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defended you unto his dying breath and still left you with a champion who was not weakened by his bond."
    "Mikhail will smite you," Ninsianna hissed in the Evil One's language. “He will run you though with his sword.”
    The Evil One’s lips curved up in a cruel smile. He gestured to the two cold-eyed goons who had accompanied him here and barked orders at them in a language which seemed familiar, but she could not understand. Her gift of tongues no longer worked? No. The language they spoke was even older than the languages created by the goddess. The two goons held her arms outwards like a sacrificial offering.
    "Jamin!" Ninsianna projected images into Jamin’s mind of the time she had healed him. "Don't do this! You have to know this is wrong!"
    Jamin's eyes grew black with fury.
    "Don't try your mind manipulations on me, sorceress," Jamin hissed. "Did you even love me a little? Or was it all just a game?"
    Ninsianna remembered the times she had grit her teeth and pretended to listen to Jamin's ramblings about his dreams to transform Assur into the center of an Ubaid nation. She had cared for him because he was beautiful and all the other women had wanted him, but never had she loved him. No, she hadn't, even though he had fallen deeply in love with her. The only reason she'd agreed to marry him was because, at the time, she'd honestly believed that marrying the Chief's son was the will of She-who-is.
    Jamin sensed her hesitation.
    "That's what I thought." Jamin clenched his fist. He yanked the red cape off of her and approached the Evil One with the garment held before him as though he presented a raiment for a king, blood-red in the dying sun.
    "You covet this cape? Don't you, chol beag ?" the Evil One asked Shahla. He set the magnificent red cape around her shoulders as though he were a lover preparing her for their bridal bed. He murmured something into her ear, loosening her hair and arranging so that she wore it the way that Ninsianna usually did. "You do want to be together? Don't you?"
    "Yes!" Shahla's spirit light was pink and happy. She wanted to go with him more than anything in the world.
    "Just one small token of your affection," the Evil One pinched her chin. "And then you will be mine forever."
    "He's not your husband!" Ninsianna shouted.
    "Oh, but she is my wife," the Evil One laughed. "We even had a wedding ceremony, didn't we?” He gestured towards the fat lizard king. “Lord Zebub was kind enough to read the nuptials. And of course we consummated the marriage." He pulled Shahla into his crotch. "Didn't we, love?"
    Shahla giggled. Ninsianna looked into her wide-open mind and saw the Evil One had mimicked her wedding to Mikhail, right down to a replica of her embroidered white linen shawl.
    "I bore witness to it myself," Jamin glowered at her. He pulled a knife out of his belt, one Ninsianna recognized as a poorer version of the one carried by Mikhail, but far more effective than her own clunky stone blade. She struggled against the two brutally strong Angelic goons. Jamin stepped before her and stuck the point of the knife into the underside of her chin. Did he intend to kill her?
    "Every single day since you spurned me and ran into that winged demon's arms," Jamin's nostrils flared, "I have dreamed of carving out his heart the same way that you carved out mine ."
    Ninsianna saw the place in Jamin’s spirit light where his heart still bled for her, the place where she had manipulated him to love her, and then she had hurt him when she had suddenly broken off their engagement. She-who-is's admonition, that it did not behoove her to be cruel, came back to haunt her.
    "I am sorry that I hurt you," Ninsianna said. Tears welled into her eyes and she saw he was not unmoved. "I broke things off because we were not right for one another. Mikhail had nothing to do with it."
    Jamin's hand trembled, causing the knife to cut her. Ninsianna winced. Jamin stared at the trickle of blood which seeped down his blade