Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Valek fighting his guards as he tried to reach Mogkan. Too late for me. With a final surge of strength, I mentally reached out. I hit an impenetrable barrier as I felt my consciousness drain. Blackness filled my world.

Then Irys’s voice was there in my mind, soothing. “Here,” she said, “let me help you.” Pure power flowed into me. I reconstructed my mental shield and deflected Mogkan’s onslaught, pushing him back. He crashed into the opposite wall with a satisfying thud.

Confusion reigned in the Commander’s chambers. Inexperienced with magic as I was, I couldn’t restrain Mogkan. He bolted from the room. With a knife in his hand, Valek fought three guards with swords. As I rushed to help Valek, Brazell grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him.

He raised his sword. Murder blazed in his eyes. I jumped back to avoid the first swing of his sword and bumped against the Commander’s bed. I leaped onto the bed to avoid Brazell’s next swing. I glanced down. The Commander’s gaze was still fixed on the ceiling. Brazell’s third swing severed one of the bedposts.

As I dived from the end of the bed to avoid another blow, I seized the post from the floor.

Now I was armed. The post wasn’t balanced properly for a bow, but it was thick. Better than nothing.

Brazell was a powerful opponent. Each swing of his sword hacked chunks out of my weapon.

At first, he scoffed at my attempts to fight him. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re a skinny nothing. I’ll gut you in two moves.”

When I found my mental zone of power, he stopped wasting his breath. Even sensing his next attack, I still scrambled to stay one step ahead of him. My wooden post was no match for his sword.

Reyad’s ghost materialized in the room. He cheered his father on, trying to distract me. His tactics worked. My back hit the wall. Brazell’s sword split my post in half.

“You’re dead.” With gleeful satisfaction, Brazell pulled his sword back to slash at my neck. But I still held a part of the wood. As his sword swung close, I deflected the weapon downward with my broken post. The tip cut across my waist. The sound of ripping fabric accompanied a line of fire across my stomach. Blood soaked the ripped ends of my uniform shirt.

Then Brazell made his first error. Thinking I was finished, he relaxed his guard. But I was still on my feet. I raised my weapon. With desperate strength, I struck him across the temple. We crumpled to the floor together.

I gazed at the ceiling, trying to regain my breath. Valek hovered over me. I shooed him away. “Find Mogkan.” He disappeared from my view.

Once strength returned to my limbs, I examined my wound. Running a finger along the gash, I thought all I needed was some of Rand’s glue.

Reyad’s ghost floated over me, sneering. I couldn’t bear lying on the ground with him in the room. Cursing and bleeding, I stood.

“You.” I stabbed a bloody finger at him. “Go away.”

“Make me,” he challenged.

How could I fight a ghost? I moved into a defensive stance. He scoffed. No, not a physical fight, a mental one.

I thought about what I had accomplished in the year and a half since I had slit Reyad’s throat. Overcoming my fears to make friends. Confronting my enemies. Finding love. How I felt about myself. Who I was. I looked into the gilded floor-length mirror of the Commander’s room. My hair was wild. My shirt soaked with blood. My face streaked with dirt. Almost the same reflection when I first became the food taster. But this time there was something different. The shadows of doubt were gone.

I peered deeper and found my soul. A little tattered and with some holes, but there all the same. It had always been there, I realized with a shock. If Reyad and Mogkan had truly driven it from me, I would be chained to a floor right now and not standing over Brazell’s unconscious form.

I was in control. This new person in the mirror was free. Free of all poisons. I glanced at Brazell. He was still breathing, but I was in charge of him and of myself. In command. No longer a victim. No longer the rat caught in the metal jaws of a trap.

“Be gone,” I ordered Reyad’s ghost. His shocked expression gave me great joy as he vanished.

But joy was like a butterfly alighting on a hand; a brief rest before flying away.

“Janco’s hurt.” Irys’s alarmed voice resounded in my skull. “We need a medic. Come now.”

Using manacles from a dead guard’s belt, I handcuffed Brazell to the heavy bed. Then I bolted from the room. I raced through the corridors. He can’t die, I thought. Not Janco. I wouldn’t be able to bear his death. Horrible scenarios played in my mind. I was so preoccupied that I rushed right toward Valek and Mogkan without even recognizing them.

They dueled with swords. The reason the scene had taken a while to clarify in my mind was because Mogkan had the upper hand. Valek’s pale face was haggard. He swung his sword as if it was a dead weight. His natural grace had fled, and what remained were sporadic, jerky movements. Mogkan, on the other hand, was quick and competent, technically accurate, but lacking style.

My disbelief and concern grew as I watched the match. What was wrong with Valek? Was it Mogkan’s magic? No, Valek was immune to it, I thought. Then realization dawned. Valek had said being close to a magician felt like wading in thick syrup. And Valek had fought seven guards in the Commander’s room after spending the last two days in the dungeon without food or sleep. Exhaustion had finally caught up to him.

Mogkan’s grin widened when he spotted me hovering nearby. He executed a lightning-quick feint, and then lunged. Valek’s sword clattered to the floor as a crimson slash snaked up his arm.