Doraan
Doraanpacedthelengthof his chamber. His head pounded incessantly, growing more and more persistent with each shooting stab of pain through his skull. A throbbing pressure was building behind his eyes and blurring his vision.
Everything that happened tonight was grating at his skull, scraping against it like the talons of a falcon. His trip home, Forcina, the boy. It was all too much and he didn’t know how to handle it.
He brought a fist down onto his desk, sending papers scattering to the floor.
This had quite possibly been the worst birthday of his entire life, even worse than the one when Forcina had cast the curse upon him.
He closed his eyes, replaying the evening of going ashore in his mind.
The boat ride to Aksahri felt as if it had taken an eternity. Each stroke of the oars through the water sent a tingle of unease down his spine until he was wound so tight that he nearly sprung out of the tender to swim his way back to theCursed Soul.
Doraan held his breath to the point of nearly fainting as they passed through the threshold that would normally propel them away from the shore. The curse only allowed them access to land for a single hour, once a year, on the evening of his birthday. From eleven to midnight, they could actually experience walking on the solid earth. Any other time, it was as if an invisible barrier blocked them from sailing any closer. They were left to simply gaze at their home city from miles away.
The anticipation of walking on land again set a hush over the entire crew. No one spoke as they rowed to shore, and he wasn’t sure anyone was even breathing as the tender struck land. It took them a full minute before they timidly rose to step out onto the beach, waiting for Doraan to take the first step.
He recalled looking down at the sand and watching the small waves wash ashore, bubbling as the current pulled them back into the shallow swells. How long he stood there staring at the ground, he couldn’t say. With a shuddering breath, he stepped off onto the beach, but he did not feel solid earth beneath his foot. In fact, he felt nothing at all.
Doraan looked down at his hands and balked as he looked straight through them to the sand below. He yelled as he fell backward, but felt no impact from landing on the unshifting sand, as if the weight of him made no difference.
The witch had made him a ghost.
A small part of him had always believed that Forcina's offer had been too good to be true. It wasn't in her character to allow him to have an ounce of interaction with his family, and as it turned out, his suspicions were correct.
The anger that settled in him since that realization hadn’t yet left and he didn’t think it ever would. The entire evening had rolled like a boulder downhill, picking up speed with each passing minute, and barreling through any hope Doraan had ever had.
For the last ten years, he had held onto the belief his family was looking for a way to help him, looking for something to set him free. But what he found while walking through Aksahri as a ghost was a city that thought him dead and a family who was living their life as if he actuallyweredead, even though they knew he wasn’t. They had even gone so far as to create a gravesite for him. Any semblance of hope that remained in him had been replaced with a fire that burned bright and hot, searing his inside like resting embers.
His fist soared through the air and collided with the oaken wall of his quarters. His knuckles came away bloody from the impact, but his steaming rage masked any sting from his physical wounds.
He didn’t understand it. He was their only son, their flesh and blood. How could they just pretend he was dead?Especiallyhis mother. They had always shared a special bond, a deep connection that only a mother and son knew. His mind wandered back to early morning walks with his mother in the garden. What he wouldn’t give to see the exquisite array of purple and yellow flowers spread throughout the city gardens, to touch their velvet petals and watch the bees as they gathered pollen, flying from one bloom to another. The fragrant perfume of those flowers was now just a distant, cherished memory, slowly fading the longer he was gone from home.
He closed his eyes, picturing his mothers’ crooked, comforting smile, her kind, deep-set eyes, and braided black hair that fell to her waist. She always dressed in bright, sunny colors of orange and yellow—happy colors,she would call them. He would have thought she would move sky and sea to get him back to her.
Apparently not.
Doraan’s nostrils flared, and he spat on the ground beside him, setting those memories he cherished so much ablaze in his mind, turning them to ash and letting them float away with his dreams.
He expected as much from his father. Doraan knew his father didn’t love him, but he thought he at least cared for him in some capacity. If not as a son, then as a pawn to further the family line.
The few memories he shared with his father were short and sometimes harsh. There was one in particular that made him think his father might care for him more than he let on—one late evening Doraan had found his father still awake and bent over his desk looking over heaps of papers. He recalled how the light of the fire gleamed against his fair skin, his hazel eyes flashing as he looked up at Doraan. Surprisingly, his father motioned him into his rooms and spent the night showing Doraan what he was working on. It had been one of the best days of his life. His heart and soul soared with each small smile his father bestowed upon him. He had even let Doraan sit on his lap. Doraan couldn’t even remember what his father said to him at that moment; he was simply content to be close to him, to feel as if his father truly cared for him. It was the first time he had ever felt like a son to his father. The first and the last time, because it had all been lies. Why had he even missed his father at all?
His parents didn’t care for him at all. They were the very reason he was in his current predicament, and they had the audacity to simply brush him from their lives as if he were no more than a speck of dust upon their shoulders. Doraan punched the wall again, his hand eliciting a loud crack as pain pulsed through his knuckles, spreading through his hand and into his wrist. He bit back a curse, almost welcoming the throbbing ache that proved he was still very much alive.
The thought lit a new fire beneath him. It was time to stop dwelling on dreams and take life into his own hands. Hope had gotten him nowhere. It had only wasted ten long years of his life. Ten years of fighting to survive, of pirating and pillaging just to live. Ten years of nothing.
It was high time he did something to change that.
He would spend every waking minute searching for a way to break the curse Forcina had cast upon him. And then he would go home and show his parents that they should never have forgotten him, that he is worthy of their love, worthy oflife.
The only problem was, where did he begin?
6
Kamira
Kamirafeltasifshe had barely fallen asleep before she was torn from her slumber by the loud clanging of a bell ringing out through the entire ship.
