Even if she had found them, Kavya couldnt jeopardize the tranquility of the assembly. To do so now would bring about Talliss dreadful scenario: the failure of all shed worked toward for decades.
Her mind raced. Her wrists and ankles ached. And her lips burned with the touch of this strangers kiss.
Tallis was different. Frighteningly different.
A mind I cant read.
She shouted into his brain until her gift retaliated with a walloping headache. Shed have been better served by smacking her forehead against the ground. Trying to compensate with her senses was nearly useless. Who of her clan needed them?
All they really needed was a Dragon-forged sword to kill . . . or a Mask to hide.
Every Indranan was born as a twin or, in Kavyas case, as a triplet. Siblings grew up knowing that the Dragon had divvied up their true potential in the womb. Learn to share . So few did. By committing fratricide, the Indranan could unite fractured pieces into a whole. Some called them twice-blessed, although twice-cursed was more accurate. Murderous twins carried with them the screams of the departed.
The ability to read anothers mind was the most intoxicating, terrifying gift among the Five Clans. To keep from wanting more was the ultimate responsibility.
The Heartless.
Kavya had never protested the derogatory nickname. Shed simply fought to rise above that hideous legacy.
Her fight at the moment centered on Tallis. With his face tilted down and decorated with a maddening smile, he was as solid in body as he was opaque of mind. Shed suspected that he hid strength under unassuming clothing and a lean fighters frame. She hadnt known how that strength would feel, pressed intimately along her silk-clad hip as theyd walked through the valley.
Now he knelt before her. Body to body. Heat against heat.
He was holding her.
Hed slipped his hands beneath the long sleeves of her sari and cupped her restrained arms. His fingers were warm, blunt, strong. When was the last time shed been graced by anything more than reverent touches? This was prolonged contact. This was calluses against smooth skin. Because she couldnt read his mind, she compensated with a desperate scramble for information.
He smelled of dust and juniper.
He was a foot taller.
He had eyes the color of the sea at its darkest depths, but not the Indian Oceansome frigid, azure wasteland.
Kavyas attention kept slipping back to him. She couldnt even find Chandrani, her best friend and closest ally since childhood. Chandrani was the only person who knew Kavyas mind without its Maskthe only person except for Pashkah. Without the Masks shed worn since the age of twelve, Kavya wouldve been at her brothers mercy. If he succeeded in killing her, Pashkah would become something unholy.
This stranger knew how he was affecting her and had piercingly guessed that violence was a fact of life for Kavya, as it was for every Indranan. Shed spent her adolescence in the rough cubbies and alleys of Delhi. A girl didnt survive places so perilous without witnessing terrible things and developing protective skills. The net result was that to be threatened by a bladeeven one as intimidating as his seaxhad nothing on the distraction of being held.
Thought began and ended with Talliss arms sliding down to her backside.
No.
No!
Chandrani!
Except for her
rabbits-heart pulse, she held perfectly still. Chandrani would find her. Kavya had to believeand bide her time.
Her feet and calves were going to sleep, but she hadnt wanted this man to lord over her with his height, strength, and the weight of his stare. Not that it had mattered after hed assumed the same stance. They looked like worshipers at prayer, supplicated before one another.
What hed done to her . . .
What he kept doing. The trace of his lips from the divot behind her ears to the tendon of her neck was like nothing shed ever experienced. What was this madness? Had his ramblings been a strange cover for his desire to bind her, even ravish her? Sensation shot through her limbs and down her spine. Her thighs tremblednothing he would see, but she resented her weakness.
Those people who revere you, he said against the skin hed made damp by his tongue. Do they know how you taste? Do they wonder? Do some fantasize about claiming the body of a living deity?
Kavya punched her shoulder against his jaw. Get off me, you Pendray filth. Always thinking with your cocks and your work-worn hands. If you think at all.
He smiled as if he were the mind reader. Stereotypes, eh? Wasnt that my sin a few hours ago? We could play that way all day, but my game is better. He grabbed a fistful of hair. Tell me, goddess. Do you like that they imagine fucking you? Or that I have? For years .
Her heart shuddered. He was sick, yet her body reacted to his crude words. No wonder the Indranan lived apart from baser clans, no matter the danger within their own.
Thats why you brought me here? In a camp full of people loyal to me?
Ah, so theyre loyal to you . Not to your cause. You give yourself away.