Free Trial of Fire by Kate Jacoby Page A

ever been in his life. He gasped in a deep breath, then another, bringing his eyes open. Shock left him dizzy, nauseated and trembling.
    The connection feeding him, sweeping him up into the heavens, making him fly: it had been broken somehow.
    By whom – the Enemy? Or the Ally, still determined to have a say in her own fate? No person alive other than they would have the power to sever that connection.
    Unless it had been the Key itself cutting off the lifeblood …
    But how thrilling, how incredibly exhilarating it had been, for those precious few moments: to fly so far, so high, so fast. To soar through the nothing between them, to keep going, to hold his breath and then to see, in the Seeker’s mist, to actually
see
the Enemy, the Douglas, holding onto the Key, actually touching the thing he’d been chasing all his life—
    To finally
find
it – and to show the Enemy, at last, that he could never win.
    By the blood of his ancestors, of Bayazit of Yedicale, who had helped create the Key, who had made the Word of Destruction, down through all those who had followed him, by the blood of Thraxis himself: the journey was almost over. He was so close to victory that he could almost taste it, almost feel it in the fingers which tingled even now with new life.
    The nausea subsided in the wake of his joy. Shaky with his new-found strength, Nash rolled to his side and carefully rose from the bare wooden floor. Again dizziness swept through him, but he was blind to it.
    ‘Taymar!’
    A heartbeat later, the door opened and his devoted servant slipped into the room, fresh clothes draped over one arm, a cup of wine in the other. As Nash dressed, Taymar kept his silence. It was not the first time this man had aided Nash in regenerating; perhaps it would be the last.
    ‘How do you feel, Master?
    Nash smiled, emptied the cup in one swallow and handed it back. ‘Invincible.’
    Though his eyes were dulled by the Bonding, Taymar could match Nash’s smile. ‘Your men are waiting, Master.’ With that, he stepped back and opened the door. Nash walked through, emerging into a small sitting-room, where an unexpected richness of quality in the neat furnishings brought him back to the present.
    Valena
. The woman who had pledged herself to his cause, who had shared his bed for many years, who had borne his daughter, had, in the end, betrayed him – just as he’d always known she would.
    ‘Where is she?’ he asked softly, almost enjoying not knowing. The prospect of what he would do to her was a pleasure just tasted and not yet devoured. He would take his time with her, because he could.
    ‘Lady Valena is outside, Master.’
    Nash’s gaze flickered to the open door and the dank, grey view he could see through it. Wind kept the trees moving; all else was as still as death.
    He stepped outside and lifted his face to the air, savouring the cool feather-touch upon his skin. He saw the wood and the hills. He saw his men and horses waiting for him at the bottom of the clearing. He saw the trees barren of leaves, their gnarled arms reaching to a sky they’d never touch. He saw that sky thick and grey, three days after the last time he’d seen it, before he’d taken in the blood.
    Ah, such blood. Such power. His child, and Valena’s. The blood still fresh, still warm, still bubbling with bright power. And now it was all his.
    He laughed. The trees were old. He was young. Again. And this time, he would stay young. He moved, feeling his newly awakened body tingle with fresh life, needing to run with the dry wind, to stretch and push, to exert and expend the hidden energy within. He had so much strength now, so much power at his fingertips.
    How could the child’s blood have done this – surely all this was beyond Prophecy?
    Of course,
this
child hadn’t been in the Prophecy. No, the child he was
supposed
to use should have been born of his blood and the Ally, or better still, of Ally and Enemy. It was clear, in all he’d read, that