The Valley of Lies (Lightkeepers #1)

Chapter FIFTY-FOUR: Zan

Zan couldn't see past the blue flames and waves of heat rolling off his sister. He hadn't known cats had eyelashes, until he felt them forming a sticky crust that made it difficult to blink.

Foswida had used Ayer's stolen magic against him, but now that a cloud of dragon fire engulfed the little witch, he could finally breathe again. The invisible snare around his neck had loosened. But for how long?

He scrambled backward to avoid his sister's burning rage.

I love you, Zan.

He knew she'd meant goodbye, but no way in hells was he going to sit back and let her destroy herself to secure their victory.

Whatever her next move was, he would back her up.

Manic laughter bubbled out from the expanding conflagration around Foswida.

Zan watched as Ayer back stepped from the fire, white trails of smoke curling away from her flared nostrils. He worried Edril would use the moment of distraction to his advantage, but Liss hadn't moved from where Ayer knocked her close to the audience. Not that it was necessarily a good sign; the white-haired girl's tilted mouth and sly brows smacked of Edril's pompous self-satisfaction.

Zan wanted to claw the warlock's unholy soul from Liss' body, but he couldn't do anything rash. Edril had chosen his vessel wisely, and Zan hated him all the more for it.

"Sorry, but you'll have to try harder than that, dragon girl."

His gaze snapped forward at Foswida's shrill provocation. The little witch emerged from Ayer's fire unscathed, her apron-like dress blood-stained but intact. The blaze had only affected her hair, albeit superficially, her thick ringlets deconstructed into gnarled, frizzy clumps that stuck out at odd angles.

Zan could think of just one reason she might be impervious to dragon fire.

"Behold, your new master." Her smile was a caricature of a child with a mouthful of baby teeth dwarfed by erupting, over-large replacements.

It was the same grin she'd had for ten years, and probably hundreds more.

"How?" The question in Liss' sweet voice sounded more like a denial.

Gods, this was all his fault. Zan had brought Liss here against his better judgment, and now she was under the Triumvirate's thumb, just like Ayer.

Worse than a fool, his existence was a curse. Danger and pain touched everyone he cared about.

"You'll like this one, big brother. Domi imprinted on me when she Raised me. I never had to go looking for the princess' zizhi. I always knew where it was. It called to me as if I owned it."

Foswida's twinkling laughter shared a twisted similarity with the young brownie, Thimble. They looked about the same age, too.

"Domi sent her spies after you, but she never worried about me. You both thought I was too stupid for anything. And now that she's gone, what's hers is mine."

"What are you planning to do with Ayer's soulbond and the changeling?" The predatory look Edril leveled on Zan using Liss' face was gravely unsettling. "It seems they're both important to her, and to this dainty Lightkeeper. Neither will appreciate you killing them."

"I won't kill them. I'm just having some fun. I like boys in uniforms, and I love cats."

Ayer roared. Another plume of blue fire rattled the chandelier's iron limbs. The slavering audience fell to silence, holding their stale, sour breaths. Zan's spine tingled like it had when Foswida mouthed 'changeling,' before he'd scrambled up the chains that stretched toward the chandelier. Before he'd wasted time delivering his sister's fake zizhi.