Elek struggled against the ground, twisting his wrists where they were bound against his ankles, desperate to get free while the feylords were distracted.

And they were distracted. He could sense the power of their compulsions fading as their minds were occupied with something else.

Come on, come on, come on! he thought, desperately wringing his arms back and forth, wrenching his wrists brutally against the hogtie. He could feel his wrist growing slick with either sweat or blood, loosening the bonds’ grip on him.

“Come on!” he cried, stunned he was able to speak for the first time in two days. “Someone help me!” he shrieked as best he could around the gag. “Help me, please!” He was so close, so very close… All he needed was to get free and he could shapeshift and be gone forever. Not even a feylord could catch a unicorn that didn’t want to be caught. He’d been stupid, gotten complacent, stopped running…

“Hello?” a voice said from the forest beside him. “Did I hear someone?”

“Pleaseth helpth me,” Elek babbled around the iron bit, twisting on a shoulder in an attempt to get a look at the speaker. All he needed was for the man to remove the iron from his wrists…

A man stepped from the forest, his head and feet covered in black leather with silver scrollwork, searching for Elek. His brown eyes located him under the pile of spruce boughs that the feylords had leaned over him and he froze.

“Please untie me!” Elek cried, hoping it was understood despite the gag. “They’ll come back soon!”

For a long moment, the man just started at him like he was seeing a ghost. He even looked away, like he wanted to slip away and leave El'eknadaz'a where he lay. When his eyes came back to rest on Elek’s face, however, he saw them harden with resolve.

“You’re tied up pretty good,” the man said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “Not going anywhere, are you?”

“Please,” Elek babbled. “Just undo the cuffs—I can do the rest.”

“Oh you poor thing,” the man said, moving towards him. “Here, let me help.”

Relief flooded through Elek’s being and he gave a thankful sob through the metal gag.

The man came over and carefully removed the branches that covered his back.

He’s setting me free, El'eknadaz'a thought. I can escape before they get back.

But the man didn’t fiddle with the restraints at Elek’s wrists. Instead, he squatted beside him, looking Elek directly in the eyes.

“You all have such deep blue eyes,” he said, almost whimsically. “I’ve always hated the color blue for that reason. Blue reminds me of the poison you carry upon your brow.”

Elek’s startled mind stuttered. …poison? Did he mean his Horn?

Casually, the man reached for a dagger that he kept in a sheath on his belt. “It’s why I’ve spent so much time getting rid of them. It occurred to me eight hundred years ago that the only things that could stand between me and my plans were Psyche or a pissed-off unicorn. And it hasn’t been lost on me that I run into both the same day. The gods are playing a desperate game.” The man in the silver-scrolled leather smiled down at him. “I bet they didn’t see this one coming, though…” He began to speak in an arcane tongue.

Elek didn’t understand until the blade of the dagger sank into the flesh of his back with an icy blackness that he felt taking root in his ribcage, his lungs, his heart, extending up into his brain…

Elek screamed.

“Just relax and think about how much you hate the Secondlander lords for what they’ve done to you,” the man said, his soothing voice a contrast as he continued to slice into El'eknadaz'a’s flesh. The compulsion, however, was a thousand times stronger than anything Chidilch'etl' had done, and Elek felt pieces of him get carved away with the words. Calmly, the man continued slicing at his flesh and said, “Think about how they’ve imprisoned and maimed your people.” Elek shuddered, feeling himself losing more pieces of who he was. “Think how you were treated like an animal. Think how they raped your women and made them abort babies of such unions. Think of how they kept you naked and refused to let you speak. Think of the vengeance you could have. Think of wrath.”

With every cut of the blade, the web of seiðr worked deeper into his being, surrounding him with more darkness, sinking his mind deeper into the void of corruption more thoroughly than any compulsion, until everything that Elek was, everything he had struggled for the last two days to maintain, was ripped away, leaving him with nothing but the rage, the fury, the darkness directed at the feylords and what they had done to him…

#

Chidilch'etl' recognized the dread unicorn before the others, and he stumbled backwards as Pestilence freed it from its bonds. Oh no, he thought. They were things of legend, creatures that only came to be through some great injustice once every few millennia, embodiments of pure wrath. He backed up further, leaving the other three to watch Pestilence finish the ritual in wonder, his heart pounding wildly in his ears.

