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“We have no more need of you, Rafus,” Karo says, “but for one final piece. Ur-Durik is coming and the rites that will allow your sons to defeat Zai begins with their father’s blood, spilled on this table.”

Rafus shakes his head. This cannot be happening. Not Karo. She is his wife. His first wife. He only ever tried to please her.

The blade pierces his jacket. A black silk jacket embroidered with a green and purple peacock on the breast.

30

TOBI

Tobi looks at Harok. He has no words. Every part of him wants only to tell Harok that he will not do this. But if he does not…

Harok is doomed. Tobi cannot save him. Tobi’s only choice is whether he allows this demon to take control of Harok or whether he stops it.

A demon who is Zai himself. The God revered by the Azurian Empire. By the Rose Court. The God who Emperor Selim has devoted his life to.

Tobi remembers those days in the Rose Palace when he would be charged to act as Selim’s page. Sitting on a stool in the private shrine, watching as Selim chanted before his altar of Zai and those two black statues, watching him flagellate himself and starve himself and wash the feet of his visitors all to exalt the glory of his God.

He had told his mother about it at night, lying in her bed in the Tower of the Heir, where she would let him sleep if Rafus wasn’t visiting, and she would laugh. Gods weren’t real. Demons weren’t real. Selim was debasing himself for nothing. To an empty sky and the cold earth.

But she was wrong. Zai was real. Zai was a demon who grew stronger the more he was worshipped. That was the reason Harok had worked so hard to wipe out the Exceli. Their existence, their numbers made the thing inside him stronger and more able to take control of him.

And the Exceli are stronger than they have ever been. What must that do to Harok. Harok who had lived all of his adult life fighting a demon. A battle that could never end except with his death.

All Zai wanted was to be worshipped. And it didn’t matter to Zai, Yaelin had said, what men did to worship him, they could select sacrifices they wanted rid of and put them through trials before slitting their throats and throwing their bodies into a pit. They could make offerings in clay pots. They could make laws to control the lives of men and kill them if they committed sins of the body.

Tobi’s mother had been right about one thing. The rules of Gods were always the rules of the men in power. But so long as worship was done in his name, it fed Zai.

The great Azurian Empire was like a well of power for this demon. The only way to stop it was for Tobi to kill Harok now, before that demon wrests control from him completely. He must kill Harok.

The man he loves and the cruel God of the Empire.

Although, Tobi wonders what his mother would say about that. Is Diazuul truly Zai? Would it make any difference to the great faith of Azuria if Tobi killed the demon that inspired their God. Is Diazuul truly Zai, really? Or is Zai the men who worship him? Doroth Zain and the Faith. The Brides of Zai who care for his mother. The Immurite who lives in her sealed room in the heart of the Sarelik temple. The enforcers, the Book of the Rules. Irgo Lal and Emperor Erond could not cement their alliance because of religious differences even though they unknowingly worshipped the same God. If Tobi kills Diazuul what difference would that make to any of them? It made no difference to the faith in Azuria when Harok claimed Diazuul was dead and that demon was inside his body.

What would his mother tell him? He wishes she was here now. Here and with her mind unbroken, to tell him what to do.

She would tell him he didn’t have a choice. He doesn’t have a choice. Tears prick Tobi’s eyes.

“Suskara?” Harok says. “Please.”

Tobi picks up the sword from the bed. He curls his fingers around the hilt. Despite its impossible size and weight and the fact Tobi has never had any skill with a blade, it feels good in his hand somehow. Like he is meant to hold it.

Tears are falling now. His vision is blurred. This cannot be the right choice. It cannot. “Irgorye, I can’t do this.”

Harok puts his hand on Tobi’s cheek. His voice is deep and low, “Must I command you, Suskara?”

“Yes,” Tobi says, broken.

“I am your Irgo and your Irgorye,” Harok says, soft and deep and low. “You are my kushir. You are bound by the laws of the Solwen to obey me. Take my life with Demonica. Plunge that blade into my heart. I command it.”

Tobi makes a gasping, sobbing sound. His hand is shaking. He raises the sword up and places the point against Harok’s chest.

And he forces it down. He plunges the blade into Harok, tears streaming so hard down his face he can barely see what he is doing.

Harok cries out in pain. A great roar. A bestial sound. Tobi uses his free hand to wipe away the tears that blur his eyes. He pulls the blade from Harok’s chest. It’s hard, like Harok’s body holds onto it. It takes more effort to pull it out than it did to push it in. Blood wells up in the bloody maw it leaves behind. Tobi cries out in pain and presses his hand down onto the wound. Warm red blood covers his fingers..

“No,” he sobs out, “no, no.”

This cannot be right, it cannot. “Irgorye,” he says. Voice choked. And then the same word in Artemian. “Master.”