Cyrene looked deep into Ahlvie’s bright gold eyes. She wanted to think that she could see into his soul and know who he was underneath. But he wasn’t Doma. He had no magic. He was just a human who could transform into one of Malysa’s beasts. He was an Indres. And she just couldn’t trust that it was her Ahlvie looking back and not a plant that Malysa had sent to get to her.
“I want to believe you.”
“I knew that you’d doubt me. But I can give you information on Malysa. I know some of what she’s planning. I know what she wants and where she is.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t know if what you tell us is true,” Cyrene said. “And, even if it is true, she might have wanted you to tell us that information so that she could lull us into a false sense of security.”
Ahlvie huffed and flopped back down onto the chair. The ropes he’d been in last night were shredded, just as Dean had predicted. “You’re right.”
“I am?”
“Yeah. You can’t trust me. I mean, I want you to.” He laughed uneasily. “But I wouldn’t trust me either. I just…Creator.” He tilted his head up to the ceiling. He looked so much like her Ahlvie that it hurt. “Malysa controlled the shift. I haven’t been able to shift back without her express command. She has this control over me so that I can turn to this killer that locks me up behind my own eyes. I have to watch as it takes over and does horrible things. Things I’d never do.”
Cyrene swallowed back the sadness and anger.
“But then I figured it out. Malysa said something that just clicked with me. She said that I couldn’t shift because I didn’t really want to. And, when I heard that you were here, well, I knew that I could take back control. I hadn’t known how to before. Once I realized I could, it just happened. Me back in control. The beast chained behind my eyes.” He looked haunted as he spoke the words.
“Could Malysa flip the beast back in control at any point?” Cyrene asked.
Dean shot her a look that said she’d clearly asked that question wrong. She’d asked it like what Ahlvie had said was truth. That he was in control and she was talking to him and not the beast.
Ahlvie looked at her hopefully. “I don’t know. I hope not. It’s horrible inside.”
Cyrene strode away from Ahlvie. She couldn’t look at him. Look at him and see her friend when she didn’t know how much of what he was saying was the truth and how much was a lie.
Dean came to her side and put a hand to her shoulder. “I can ask more questions if you’d like. I can handle the interrogation. It’s…it’s not my first.”
Cyrene winced at that, too. At the horrors Dean had had to endure in Domara. But she just shook her head.
“I don’t know if we can trust anything he says. Not without knowing for sure that Malysa can’t reach him. What we need is a way to ensure that the link is broken between him and Malysa. That the beast within stays a piece of Ahlvie and not the other way around.”
“Do you have any idea how to do that?”
A tear trickled down her cheek, and she brushed it aside. “No.”
Twenty-four hours dragged by. The slowest and one of the most excruciating days of her life. The waiting and wondering. Staring at Ahlvie. Avoiding Ahlvie. Trying to decide if he was betraying them or leading them astray.
More waiting.
More wondering.
By the time the Guild reappeared in the warehouse with the official all-clear, Cyrene thought she would go utterly mad if she was there another moment.
“Well?” she asked the Commander.
“As far as I can tell, it looks like he speaks the truth. There are Indres in the city, but they seem aimless without him. Nowhere near our side of the city. The Honorary and her lot still aren’t back from the sacred grounds. We intercepted a messenger that put more patrols out, looking for your description, but no one on their way here. No sign of this Wara…Braj.”
Cyrene breathed a sigh of relief. “That doesn’t mean that he’s telling the truth, but it’s a relief.”
“I also think it’s probably our cue to leave.”
Cyrene froze. “Truly?”
“We voted while you were visiting your sister. As much as we all agreed that there was much to do here in Kell, we’re hardly safe where we are. And there’s more that can be done.” The Commander looked off toward his troops standing in the shadows. “I said we’d all go or no one.”
“And they agreed to that?” she asked in disbelief.
“It proved that I stood with every one of them. In the end, we all agreed.” His gaze swept back to her. “We follow you, Domina.”
“How soon can we leave?”
He arched an eyebrow. “What do you think we’ve been doing the last day?”
“Of course.”
“Are you putting down your beast?”
She shook her head. “He’s coming with us. I have a plan.”
A lie. She had no plan. But she had a thought at least. And a thought could grow into something more.
“No, you don’t,” he said with a laugh.
“Okay, fine. Not a plan. But an idea.”
“You risk a lot for him.”
“He’d do the same for me if he were in full control of himself. He has many times before. I can’t abandon him. Just as you said that it’s all of your people or none of them, it’s the same for me. And he is one of mine.”
The Commander shot her a rare smile. “I can respect that.”
She held her hand out. And he reluctantly put his in hers.
“Thank you, Tristen.”
“Let’s just hope that your plan for us is just crazy enough to work.”
“Those are my best plans.”
He released her hand and arched an eyebrow. “Trust me, I know.”
Cyrene returned to Dean to tell him the good news. She looked over the shield around Ahlvie and wondered how she was going to make this mobile. They couldn’t exactly drop it and let him walk with them. Not if Malysa could still get to him. But Cyrene didn’t really want to knock him out and have someone carry him. That might be even more suspicious than him walking inside a shield no one could see.
“Where are we going?” Ahlvie asked.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t make me gag you.”
“How’s Avoca?” he finally asked.
Cyrene shuddered at the question. “Please stop talking.”
“That bad?”
“Ahlvie!” she snapped.
“Sorry. Sorry. But she’s my wife. And I almost killed her,” he muttered. “I was there. I stopped the thing inside me.”
“She knows,” Cyrene said as she worked her magic to ease the shield in tighter around him. Then she created some sort of tether with it. As if she were holding his arm in place, but it was just the shield. She passed it to Dean without comment and created another one.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“You have two options. Either you walk out of here between the two of us in that shield or I let Dean knock you out again.”
Ahlvie glanced at Dean. “Uh, the first option. Yeah, definitely option number one. Can I walk in this thing?” He stepped forward. “More of a stutter. I look kind of drunk.”