Cyrene settled her mind, finding that calm that she had so lacked while trying to learn her magic. Then she placed her hands on Ahlvie, sliding easily through the shield and to his shoulders where he lay on the ground.
For a moment, she felt nothing.
Then she pushed past the shield to Ahlvie’s existence beyond.
She had done this part before. When Kael had been teaching her to enter minds, to change and control them, she had been able to do it then. But it had always felt like an invasion since then. As when Kael had entered her mind in Tiek. But this…this was nothing like that. Ahlvie had consented to her entering his mind. There was no resistance. Just total openness, and then she was inside.
She floated through a myriad of thoughts and feelings and wandering emotions. Then she settled his mind until everything felt more still. With a move forward, she put him under and felt him slip into a trance state.
Holding on to that feeling of almost sleep, she reached out for her link with Sarielle. They connected as easily as breathing. Her magic sang to the tune of Sarielle’s.
Good luck, Domina, Sarielle said against her mind. I will guard you from here.
“I know you will.”
Then Cyrene pushed forward with her spirit magic until she felt the viscosity of the spiritual plane barrier under her fingers. She pressed through the liquid, and in the next second, she was there.
She took a moment to orient herself. Bringing up the first place that came to mind—the rose gardens in Byern.
Everything was in full bloom. Roses of every color decorated the enclosure as it had when she went through her Presenting and then through her own rose garden ceremony. The very ceremony that had bound her to her home. Something that had snapped since. But she still loved and admired this great garden and what it had once meant to her.
She took a deep breath. This was the tricky part.
She put her fingers to the diamond at her throat. She was the Domina now. She might not have trained for this, but she had earned it all the same. She could do this. She knew that she could.
With all the concentration she possessed, she reached out through the plane. Scoured it for the mind that she was looking for. Not just waiting to call a person already in the spirit, but reaching in and pulling them through, too.
“Ahlvie,” she whispered, hoping her voice would draw him to her.
It did not.
She focused then on the essence of Ahlvie. The funny, lighthearted cheat that she had grown to admire. The wicked swordsman who had grown up in Fen. Who had completed their Lone Wolves ceremony, become a High Order, and trusted her implicitly. The man who had tried to sell her to help get them out of Byern. And who had fallen in love with Avoca on sight. The person who had only taken two things seriously—his love for Avoca and Cyrene’s mission.
Ahlvie wasn’t the beast. And the beast wasn’t Ahlvie. They were just two sides of a coin. Not the totality.
And, as she concentrated, a body began to materialize in the gardens before her. She grinned as Ahlvie appeared, even with his once-brown eyes. But then she shuddered back a step in shock as a second form took shape.
A giant wolflike creature with razor-sharp fangs and menacing gold eyes.
The Indres within.
Conjuring Ahlvie had brought both forms but separate. As if they couldn’t exist together on the spiritual plane, but they also couldn’t exist apart.
It was Ahlvie’s smile that nearly made her break down when he was finally fully formed.
“It’s you,” she breathed.
He stepped forward, throwing his arms around her. “I knew that you could do it.”
She laughed. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve just brought you to the spiritual plane.”
“That’s something.”
“Yes, but the Indres is still here.”
She gestured to it, and Ahlvie frowned.
“Can’t you just…kill it?”
She rocked back. “I don’t think so. I think it would kill you, too. At least, I can’t untangle the two of you in the physical sense. What happens here is permanent.”
“But you can figure it out, right?”
“I hope so,” she said, biting her lip. “The most important part is that…it’s really you. Is everything you told me back there true? Now that you’re not in Malysa’s influence.”
“You can be sure that I’m not when I’m here?” he asked uncertainly.
“Definitely. The Indres has the shade of darkness. I can practically feel her presence on the beast.” The thing growled at her then. And she just narrowed her eyes and threw up a shield. “I’m stronger than you here.”
The beast growled again and threw itself at the pair. But she had trapped it. It was much easier to do that here than it was in her physical form. She could control anything here. Manipulate it to her liking. It wasn’t even real magic in the spiritual plane, just a projection of it. The beast began pacing as if trying to find a way to get to her, but she knew that it could not.
“And there is not the darkness on me?” he asked.
“Your eyes are even brown. I think this is the two sides of your existence.”
“Then, yes, everything I said was true. I think I can keep her out, but I don’t know if it will be forever. Just as long as she doesn’t force the transformation again.”
“Do you think that, if you shifted yourself, she could still reach you?”
He stared back at the beast, the thing that had caged him these past months. “I’m afraid to try. I would think yes.”
“So…you can’t shift.”
“It’s not always…voluntary.”
Cyrene bit her lip and considered that. “Let me see what I can do.”
And so she tried everything she had ever thought of and some things that she hadn’t. She worked on the beast, trying to find a way to sever it from Ahlvie altogether. To rid him of the thing living under his skin. But it was ingrained there. She could separate the spirit but not the physical forms.
He had been bitten so young. The venom had grown with him. He was as much Indres as he was Ahlvie. Anytime she tried to separate one from the other, she could sense both of them dying. It was impossible.
She conjured a chair and sank down into it. She could feel the exertion getting to her. The weight of it all. She’d need a lot of food after this. It was always worse after she used her energy in the spiritual plane. As if she couldn’t tell how much she was really using in reality.
“I think it’s hopeless, Cyrene,” Ahlvie said. “Maybe you should just kill me.”
She snapped her attention to him. “Don’t say that. We will figure this out.”
“This is who I am. I’ve accepted that. Maybe…maybe you should, too.”
“And would you say that to Avoca?” she demanded.
He winced. “Of course not.”
“Then don’t say it to me. Because I would have to be the one to deliver that news to her. She would never forgive me for not trying everything possible.”
“You are waning, Cyrene. You can’t keep going at it like this. It will weaken you, and you need your full strength against Malysa.”
“Fine. Then I’ll rest, and we’ll try this again. And again.”
“What if this is what she wanted?” Ahlvie reasoned. “What if she knew that, if she let me go, I’d be a distraction from your real mission?”