It was the only reason he survived. Q'aynidelzexen, who was closest to the unicorn, was first to receive a roiling black horn through the heart as the beast upformed and surged towards them in a movement too fast to see.

“Run!” Kesani'aan cried, raising his bow.

“No, don’t fight it!” Chidilch'etl' babbled, already knowing that throwing aggression at a beast formed of wrath would only feed it. “You can’t kill it!”

But the foolish lordling let loose the arrow anyway, and the void-black unicorn, which had been thrashing Q'aynidelzexen on his horn, ripping him open and spilling his hot innards on the ground like a sack of beans, twisted to face him, his black-streaked violet eyes finding him with single-minded purpose.

Chidilch'etl' knew he couldn’t run. He knew the unicorn could outrun any animal, in any realm. His only chance was a portal.

…a portal that, as a supposed low-level Sky Clan lordling, he shouldn’t have been able to forge.

“Better hurry, Fire Clan lordling,” Pestilence said, leaning against a tree as if he were watching an amusing game of dice. “You’re running out of time.”

Glancing between the unicorn, which was even then trying to throw the dead huntsman from its horn, to Kesani'aan, who was nocking another arrow, Chidilch'etl' dropped his bow and frantically started summoning a portal.

It was Tik'uniyunen that gave him the added time he needed to forge the portal. Even as the dread unicorn was twisting on Kesani'aan, the Naltsiine’s arrow dissolving from its flank and falling to the ground in a flicker of ashes, Tik'uniyunen took aim at the beast’s streaked purple eye.

It hit, making the animal jerk and twist.

“Run, my lord!” Tik'uniyunen cried, nocking another arrow. “I’ll distract—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence before the dread horn had punctured his gut, rotting him from the inside, and the unicorn threw him into the bushes and began stomping upon him with his black, cloven hooves. Every contact with the hooves left rot and corruption and fly larvae in its place.

Chidilch'etl' said a desperate thanks to Gaia as the portal opened and he stepped inside. He was just about to close it again when Kesani'aan followed him inside.

Chidilch'etl' closed the portal and, as the bitter cold of the Void began to freeze his limbs, he found a glowing pathway to another part of the globe and tugged himself there. He was spilling out onto a tropical island in the south pacific when Kesani'aan tumbled out onto the sand beside him, then the portal slammed shut at their backs.

For a moment, he and Kesani'aan stared at each other, cheeks still to the sand in horror.

“Now can we go back, milord?” Chidilch'etl' said, deciding that Kesani'aan was stupid enough to potentially not put together his duplicitous nature.

“You never told me you could make portals!” Kesani'aan cried.

“I, too, had books, but, unlike your brother, I was never very good,” Chidilch'etl' lied. “Gaia lent me her hand today to save us.”

Kesani'aan stared at him, still gripping his bow in a white-knuckled fist.

Chidilch'etl' got to his feet, glancing around the island, focusing on the jungle beyond the beach. “We need to find a fairy ring. Your father needs to know about the dread unicorn before Pestilence looses it on the Second Realm.”

Behind him, Kesani'aan was oddly silent. Frowning, Chidilch'etl' turned.

Kesani'aan had his bow drawn and aimed at him, his face a thunderhead of rage. “The dread unicorn isn’t the only thing Father needs to know about.”

Chidilch'etl' froze, realizing how easy it would be for Kesani'aan to put the arrow through his brain. He opened his mouth to compel the boy to put the bow down.

“Don’t talk,” Kesani'aan snapped. “Only nod or shake your head from here on or I’ll put an arrow through your throat.”

Chidilch'etl' stiffened, but didn’t try to compel the Sky lordling.

