She had lost her entire world.
She had lost her soul mate.
As she came around a corner, Erika suddenly appeared from a dark doorway right in front of her.
The Mord-Sith again had on her black leather outfit. Gripping her Agiel in a tight fist, she was considerably closer to Kahlan than any of the people back down the hall following behind. And the Mord-Sith was already moving at a dead run as she emerged from the doorway. Kahlan had fought in the war with Cara enough to recognize the way Erika was holding her weapon. It was a killing stance, meant to deliver a single strike to stop the heart of an enemy.
Erika’s eyes were filled with hate.
Instinctively, Kahlan had already raised her hand as Erika flew toward her.
Kahlan’s fingers just began to contact the center of the woman’s chest, just below her throat.
In that instant, time became hers.
The contact of her fingers was still ever so slight, barely more than that of a lover’s warm breath on a cheek.
Time was hers. Kahlan could have counted every hair at the hairline on Erika’s forehead and then every eyelash.
Although Erika’s face was filled with hate, Kahlan felt no hate. She felt no pity, no rage, no anger, no sorrow. There was no mercy in Erika’s eyes, and there was none in Kahlan’s, either.
In that infinitesimal spark of time, Kahlan’s mind was without emotion, filled only with the all-consuming rush of time suspended.
As she watched Erika before her, frozen in time in the midst of rushing in for the kill, Kahlan knew that the woman had no chance.
None.
She was already dead. That fact simply hadn’t caught up with her yet. Kahlan could see in the woman’s eyes that she did not yet comprehend what was about to happen. She still thought that she was in control of what was about to happen.
She was not.
The cold ferocity of Kahlan’s power slipping its bounds was breathtaking. She felt it welling up from that deep core within her, obediently inundating every fiber of her being in its onward rush.
In that instant in time, her power was all.
As Kahlan had done countless times before, she released her restraint on that wave of power just as it was cresting through her.
Erika’s mind, who she was, who she had been, every desire she had ever had, was already gone.
In a timeless instant of pristine violence, thunder without sound jolted the air of the hallway.
Glass chimneys on the nearby lamps shattered. A window exploded outward. The floor and walls shook from the concussion. Nearby doors blew open. The ripple of power lifted the carpet, rolling it in a wave racing away in both directions. The terrible shock of it cracked the plaster of the walls all up and down the hall.
Behind her, people were thrown to the ground. Those closest felt the searing pain of it the most.
Screaming, Erika collapsed. Her arms and legs twitched as they began pulling in, drawing her up into a ball as she screamed. Bones snapped. Flesh ripped. The woman could do nothing to stop the pain of her body coming apart as the lethal result of her Mord-Sith ability absorbed the unleashed power of a Confessor.
As the woman in black leather writhed in agony, the men, who had finally recovered and scrambled to their feet, came rushing forward to make sure the threat was subdued. The threat had been subdued before they had even seen the woman.
The threat had been ended the instant Kahlan had seen her.
Cassia, Laurin, and Vale, all in red leather, closed in beside Kahlan, looking down at the result of a Confessor unleashing her power on a Mord-Sith.
This time, there would be no begging to carry out the wishes of the Confessor who had touched her. It was different when a Mord-Sith was touched by a Confessor’s power. For a Mord-Sith, such a touch meant a long and agonizing death.
“Pick her up and take her down to the dungeons,” Kahlan said to the men. “Leave her down there where her screams won’t bother anyone. No need to lock her in. She won’t be going anywhere, but she will be the rest of the day and probably the entire night dying.”
“I had heard the stories,” Cassia said in a whisper as she watched the men picking up the twisting, screaming woman dripping a trail of blood as they carried her down the hallway. “The truth is a lot worse than the rumors.”
Kahlan nodded. “She chose her own fate the day she eagerly swore allegiance in her heart to Ludwig Dreier.”
As the men vanished down the hall, carrying the screaming Erika away, Nicci took Kahlan by the arm and pulled her close.
“Kahlan, the poison you carry in you, Jit’s touch of death, cut you off from your power, preventing you from using your ability. So how did you do that?”
“I no longer carry Jit’s poisonous touch of death in me.”
Nicci blinked in surprise. “What?”