I DIED IN A DEMON'S ARMS, NOW SHE CALLS ME MASTER

Chapter 5: The Man Who Knew I Wasn't Him

NOLAN POV

The man in the silver-trimmed coat said my name as though he had waited a long time to say it. He did not sound surprised that I was alive. He sounded like someone ticking an item off a list.

I kept my face neutral. "Should I know you?"

His smile widened. "No. The man you replaced certainly did."

Veyra's hand drifted toward her sword, and the emissary noticed at once. "Careful," he said mildly. "If you kill me, you will never learn why the Quiet Meridian chose you to murder him."

Her fingers stopped an inch from the hilt. Her fury rolled through the bond like heat from a forge.

"I serve High Inquisitor Odran Pell," he went on, "and I have come with an offer. Surrender peacefully, Nolan, and we will remove the resonance bond, answer your questions about the transfer, and allow Miss Noxen to walk away unharmed."

It was a very good offer, which was exactly what bothered me. "You know a lot about a bond that's an hour old."

"We know a great deal about many things."

"Then why bargain with a powerless adventurer? You sent mercenaries and black bolts, and now you're offering me answers."

"Because you are not powerless." His eyes gleamed. "The original Nolan Rhyse carried a rare compatibility with ancient Sovereign magic, which made him valuable to our research. His public disgrace made him lonely, and a lonely man is easy to isolate."

"So you ruined him first and killed him second."

"I never said that."

"You didn't need to." I held his gaze. "Did he die because he found out what you were doing?"

"He became dangerous when he began asking about the Abyssal Prison."

The name meant nothing to me, but Veyra drew a sharp breath. "It is an ancient containment structure," she said without looking away from him. "It holds entities older than any kingdom, and no one agrees on where it stands or what it was built to do."

"Then you understand the stakes." The emissary turned to me with something close to gentle concern. "Sovereign Resonance is not a gift, Nolan. Left uncontrolled, it will tear both of your souls apart, and we are the only ones who can stop that."

"If you want my soul stable, why did you try to kill me?"

"Because the original Nolan's death was necessary to complete a process." His smile dimmed. "One that you have interrupted."

The words dropped into my chest like cold stones. They had never meant for the original Nolan to stay dead. His body, his soul, or his resonance had been part of something larger, and I had landed in the middle of it. The emissary made my arrival sound like an accident, but I could not tell whether that was the truth or merely the more convenient story.

"I will not surrender him," Veyra said.

The emissary raised an eyebrow. "You would choose a stranger over the truth?"

"I am choosing the truth." Her voice was low and steady. "I will not hand him over until I know whether you used me to kill that man, and the answer is mine to find, not yours to sell."

His expression hardened. "Then you will both regret it."

He pressed a small device in his palm, and agony split my skull. The interface collapsed into static, and Veyra and I buckled together as the bond amplified every spasm between us. I heard him order the soldiers forward in a flat, bored voice. "Take the vessel alive."

Through the white haze, I caught a faint pulse of light passing between the soldiers' belts. Each man carried a small crystal fixed to his gear, and every one of them brightened at the same instant like lanterns hung on a single wire. Breaking one would accomplish nothing on its own, but breaking the formation might snap the whole system out of sync.

I forced my head up and called to Veyra, loudly enough for the emissary to hear. "Are you guarding the right flank, or saving your strength for the left?"

She looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Then her eyes flicked to the crystals, and I watched understanding cross her face.

"The left," she said coolly. "I have always preferred the left."

She flew at the soldiers on that side with a speed that made the nearest man yelp, and their line bent toward her. I dragged myself behind a boulder, snatched a fallen halberd from the dirt, and hurled it with everything I had left. It struck a crystal at the end of the line and burst it into a spray of blue shards.

The pain vanished. The interface snapped back into focus, and the whole formation lurched as though someone had cut its strings.

Veyra could have disappeared into the rocks then, because she was fast enough to leave every one of us behind. Instead she carved a path through the confused soldiers that curved straight toward me, and she kept me within arm's reach the entire way.

The emissary had staggered backward, and a leather case slid from his coat and landed on the stones. I dove for it, tucked it under my arm, and ran with Veyra into a narrow ravine while the soldiers shouted and regrouped behind us.

We wedged ourselves into a hollow beneath a ledge and listened to their boots pass overhead. When the sound faded, I finally let myself breathe.

"I won't expect you to follow my orders," I said quietly, "just because our souls are tied together."

She gave me a flat look. "I would not follow your orders if they were not."

I smiled. I tried to hide it and failed, and she noticed. For a moment she held my gaze, then looked away without a word, and I did not say anything either.

I opened the case. Inside lay a sealed document and a small black crystal etched with the Sovereign symbol. I broke the wax and skimmed the pages, which described the original Nolan's death in clinical detail and mentioned the next phase of the experiment. Near the back, one sheet had been folded away from the others, and its heading made my pulse stumble.

SOVEREIGN VESSEL TRANSFER: FINAL AUTHORIZATION.

Beneath it were the original Nolan's identifying details, a summary of the shrine incident, and an order stamped with Odran Pell's seal. But the last two lines turned my blood to ice.

TRANSFER SUBJECT: NOLAN RHYSE, EARTH-ORIGIN SOUL.

STATUS: SUCCESSFULLY INSTALLED.

I read it twice, then a third time, as though the words might rearrange themselves.

They had not merely known about my arrival. They had recorded it.

Veyra read the page over my shoulder, and her face hardened as she understood. Before either of us could speak, the black crystal in my hand lit up, and a distorted voice crackled out of it.

"To the person occupying Nolan Rhyse's body: if you can hear this, then the transfer succeeded."

The voice paused, and the silence stretched until I forgot how to breathe.

"Do not trust Veyra Noxen. She was never the one who killed me."

A crack split the crystal down its middle. And from somewhere far beneath our feet, something answered my resonance in a voice like grinding stone.

"The vessel has returned.”