She narrowed her eyes.
“My captain didn’t offer me the truth about the mission. All I knew is that we were to come to your planet, dig for a black substance called Antheon. He never explained the details. Never said it would come to this, to taking your people captive and using them as workers. If I’d known, I would have tried to stop it.”
He hoped she believed him. He hoped her magic sensed his honesty, his truths.
She nodded. “Alright. Markam?”
Markam sighed and stood to approach him, his hand on the dagger at his hip.
“I-it wasn’t a lie!” Karr said, as he watched the dark-eyed man approach with a sickening swagger. “I told you the truth.”
But instead of reaching for Karr with some horrible magic that would squeeze the air from his lungs or suck out his eyes… Markam only turned the spit, removing the hideous creature from over the flames. “Relax, Wanderer. You’ve earned yourself a meal with that first truth.”He ripped off a roasted ear from the creature and held it out. “The first taste.”
“Oh, goddesses, hold me,” Azariah groaned. “You said you were done with torture.”
Markam raised a brow. “I beg your pardon, Princess?” He tossed the ear into her lap. “Perhaps you’d like the first bite?”
She swept it from her lap as if it were on fire.
“Enough.” That was Sonara again, drawing the situation back to her. She grabbed the ear and popped it into her mouth. Her gaze flicked to Karr, who realized suddenly that he was relaxed. That his heart rate had slowed, no longer on edge.
For in that small bit of chaos, the situation had shifted again. He’d seen more than captors in these strange, magic-bearing Dohrsarans.
He’d seen humanity.
And at that glimpse, he saw hope.
Perhaps they would see reason, decide to set him free, if he could convince them he’d had no part in it.
“My brother took the mission of his own accord,” Karr said. “He was hired by a man named Geisinger, a king in his own right, from a planet called Earth. Cade brought us here, said he was going to have a crew waiting to dig beneath the planet’s surface to find the Antheon. Said Geisinger had set it all up. I pressed him for answers, but he gave none. And then when we got to the Gathering, and you,” he looked pointedly at Sonara,“killedme… I’m guessing it set things into motion. Now it’s my turn. Why did you kill me?”
He felt so strange asking the question, speaking of his own death as if it were a casual topic. As if they were old comrades sharing a drink together by a warm hearth.
Sonara cracked her neck. “To understand the truth, you must know the origin of it all. I’m a Shadowblood, brought back from death to live a second life.”
That word.
The Child of Starlight had spoken it, in his dreams.
Karr leaned forward, holding onto her words, desperate to understand them.
“My blood has been replaced by living shadows,” Sonara said, “and those shadows have granted me a curse. Each Shadowblood’s curse is different, perhaps pulling at some strength they may have had in their first life. With mine, I can sense the auras of others. Their truths and their lies, their emotions, their anticipation before a swing. Before they try to escape.” She smiled wickedly at him. “I killed you because my curse deemed it so. It directed me to end your life, for some reason deeper than us both. And now here you sit before me… A Shadowblood, made anew.”
A shiver of fear ran through Karr. But it was also followed by something that seemed to slip past the fear. Curiosity.
“Why?” he asked.
Karr’s heart was pounding in his ears again, like a tub of water set churning down a drain.
“The Great Mother chose you,” the woman in the skull mask said. “The planet itself. Dohrsar. She lives and breathes… and chooses. Andyouhave been chosen, Wanderer. The planet commands all magic. Commands all things. I believe it spoke to Sonara. Urged her to make the choice, taking hold of her magic so that it could set things into motion. Just as it urged your magic to reveal that door to us.” She looked over her shoulder at the crimson door nestled into the rock.“For whatever reason… the planet needs you here. Your fate is intertwined with Sonara’s.”
Karr swallowed. Was this girl, this Child of Starlight in his dreams, some incarnation of the planet’s soul? It was impossible, but so was magic such as this…
He’d seen plenty of strange things in all his travels.
He’d met plenty of people that believed in things others would call ridiculous, religions that he’d never given much thought to, while others gave their entire lives to the cause.
Eventually, one of those religions had to be found to betrue.He just never suspected he’d be the one to discover real proof.
