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staff, Calto touched the moonstone to her head.
    Like being physically jerked forward, Simta’s hands flew from her face in a spread eagle position. Layers of her mind, her memories, her past lies, and deceits burst free. She felt Calto shuffle through her lies and carelessly toss them aside. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. Simta wanted to beg for mercy, call for help, but she did not. Those were options she no longer owned.
    “Well, isn’t this interesting,” Calto mused, and Simta’s mind crashed into a forgotten memory. She found herself back in her room at the inn, sprawled across her bed, naked, moaning, clutching at Malaria’s ass as he jammed his cock deep inside her. Instead of experiencing feelings of pleasure, an intense pain ripped through her body. Like water colors on a too wet canvas, Malaria’s features melted, transforming into something which made even the pain of what Calto did to her a mercy.
    Malaria’s sleek, muscled body grew larger, grotesque in its shape. Long blue barbs protruded from the backs of his arms and head. Spikes grew crookedly down his spine. More of the same needle-like barbs riddled the back of his calves, dripping a green poisonous liquid that burned and ate away at her skin. Simta knew her face was a twisted mask of silent horror as Malaria dipped his head down to her breasts. She heard herself scream as he tore at her pale skin, shredding delicate flesh with long, razor sharp teeth. When she thought she could scream no more, as blood poured from her body to soak the sheets beneath her, sickly grey and black tendrils of magic wrapped around her dying body. Malaria stopped feeding and raised his head to look down curiously at her. Frowning, he lifted a clawed hand above her chest. Simta watched in horror as he shoved bits of his magic into her ruined body. The blood on the sheets reversed its flow to rise and reenter her wounds. In mere seconds, those wounds were healed, but a horrible squiggling, grayness covered her skin.
    The scene disappeared suddenly. Simta found herself back in the Evertrue study, lying on the floor in a ball, hugging her knees to her chest, and crying hysterically. Long, agonizing moments passed before she realized someone had put their arms around her and stroked her face, trying to give her some small measure of comfort. No comfort was there for her. No peace was to be found and never would be. What she had witnessed in the inn’s room would haunt both her waking and dreaming hours for as long as she lived.
    “This cruelty was unnecessary, Calto. You nearly destroyed her.” A man’s voice speaking gently near her ear, barely carried past her sobbing.
    “Please,” Calto sneered. “Our cousin deserved that and more. She’s a disgrace. A piece of filth who would better fit in among the lowborn trash.”
    “‘ And I say unto thee, walk among my people with compassion, walk among them with mercy in your eyes and forgiveness in your heart .’” Although the man holding Simta spoke with a low voice, it held passion as he recited one of Anothosia’s teachings, one all her priests were ordered to follow. Opening her red, swollen eyes, she turned her head to look into the face of Calto’s twin brother, Larson, knight and captain of the Order of the Sword and the Staff. Seeing Larson, tears streamed down her face in a silent torrent.
    With a dismissive wave of his hand, Calto ignored his brother. “Save it for church services.” He studied Simta. “You have no idea what your lover sent you to steal, do you?”
    Cringing again, Simta shook her head. Every time Calto spoke, fresh tendrils of pain whipped at her mind. “Please, stop. I–I don’t know why he wanted it. I swear to you on my very soul, I do not.”
    When a low humming filled the air, Larson hugged her tighter. Warmth and peace eased over her body and mind, allowing her to feel something other than abject horror and unrelenting fear, but just barely.
    Anger flashed across Calto’s