Honored Vow

appreciated that, I also needed to
    simply rest. With Crane talking to them and me close to him, I felt
    included without having to exert any energy at all. I didn’t remember
    closing my eyes.

    218

    Mary Calmes

    Chapter Seventeen

    “THE trial of the heart begins now,” the priest announced loudly and gave
    the command to begin.
    I felt like I was in a dream.
    Each semel was bound to an actual wooden cross, tied tightly and
    painfully with rope. It was to be endured. The sooner it was over, the
    sooner your semel went free. The point was to fight efficiently and release
    your leader.
    If the house failed to protect the semel or shirked their duty in
    cowardice, the semel was disemboweled by the “knife-wielder,” who was
    the sheseru of the semel-aten. The semel was then cut to pieces until there
    was “a river of blood,” the law said. It was far too horrible to contemplate
    the death of my mate from having his organs devoured and then being
    drawn and quartered.
    If the assault was foiled, then the semel was released and he and the
    three chosen from his household to defend him, as well as his mate,
    attacked the other semels. It was kill or be killed during the final trial of
    the heart, and whatever I had shared with the other yareahs the night
    before was meaningless as the test began.
    We all had to make it out alive.
    Dval Quach, Ammon El Masry’s new sheseru, entered the pit with
    fifteen men. They could shift, if they wanted, into panthers, just as we
    could, but I was not allowed to employ my werepanther form. If I shifted
    into either my werepanther form or any nekhene form, I would be
    disqualified, and Logan and Crane and Andrian and Taj and I would be

    Honored Vow

    219

    executed. Logan, of course, would be killed in the prescribed fashion, the
    rest of us beheaded.
    The sheseru stood in the center of the pit with the three semels
    trussed up along opposite edges. Five men each ran to attack the
    households. The problem was in the numbers. If one semel fell, then all
    those left who had attacked him would join the others. Whoever fell first
    would be facing a fair number; the others would not. The trial proceeded
    until there was only one challenger remaining to stand against the semel-
    aten, with his maahes, the following day.
    We were in a trial today, but there was also the following day to
    consider. The priest had cautioned us against simply defending our semel
    and not thinking to attack others as well. If you killed another semel, yes,
    that would mean more khatyu to fight, but at least you would be that much
    closer to becoming semel-aten.
    I had told Andrian, Taj, and Crane that no one was to leave Logan’s
    side. We would slaughter anyone who came near him. It had been my last
    order before we all shifted to panther form, having agreed that morning
    that this was the form we would take.
    As we made the phalanx around the cross, I was unprepared for the
    bullwhip that wrapped around Andrian’s throat and yanked him off his
    feet into the dirt a few feet from us. Normally there were no weapons in
    the pit, and so I was surprised. Taj moved fast, faster than any of the
    khatyu were prepared for, and with a snarling roar, landed all over Dval
    Quach. Even if he had been warned by the semel-aten that Taj was a
    former member of the Shu, he had not been prepared for such a blurring
    attack.
    As soon as the tension released, even for a second, Crane was there
    at Andrian’s side, having shifted to his human form, as was legal, getting
    him out of the whip. Andrian rose, coughing, retching a moment before he
    and my best friend were swarmed by ten panthers.
    If I shifted into my nekhene form, I could kill them all, but I
    couldn’t. And I wasn’t big in my black panther form. Watching Crane and
    Andrian fight for their lives, seeing Taj in a fight to the death, I realized
    the futility of my situation. There were more cats advancing on us, and
    even without looking, I knew that one of the other semels, either Gavin or
    Hiroshi, was dead. What could I….
    “Reah!” Logan screamed at me.

    220

    Mary Calmes

    When I turned to him, I saw his eyes. Even where we were, as close
    to horror, to the end, to the edge of the precipice, still, there was love there
    in his eyes, not fear. He was so full of desire and want and need, and… he
    was my mate.
    He was the mate of the reah of the tribe of Mafdet, but not the mate
    of the nekhene. The nekhene had no mate.
    I couldn’t outwardly