“I won’t be your puppet,” I told him.

“I don’t want a puppet; I want a partner.”

“Life’s full of disappointments.”

Nukpana held up his hand and the guards stopped. “Apparently you require a more personal incentive. Release the witch,” he told the guards. His smile was slow and horrible. “Bring the nightingale.”

I screamed and lunged for Nukpana. I was fast, but the guards behind me were faster.

Four big goblins grabbed Piaras. He tried to fight them, but there were too many. As they lifted him onto the altar, Piaras’s voice dropped desperately to a dark, low register.

“Gag him,” Nukpana snapped. “Quickly.”

One guard gagged Piaras, while the other three held him down and shackled him to the altar.

My heart pounded, blood ran cold, mouth went dry. Anything and everything you’d expect to feel when you saw someone you loved about to be slaughtered. None of those things were going to get Piaras off of that slab, so I made myself stop doing them, every last one. If I panicked, I couldn’t think, and if I couldn’t think, a lot of people were going to die or worse—starting with Piaras.

“Don’t.” It took everything I had not to make that one word sound like begging. I would not beg. Nukpana would like it and I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

“What I do—or do not do—is for you to decide.” Any pretense of civility was gone from his voice. He wasn’t playing anymore. “You know what I require.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“But you do. In these very woods you destroyed six Magh’Sceadu, merely because they threatened your precious nightingale. I’m asking for a similar demonstration.”

“Do I get to pick the target?” The words came out through clenched teeth.

The goblin laughed. “I could hardly enjoy the performance if I were vaporized.”

“Scared?”

“Merely prudent.” I felt his personal shields go up. He might as well have erected a fortress around himself.

“We all make sacrifices, Raine. I don’t wish the nightingale’s death either. Merely show me the Saghred. Show me the power, and we both get what we want.” He looked over at where Prince Chigaru lay unmoving on the ground. “I think the prince and the witch will work nicely for your first demonstration.”

I didn’t move.

Tiny, pale lights appeared and flickered in the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. Each flicker brought them closer to us. Fire pixies. No doubt they considered the stone altar one big buffet. My job tonight was to make sure every last one of them went to bed without supper. The guards had probably rung the dinner bell the moment they chained Piaras to that altar.

“I am but a student, Mistress Benares,” Sarad Nukpana was saying. “There is much to learn, and much to be accomplished. You will assist me in my work.”

He placed the casket on the altar and opened it. Piaras seemed to stop breathing. So did I.

Nothing happened. The Saghred didn’t steal anyone’s soul. My father’s ghostly hands didn’t shoot out and wrap themselves around the goblin’s throat. Absolutely nothing.

I expected something. From Nukpana’s expression, nothing was precisely what he expected.

He lightly caressed the stone’s surface. “Such a simple thing, is it not, Mistress Benares?”

My breath caught and my heart hammered in my chest. I actually felt the lightness of his touch, the warmth of him as if his fingertips had touched me, not the stone. I wondered if by controlling the Saghred, he could control me. That wasn’t about to happen, not if I had anything to say about it. I tried not to think that I might not have any say.

“You still do not understand, do you?” he asked when I didn’t respond.

His hand remained on the stone, and I felt a warm pressure heavy on the back of my neck. I didn’t know if he was aware of the connection. I felt a shudder coming on and stopped it.

“You fear what the Saghred would give,” he continued, “because you do not know the extent of its gift.”

“I never considered madness a gift.”

“Madness, or an unfettered mind?” His voice was soft and coaxing. “A mind without limits, free to do, to accomplish anything it can imagine. To be without boundaries. As the daughter of Eamaliel Anguis, you will have the honor of experiencing power beyond that of every mage on the Isle of Mid combined. Power the Conclave and their Guardian pets want for their own. Your powers will continue to grow. They fear that. I do not.”

The stone gleamed in the moonlight and waited. Waited for the decision I didn’t want to make.

A fire pixie glowed and fluttered near the altar. Either it was the same pixie that had bitten Piaras two nights ago, or it was her twin sister. Or maybe all fire pixies looked alike. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

The grand shaman drew a dagger out of his robes. I’d seen its twin last night. A foot-long triangular blade, jewel-encrusted grip, pommel topped with a ruby the size of a child’s fist. That one had been used to tack Nukpana’s letter to me to the embassy gates. I was right; the crazies always carried spares. He put it on the altar next to the casket.

Piaras’s dark eyes met mine, wide with panic and terror—and hope. A muffled sound came from behind his gag. He hadn’t given up, not yet. He had no idea what I was going to do to keep him from taking that dagger through his heart, but he was hoping I knew.

I did.

The goblin grand shaman lifted the Saghred out of the casket and set it on the altar next to the dagger.

A male pixie clothed in blue flame darted in front of my face, then dove for my neck. I swatted at him, and he fled. Only after he had gone did I feel the sting. I touched my neck and my fingertips came back wet with blood.

The smell of blood, and the promise of more lured in more fire pixies. They were being cautious—all except Piaras’s pixie. She fluttered around Sarad Nukpana and Piaras, glowing bright orange, eager to feed. Beauty, but no brains. She’d be better off taking her fluttering elsewhere. Piaras struggled in vain against the shackles that bound his wrists over his head.

Nukpana struck, one-handedly catching the pixie in midair, and crushing her the same way. He wiped the remains on the altar with no more regard than a swatted fly. The Saghred pulsed once with a nearly imperceptible glow. If I had blinked, I’d have missed it. Someone was awake—and hungry.

Sarad Nukpana’s shields shimmered as he enhanced their power even more. He was being careful. Nothing was getting through those shields unless he allowed it. I was familiar with what he was using—a circle to protect himself against the awakening Saghred, as well as spells, people, and weapons.

A small silver amulet wasn’t a weapon—but I knew a way to turn it into one.

The goblin rested one hand lightly on the Saghred, and gestured me to him with the other, still bloody one.

“Release her,” he told my guards.

“Sir, are you—?”

“I said release her.”

“Your will, my primaru.”

He gestured me to him again. “If you and the beacon would join me.”

From what Mychael had told me, I should be close enough to the Saghred to remove the beacon without my usual brush with death. I pulled the diamond chain with the beacon over my head. I could still breathe and stand at the same time. Good. Mychael had been right.

I hoped my father was right, too.

Power makes you blind to your own greed—and its consequences. I didn’t know if it would work. I didn’t know if the backlash from Sarad Nukpana’s shields would kill me. But with the goblin’s breath close enough to fog the Saghred’s surface, and Piaras about to be murdered for the sake of a sick experiment, it didn’t matter.

I tossed the beacon to the goblin. “Catch.”

The beacon passed through Sarad Nukpana’s shields and into his waiting and bloody hand—shields that ceased to exist when he reached out to grab the beacon. The goblin’s obsidian eyes widened in realization at what he had just done.