It went through him, searing past his skin, past his blood and his bones, into his rib cage, where she removed his heart.
Not flesh, as he had suspected.
But solid black.
The Antheon that Cade was after, but today, it pulsed in the child’s grip.
Like a still-beating heart.
When he woke, Karr Kingston’s captors had prepared a feast for him.
Or so they’d said.
But by the looks of the hideous creature rotating on a makeshift spit over a fire, its jagged teeth poking out from a charred, fleshy head… he wasn’t so sure.
Sonara,the blue-haired woman had called herself. She’d dragged him here by his ropes, setting him before a stack of unlit wood, where the rest of the group sat. Dirty and not heavily armed, there were only four of them in total.
The beautiful one, with black, depthless eyes, had held her hands before her, her dark brows knitting together as she concentrated.
“Find your peace with it, Azariah,” the small-framed one, in the wolfen mask, leaned forward and seemed to sigh. “Settle your soul into the depths of the Great Mother and let your powersoar.”
A spark of blue shot from Azariah’s palms, sparking the fire to life in an instant.
Karr hardly believed it—for that was magic, living and breathing, in front of his very eyes.
Magic the likes of which he himself had achieved yesterday. Impossibly, he knew it washis magicthat had done it,hispower that had split the cave floor.
He remembered that awful heat, that roiling darkness that had broken inside of him, tumbling into an abyss in his soul where something living had been waiting for him to open it.
That great surge of power had shoved the very cave walls aside, revealing a crimson door, as if it had been there in hiding.
The firelight spread further, revealing that very door now.
There it stood in the rock, sealed shut.
Hehad done that.
Buthowhad he done that?
The question made him look at the group differently, for this wasn’t any normal prisoner-of-war situation.
Something had changed drastically in himself, and it made him desperate to try to discover what other secrets this group, this planet, might be hiding. For was it possible the people who’d taken him captive werealllike him? Was it possible that others, on Dohrsar, had this hidden magic?
He looked to Sonara, who sat cross-legged on the other side of the flames, her hand resting on her black-and-blue sword.
“Why did you kill me?” Karr asked cautiously. “And why did I come back changed?”
She picked at her teeth with a bone. “I ask the questions. If you answer mine, you’ll earn the right to ask me one back. Is that clear?”
Azariah simply ran her hands through her tangled hair as if trying to remove the knots. The one in the wolf-skull mask was motionless, looking towards the red door in the rock, and the man beside her, whose eyes danced with mischief as he twirled a dagger between his fingertips, was watching Karr like he might bolt.
Like hedaredhim to bolt and see just how far he could run before he sank that menacing dagger between Karr’s shoulders.
“Fine,” Karr agreed. He’d play her little game.
Sonara tossed the bone behind her and sat back in a casual, relaxed lean. “What business do your people have on my planet?”
He chose his words very carefully. “I’m not in the business of taking people captive. I’m not in support of this mission at all.”
