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experience!

    She exerted herself, thrust him out of her core, and slammed a wall up.

    You are disallowed! She snapped, and augmented the thought with a bite, so he would remember.

    Silence. He moved his head against the tile floor, eyes closed. Then—

    Yes, lady , he answered meekly.

vii.

    It was a simple exercise, designed to allow dominant and submissive to become accustomed to working as one. Unfortunately, she thought—taking care to keep that thought well-shielded—it appeared that Rool Tiazan had not yet accepted the new terms of his existence.

    While he had not again attempted to breach her walls, nor expressed contempt of the Iloheen, nor sought in any way to prevent their further bonding, he likewise did not allow one opportunity to resist her dominance to pass untried, so that even the simplest exercise became a war of will against will.

    As now.

    Three times, she had opened a working channel between them, and drawn his power in order to engender a flame in the grate she had brought into being.

    The first time, he had withheld himself, resisting even her strongest demand. Rebellion had been costly, however, as she controlled his access to the means of renewing his essence.

    The second time, he had not been able to withhold entirely, and a few wisps of smoke drifted weakly from the grate. This, too, had cost him a tithe of strength, so that she was certain of obedience when she drew him the third time.

    Too certain, and more fool she, to suppose that his only weapon was resistance.

    She focused again upon the grate—and abruptly there was power—far too much for the narrow channel she had formed. More than enough to incinerate her envelope, the grate, and Rool Tiazan himself, unless it were controlled, immediately.

    For herself and the grate, she had no concern. Rool Tiazan was a different matter, being both bound to the vessel and denied the ability to rejuvenate it at need. If Rool Tiazan burned, not only his vessel, but his whole essence would be destroyed beyond recall.

    She opened herself, dropped all of her shielding, and accepted the fireball. There was a brief, dismissible flare of agony as she phased and released the energy harmlessly into the second plane.

    From this vantage, Rool Tiazan was a densely structured pattern of deep and cunning color. As she watched, the pink shine of the autonomous system flared—then faded as the vessel began to die. The scintillant essence spread, overflowing the vessel in rippling wings of energy. The core coalesced, as if the zaliata would phase to the second plane—and froze, anchored by the biologics to the failing vessel.

    She acted then, and shamefully; not from cool calculation but from base emotion.

    Brutishly, with neither finesse nor subtlety, she thrust her will through the glorious colors, feinted past the wary intelligence, and seized control of the autonomous system. She slapped the failing vessel into life, spun the bindings, and rode the tumult of the zaliata's energies, forcing it, dominating it, until it collapsed under the double burdens of her will and his body's demands.

    In a flare of rage nearly as searing as the fireball that had consumed her envelope, she threw Rool Tiazan to his knees, constricted his lungs, his heart, multiplying the pain until at last it breached the cool green fortress of his thought and he writhed in her grip, gasping for breath, desperately seeking to ease her hold about his vessel's core, the tendrils of his power plucking uselessly at her will.

    She held him until she judged he had assimilated the lesson, then threw him against the tile wall and withdrew herself.

    The ashes of her envelope were still warm. She resurrected it and stepped within, scarcely noticing the small bite of pain. Carefully, she smoothed her robe, put her anger aside, and turned.

    Rool Tiazan lay on the floor at the base of the wall against which she had flung him. Blood ran freely from his nose, his ears, his mouth. His eyes