“Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long.”
“You bitch! You couldn’t even give us one hour. Onesinglehour to visit our families.”
“What's the matter, Doraan? Have you finally realized the implications of your curse?”
Doraan said nothing, his thumbs cocking both pistols.
Her smirk turned venomous, like a cobra ready to strike. “At least they are still alive,” she hissed. “At least you got to see them again. I will never have that chance.”
Doraan barked a humorless laugh. “It’s nothing you don’t deserve, witch.”
Forcina growled, the air around them swirling with her anger, causing the rigging to creak and strain, the sails flapping with the sudden whirlwind. “You know nothing, child.”
“I know enough,” Doraan pulled the triggers of his pistols one after the other. Smoke billowed and sparks flew as the bullets sailed through the crisp midnight air, but just before they met their mark, they fell upon the hard wood of the ship and rolled like discarded marbles, stopping just in front of his foot.
Her cackle pierced through the night air like daggers. “This is all you will ever be, Doraan. A boy cursed to live a life of piracy. A man left with nothing but this rotten old ship.”
He kept his face devoid of emotion, refusing to let her see how deeply her words had cut, and stared at the two round metal balls at his foot. He knew the bullets wouldn’t meet their mark. Forcina wasn’t invincible, but she could not be wounded so easily either. She was a powerful Sorceress with an affinity for air.
Doraan hadn’t thought tonight could get any worse, but Forcina’s arrival had caused any semblance of patience he had to evaporate. When he looked up from the bullets, the witch had vanished into the night.
“I’ll be in my quarters. Do not bother me, not even if one of you sorry fools is at death’s door,” he barked at his men before grabbing the hanging lantern at the top of the steps, stomping down to his quarters, and slamming his door with as much force as he could muster.
He wanted nothing more than to lay down and forget this night had ever happened. Why had he gone back to Aksahri? Wouldn’t it have been better to live in blissful ignorance, living out the rest of his days as a captive of the sea?
He hadn’t known what to expect upon returning home—it had been ten years after all. He had expected many changes, of course, but not the hard reality that he had stumbled into. He felt as if someone had shoved him into a barrel full of ice water, forcing him to wake from a bad dream only to step into a nightmare.
Doraan closed his eyes and tried to breathe in slow, steady breaths.The bastards,he thought. They had written him off, forgotten him as if he were no more than mud under the soles of their shoes. They were the reason he was even in this situation. The reason Forcina cursed him.
Doraan grunted, sitting heavily on the edge of his bed, setting the lantern on his bedside table as he rubbed his throbbing thigh.
Tonight had been eye opening to say the least. It was a rude awakening to realize that ten years of his life had been completely wasted on the dream that his family cared for him, that they were working tirelessly to get him back, when all this time they had simply cast him off as dead. Well, if they weren’t going to find a way to break the wretched curse Forcina had cast upon him, then he would have to do it himself. He would show them that he was worthy, that they shouldn’t have given up on him without even trying. That they should not have stopped caring. It was high time he took his fate into his own hands.
He closed his eyes once again, blowing out a long, heated breath, and bringing a hand up to rub at the pressure building along his forehead. Doraan was contemplating laying down to try and sleep when the hairs stood at the nape of his neck, unease roiling through his gut as the feeling of being watched washed over him. He jerked his head, expecting to see Forcina standing there but was surprised instead to see a small, rather frail looking creature shaking in the corner of his room. His surprise quickly turned into the rage he had been trying to suppress. “Who the bloody blazes are you and how did you get into my chamber?”
The boy opened his mouth, but no words came out. Doraan pushed himself up a little too quickly, not allowing himself the time he needed to adjust his footing and stumbled, careening into the child, unable to stop himself. To his surprise, the boy released his grip of something he had hidden behind his back and rushed forward, placing delicate hands against Doraan’s chest, giving him just enough leverage for Doraan to balance and stand up straight.
“Are you alright?” the boy asked.
He narrowed his eyes at the youth, suddenly wondering if he had been wrong and he wasn’t a child at all. He was small, but there was something about his face—the boldness in his blue eyes, and the firm set of his mouth that made Doraan second guess his assumption. He honestly couldn’t tell if the boy was fourteen or twenty. But before he could really get a good look at the lad, he noticed the item the boy had dropped. One of Doraan’s own daggers lay discarded on the floor. His anger rushed forward like a tidal wave once again.
“You dare come into my quarters and try to kill me with one of my own blades!” he yelled, grabbing the lad by the front of his shirt.
“I wasn’t trying to kill you!” the boy squealed. Doraan could smell the panic leaking from his pores.
“Why are you here? Who sent you?” Doraan roared. Had Forcina dropped this boy off to spy on him? Was it possible that his family wanted to make sure he never returned, so they had sent someone to murder him? As soon as the thought came to mind, he pushed it away. It didn’t make any sense. Even if they had sent someone after him, they wouldn’t have been able to come aboard. No one could.
“No one!” the boy screamed. “No one sent me!”
It was then that Doraan realized what his immediate anger had overshadowed. Thisboyhad gotten onto the ship. How had he gotten onto the ship? That shouldn’t have even been possible.
At least, he didn’tthinkit was possible.
“Who are you and how did you board this vessel?” Doraan held firm to the boy’s shirt, his eyes boring into the lad, brows drawn tight together. The only person who ever came aboard theCursed Soulwas Forcina.
“I-I, my name is Zev,” the boy stuttered. “I’ve come for work.”
“Work?” Doraan scoffed. “You're telling me you couldn’t find work in the city, so you paddled miles out to sea and boarded the first vessel you saw, in the dead of night, hoping for work?”