“I researched your ‘house’, a few years ago,” Kesani'aan sneered. “I thought you’d fabricated it because you were trying to be more important than you actually were—a way to win my favor and the respect of my father’s court.” He narrowed his brown eyes. “But you’re not Sky Clan at all, are you?”

Chidilch'etl' remained very still, knowing that what he said or did next would determine his fate.

“Answer me!” Kesani'aan snapped. “You’re a spy, aren’t you?!”

Very slowly, Chidilch'etl' nodded.

Kesani'aan eyes widened a moment, then his face darkened again. “As is my right as a son of Yazaan Naltsiine, Lord of the Sky, I’m hereby invoking the Law of Three.” Immediately, Kesani'aan eyes flared a vibrant green with the Council’s power, and energy swirled around them as the Council tuned into their discussion from the Second Lands. Feeling the sudden increase in power around them, Chidilch'etl'’s guts sank with dread.

“With the Council as my witness,” Kesani'aan went on, “I’m granting you a Favor by releasing you rather than killing you for your crimes of infiltrating my family under a false name and claiming illegitimate titles, and I shall expect three in return, to be delivered immediately upon my request. Until you have granted me three Favors, you will be bound to serve me without question and you shall find it impossible to fight me or sabotage my well-being in any way until you have fulfilled your obligation to me. Do you accept the terms?”

Chidilch'etl'’s mouth fell open and he swallowed hard, his mind screaming at him not to accept, and to take his chances forcing the Naltsiine to put the bow down.

“If you say anything other than ‘I accept,’” Kesani'aan said in a low, cold voice, “then my arrow goes through your throat and you die for your crimes against the Naltsiine Clan.”

“I…” Chidilch'etl' could feel the Council watching, waiting. Courage waged a war with his intellect. His courage was telling him to fight. His intellect was telling him he was beaten.

“Think carefully about your next word,” his once-friend warned. “I’m fond of you, Chid, but I’ll still kill you in a heartbeat.”

Swallowing hard, Chidilch'etl' said, “…accept.”

Immediately, he felt the Council boom out their approval and seal the Bargain, etching it into Chidilch'etl'’s very soul.

When it was over, Chidilch'etl' collapsed, gasping, feeling raw all over. And, when he thought of trying to compel Kesani'aan into letting him go, he found it was as if a section of his mind—the section required to think of the Naltsiine lordling as an enemy—was simply gone.

“Now,” Kesani'aan said, his face still dark as he nonetheless lowered his bow, “help me figure out how to salvage this.”

“Salvage?” Chidilch'etl' whispered.

“You’re smart,” Kesani'aan said. “Whoever you are, whatever clan you came from, you managed to hide even from my father.” He gave Chidilch'etl' a considering look. “That means you’re smart enough to help me figure out what’s going on with my brother and how to kill him before word returns to my father of what happened here today.”

“That sounds like two Favors,” Chidilch'etl' said, on a small wave of rebelliousness.

“Help me get Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s head, and we’ll call it even,” Kesani'aan said.

Seeing Kesani'aan was serious, Chidilch'etl' reluctantly considered it. Finally, he said, “The key is the barghest.”

Kesani'aan cocked his head. “How so?”

“He’s the weakest link. They were sitting around watching him call the Valkyrie. And he’s clearly susceptible to mind-weavings as he had not noticed he was within thirty feet of a feylord.”

Kesani'aan nodded slowly. “Because if he’d known, he would have killed him.”

“Because he would have killed him,” Chidilch'etl' agreed. “So we go back, find the barghest, and mindweave him into telling us everything that Tl'oghk'etnaeyen is into.”

The Sky Clan lordling considered that. “And the dread unicorn?” he asked.

Chidilch'etl' grimaced. “We wait a couple days before we go hunting the barghest. The unicorn will have moved on by then. Once we have the barghest, we can mindweave him into finding Tl'oghk'etnaeyen for us. Barghests can hunt a star on a sunny day, and that one didn’t seem particularly strong-willed, if Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s casual mind-weavings were any indication..”

Kesani'aan considered, then reluctantly nodded. “Two days it is. In the meantime, you’re going to tell me everything about who you are and why you are spying on my family…”