Blood of the Sorceress. Maggie Shayne

The three witches?

      “What did I … do there?” he asked, aiming for a skeptical, nearly bored, tone.

      “You were the First Soldier of King Balthazorus,” the priest said. He lowered his head as he said the name, the way Demetrius had observed other people did when mentioning someone they’d known who had died.

      “I was a Babylonian soldier. Fascinating.” He tried to sound amused, as if the notion were silly. But deep down he felt a stirring of … something. Memory?

      “You were seduced and then betrayed by three women. Witches, all of them. Slaves in the King’s harem.”

      So they had been there with him, those three. Those same three, they had to be. Was that why they had to help him now? Because they had betrayed him in some long ago existence he didn’t even remember? Or want to remember.

      “What did these … witches … want with me?” he asked at length.

      “What any witch wants. Power. They wanted power over you. For though they lived in luxury, they were, after all, slaves. Owned by the King, forced to serve him for his pleasures. They wanted what any enslaved person wants. Freedom.”

      “Freedom,” Demetrius repeated. He knew about wanting freedom. He’d wanted it even before he’d known what it was.

      “They used their charms to seduce you to the point where you would do anything for them. Even murder the King you were sworn to serve. Which you did, my friend. Which you did.”

      “I murdered the King?”

      There was another flash in his mind. An ornate room that belonged in a palace, golden relics and rich fabrics everywhere. Exotic oil lamps out of one of the tales about Ali Baba sent thick black ribbons of smoke into the air. A bearded man stood before him, shaking his head sadly while Demetrius struggled against the soldiers who held his arms.

      “You cannot have them killed! Blame me for this. Take my life, not theirs. Not Lilia’s!”

      But the King wouldn’t even look him in the eye. “You betrayed me. You, my most trusted soldier. My … my friend …” When the King finally raised his eyes they glinted with fury. “They die.”

      “No!”

      Demetrius ripped free of his captors and yanked the blade from one soldier’s belt. He lunged forward, brandishing the dagger before him, and he heard the slight hiss of the razor-sharp edge slicing the air—and then the King’s throat.

      It happened so fast. Blood from Balthazorus’s neck sprayed like water from an elephant’s trunk, and Demetrius’s arms flew up in front of his face as its warmth spattered him. The man he’d sworn to serve, his friend, dropped to his knees, one hand grasping uselessly at his blood-pulsing throat, his mouth working soundlessly, eyes wide with shock.

      Demetrius moved forward, falling to his own knees. The knife fell from his numb hand. “No. No, I didn’t mean—”

      The King toppled sideways and lay still, and the blood flow slowed as his body emptied itself. Only then did the guards snap out of their shocked paralysis. One shouted, “Fetch the high priest,” and another brought the hilt of his sword down across the back of Demetrius’s head.

      A soft hand patted the back of Demetrius’s neck and snapped him out of the vision or memory or whatever it had been.

      “Are you all right, my son?” Father Dom asked.