Page 96 of Unleashed

Her stomach churned, threatening to empty its contents. Only the willpower she was expending to keep herself upright prevented her from vomiting. The touch of Kelsharn’s mind was a violation, and the malevolence he exuded was beyond anything she could’ve imagined. How naïve she’d been to have thought she knew the face of evil as a child, to have thought she’d seen true cruelty from the people she’d spent her earliest years with.

She was so foolish to have believed she understood what Kelsharn was based only on Orishok’s memories.

“I have much to do,” Kelsharn said. He turned his head slowly as though surveying the ring of stone valo remains. “Much to avenge. Though I silenced Ilena forever, her creations have proven more troublesome than I anticipated. That will be remedied.”

He shifted his attention to Nina again and approached her slowly. The air around her, already chilled, seemed to turn to ice. “Your beasts have caused only grief, as well. It is unfortunate that only one of my death valos remains, but once these lot have been destroyed, I may begin anew. With you,Nina, and all your kind. I will drag them from the holes they are hiding in, I will tear down their towers, and I will show you power. There are no more of my people on this world, and their creations are vulnerable… Once I remakeyou, they will all fall before my might.”

Kelsharn’s chin lifted, and Nina sensed he was looking past her, to the valos gathered behind her. “You may destroy one another now.”

The power he projected increased; she understood, now, how he’d controlled his valos. How could anything stand againstthis?

She gritted her teeth.

Aduun stood against this. Vortok stood, and Balir. They all stood against Kelsharn because he couldnotcontrol them.

“No!” Nina yelled, thrusting her hand out at Kelsharn as though it would throw his power back at him. “I won’t let you hurt them, not anymore, or anyone else on Sonhadra.”

He pushed back at her, but she held firm, refusing to allow this monster to hurt the ones she loved. She used all her strength to hold her focus on Kelsharn. Immense pressure clamped on her temples, squeezing like a vice. The thunderous pounding of her heart was nothing compared to the commotion in her head.

—You cannot stand against me!—

Kelsharn’s voice rang in her head with the volume of a raging storm, its multiple tones combining into something terrible.

He continued to walk forward, but his step faltered.

She stretched her mind outward, brushing it over the familiar warmth of Aduun, Balir, and Vortok before pushing it farther. Beyond them were the raging beast-minds of nearly a hundred more valos, frightened, hungry, and confused. Kelsharn’s power had fallen over them like a dark fog, pressing them to the ground. He sent more psychic energy outward; Nina saw it as inky tendrils reaching toward the valos in her mind’s eye, and knew his intent wasn’t simply to suppress them, but to control them,

Nina visualized her own power as light, bright and blinding, and cast it out to intercept his projections. Light and darkness clashed, swirling into something volatile and terrible. Body tense and head throbbing, Nina held on, drawing from the strength offered by her valos, drawing from a well of willpower deeper than she’d known, drawing from Sonhadra itself.

Something warm trickled from her nose, flowing over her lips and down her chin.

Kelsharn roared; it was an inhuman, bone-rattling sound. The darkness around him deepened, becoming almost impenetrable. She felt him reachingintoher, felt his psychic claws sinking into her mind.

Nina released a battle cry of her own, layered with the bestial roars of her mates.

Kelsharn would never again hurt them. The horrors he’d inflicted upon her mates, upon Orishok, upon all the tribes, would never be repeated.

Nina glared at the creature before her with all the hatred and fury she and her mates possessed, using the emotions as fuel. But more than their rage, she clutched at theirlove. Gritting her teeth, she pulled back for an instant, lowering her defenses.

Kelsharn’s grip on her mind intensified. The darkness surrounding him coalesced and swept toward her.

In that instant, she struck.

Nina shaped her power into a blade, blazing and brilliant, and thrust it directly into Kelsharn’s mind.

His scream echoed in her head and through the air of this false Bahmet.

For several terrifying moments, her mind was connected completely to Kelsharn’s. She saw thousands of years of memories over the course of a single heartbeat, felt his anger and his arrogance, his fury and his fear, and she saw every terrible thing he’d done and intended to do to the people of Sonhadra, human or not. Everything he’d done to the people of a hundred other planets.

She watched from his eyes as he seduced the Creator of the stone valos, Ilena, and coaxed the secrets of how she and her valos shaped stone like clay from her, convincing her to provide him several of her creations to build this place. To build the prison — the tomb — he’d devised for Aduun’s clan. She felt his satisfaction as he poisoned Ilena without hesitation, without regret, once she’d outlived her usefulness and he’d grown bored of her.

But the stone valos who’d created this place knew. Somehow, they’d known, and they’d enacted their own revenge. They’d known they could not destroy him, so they had trapped him. And all his power had been unable to stop the stone valos, had been unable to break his diamond prison. Twenty-four had surrounded him, and though he killed several, their combined strength had been too great. They shaped a diamond prison around him, meant to contain him forever.

She heard his screams of fury and desperation as moments stretched into centuries.

His imaginings assaulted her; he envisioned these valos tearing each other apart with claws and teeth, relished the thought of blood and chunks of flesh splattered across the ground. He intended to destroy their heartstones one-by-one after opening the compartment in the platform upon which his diamond prison had stood.

She saw the palace on the far end of the city, and the lift within that led up a wide, round shaft, higher and higher…

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