She curled her hands into fists. Her eyes dropped to the hooded Jaxon, her jaw tightening as she seemed to take a deep, steadying breath. “Can you read, Wanderer? Because it seems you have not agreed to my simple demand. Freeallthe prisoners. Then you’ll receive Karr.”
It was Rohtt who spoke this time. “Free Karr, or your comrade here will receive death.We’ve already given him more mercy than he deserves.”
He pointed his rifle at Jaxon’s head. They’d removed the mite from his neck, knowing full well the Devil wouldn’t take him with it still intact.
The wyvern growled.
“Kill him if you wish,” the Devil said. She shrugged and removed her hat as if to shake off the dust. “He means nothing to me, despite whatever intel you must have received that speaks otherwise.” She paused and smiled with two rows of teeth. “But… I should warn you. The moment you harm him, Razor will turn you into a delicious steak. And she likes her meat well done.”
“Charred, actually,” her male companion said. “To the point of smoking.”
As if in response, emerald smoke plumed from the dragon’s nostrils. Its mighty tail twitched, and... Cade thought he saw something move.
Not something… but rather someone.
Chapter 28
Sonara
It was a stupid plan, really.
Perhaps even verging on outright outlandish, that they’d ever thought it could work. And yet, as she stood there on the loading dock, the wind tugging at her hair, the ground so far beneath her…
Sonara lifted her chin high and thought for one moment that the plan might actually work.
“I willnotfree the prisoners,” the Wanderer leader, Cade, said. There were ten guards in total, spread evenly across the dock; five on each side, with loaded rifles. Sonara watched them in her peripherals as she sighed and tapped her toe against the hard metal.
“A foolish decision,” she said. “Andnotin accordance with my demands.”
Casually, she reached up and adjusted her hat.
The signal, decided upon hours ago, for the rest of her comrades to move.
If she concentrated on it, she could just barely feel Markam’s curse behind her,like a cool tide ebbing at her back; something she only knew because of how often he’d hidden their troupe in the past, on jobs that had gone awry.
Today, he’d fashioned a visual shield of sorts, to hide the truth from Cade and his soldiers. For it was not just Sonara, Markam, and the prisoner Karr that had arrived on Razor’s back.
The others, if they obeyed her signal, were stalking just behind Sonara, hidden by the veil of Markam’s curse. Sonara dared not even try to make out their forms for fear of drawing too much attention to the fact that something was not quite as it seemed.
She thanked the wind for how loudly it howled past, mixed with Razor’s heavy breathing to help muffle any sounds. Sonara kept the conversation going, giving the others time to make their way past the soldiers unheard.
“Well?” she tapped her toe impatiently on the dock, showing not an ounce of fear.
Cade held out his hands. “I have a job that must be completed. When,and onlywhen it is done, your people will go back to their lives, their kingdoms. They’ll continue on as if this was only a blip in the history of Dohrsar.”
“Except the dead,” Sonara growled. “They will walk this planet no more.”
“You murdered my brother,” Cade said, the words tumbling out like they were laced with a bit of poison. His comrade, a man called Rohtt, glanced his way, eyes hardening. “You drew first blood, before I moved against your people.”
“And yet he still lives,” Sonara said.
For just a moment, her insides squeezed as she caught the barest glimpse of Azariah’s outline slinking between two guards; so thin,it could have been a mere trick of the light.
Come on, Markam,she thought, fighting back panic even as she kept her expression cool as the night wind.Hold the veil.
She was so close to the inside of the ship.
So damned close, to getting everything she wanted in one fell swoop: the truth about Soahm’s disappearance,andfreedom for Jaxon and the rest of their people.
