“The trick,” said Bexoi, gasping, “is to heat all the body except the head, so that you can remain conscious through the entire process of burning alive.” Bexoi was hurrying, heating her body quickly, trying to distract Anonoei from her probe. And it was working, Anonoei knew, because it grew harder to concentrate on her outself. Her inself was screaming: I’m going to die!

In that moment of desperation she thought of Set, the manmage who never dies, because his ka is free of any flesh. But that’s because he has never fully bonded with a body. I have. This body, this burning body.

Flames erupted from her skin. But she could still see. Her muscles still, for this moment, responded to her will. So she leapt forward, threw her arms around Bexoi, embraced her.

“Don’t you know that I can keep the fire from touching me?” said Bexoi scornfully. “Now die, whore.”

The sudden surge of heat destroyed Anonoei’s whole body in an instant.

But in that instant, Anonoei followed the road she had found into Bexoi’s mind, and then on into her body. I am not dead yet, she thought—but, lacking a mouth, could not say. I am here in you, Queen Bexoi. Not as a visitor, not as a beastmage partnering with his heartbeast. I am here as a ka that knows how to fully possess a body of flesh and bone.

Anonoei felt the cool skin of the new body, the Queen’s body. Suddenly she could see again—through Bexoi’s eyes, because they were now Anonoei’s eyes. She willed herself to move, and she moved.

Moved, and in the movement became the master of this body. She could still feel Bexoi inside her, struggling to control the body, failing, failing.

Anonoei’s dead body was still brilliantly hot, and the bones, not yet crumbled, still held it up. The arms were still wrapped around Bexoi. But Anonoei had no skill as a firemage and did not know how to control it. Nor did Bexoi have access to the body’s ability to command the fire.

So the heat of the fire suddenly passed the boundary between the charred corpse of Anonoei and became an agony of burning flesh in Bexoi’s body, whose pain both women felt.

Anonoei screamed and thrust the burning mass away, but too late. Her own—Bexoi’s own—clothing had been charred in the instant, and the skin of this unfamiliar new body was burning. Anonoei had no knowledge of how to put the fire out. Bexoi knew, but if Anonoei let her have enough control to block the flame, Bexoi’s strong ka would take her body back.

Either die now by being thrust out of this body by its evil owner, or die later from these agonizing burns. Nobody could burn like this and live. I will have died twice by fire, Bexoi only the once.