“We need you to go ashore once we get to our destination.”
She cocked her head as questions swam through her mind, and she finally settled on, “I’m confused.”
Doraan rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, clasping his hands tightly together in front of him.
“We need information. A certain kind of information.” He paused, clearing his throat. “It…it could be dangerous.”
“Um, okay…I’m still not following. Why exactly amIthe person you need to go get this information? Why don’t you or one of your crew go and get it yourselves? I’m fairly certain any one of you would be a far better choice than me,” she said, raising a brow.Why was he being so cryptic? What a strange conversation.
“We can’t.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
He closed his eyes, shoulders rising with tension as he sucked in a breath but never exhaled, “We can’t.”
“Why not?” Kamira queried.
“We can’t go on land.”
She snorted. How stupid did he think she was? Who couldn’t go on land? Were they famous outlaws? Actually, the more she thought about that the more plausible it seemed. “What did you all do? Accidentally steal from one of the Emperor’s personal ships?” She chuckled.
He laughed but there was no humor in it. “No, we physically can’t step foot on land.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him. They couldn’t physically go on land? Why the blazing seas not? What happened if they tried to? Would they explode or something?
When he didn’t freely offer any further explanation, she finally said, “Well, are you going to tell me why or just continue to stare at me as if I might bolt out the door at any second?”
He brought a hand up to cover his face and leaned back in his chair again, dragging the handdown to his neck with a sigh.
“Well?”
“We are cursed,” he huffed.
She waited for more, but he stayed silent, which only made her roll her eyes. “Seriously, that’s the response you’re going with? You couldn’t come up with anything better to tell me, so you devised some absurd explanation to avoid the truth? You askedmeto go and get some kind of dangerous information, but you won’t tell me the actual reason you need me to get it?”
“That is the actual reason.”
She glowered at him for a long moment, watching as a small bead of sweat gathered at his hairline before dripping free and rolling down his forehead. “No,” she said.
“No, what?”
“No, I won’t go ashore and get you your mysterious information. Not until you tell me the truth,” She lifted her chin.
“I am telling you the truth!” He groaned, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before leaning toward her, resting his elbows on his knees. “Okay, listen. I know it sounds insane, but I’m not lying to you. You can ask any one of the crew and they will tell you the same thing. We were all cursed ten years ago by a Sorceress named Forcina. She cursed us to never walk on land again. We can’t do it even if we tried. For ten years, we haven’t even been able to take the ship closer than ten miles from shore.”
Kamira’s eyes glazed over. Cursed by a Sorceress? She had never heard of such a thing. That would mean that the Sorceress could control her words as if she were controlling an element, binding them into existence. There was no possible way to do that.
“A Sorcerer can’t curse someone. I don’t think their gifts work that way. I’ve never heard of anything like that,” she said, her eyes finally coming back into focus.
He huffed a laugh. “I assure you, they most certainly can. This entire ship has been cursed. We can easily prove it to you.”
“Why?”
“Why were we cursed?”
She nodded, eyes narrowed on him.
He looked away from her, his expression shadowed in sadness. “She cursed me as a punishment to my father for killing her son. She wanted him to feel the same pain, only worse. She wanted him to know I wasn’t gone, but trapped and never able to come home.”
