“I SAID, WHERE IS HE?”
She slammed him against the metal wall of the storage bay. His head hit with a sickening crack, but he did not cry out. He let her shove him against it, curling his shirt in her fists.
“He’s here. I can sense his aura, all over this hellish place.”
Karr’s eyes were desperate as she growled and pulled him away from the wall, then turned and hauled him back towards the pod where Soahm’s aura waited, whispering,Here I am, Sonara. Find me.
She shoved Karr to his knees, then whirled and pointed at the pod. “Where is my brother?”
“Sonara.”
His palms were face-up. Pleading. She removed her sword—Soahm’ssword that she’d stolen from Soreia on her way out—and pointed it at Karr. She no longer cared if he was a Shadowblood, no longer cared that he’d helped her into this very ship. He’d once carried Soahm’s lingering scent as he’d bled. He had toknow something.
“You’ll tell me where he is,” Sonara growled, and the words were bitter on her tongue. Full of her desperation, her rage. “Or I will drive this blade in deep, and this time, Karr Kingston, youwill not come back.”
The space was silent.
She looked past his shoulder at the empty pod, certain that once she looked inside again, she’d see her brother waiting, that stupid sly prince’s grin on his lips, his laughter bubbling over.
I’ve waited for you a long time,he would say.I waited, and you finally found me.
You win, She-Devil.
You win.
“Sonara. He’s not here,” Karr said. “I’m telling you the truth.”
She crawled back inside the cramped pod.“Please,”she begged her curse. She no longer feared it. She needed it, could not go on without it. “Please, show me the way.”
A deep breath, from far within.
And then that ever-present voice whispered,The dash, my dear little Shadowblood. Just there, to the right.
Sonara reached out, realizing there was a small golden chain wrapped around the throttle of the ship.
Golden and… familiar.
Her hands shook as she grasped the chain. It was cool in her fingertips, clinking as she dropped the bauble into her outstretched palm.
She lifted it, gently, and breathed in.
There it was. The aura that had beckoned, that held Soahm within.
All from the stone. Not actually from him.
“It was his,” Sonara said softly.
She turned.
Karr stood there, watching her with sadness in his eyes.
“But that can’t be. It was my mother’s,” he said. “One of the few things she always held onto, was never willing to sell in all of their dealings and travels. She said it came from a friend. But I always suspected it meant something more. She was still wearing it when she was killed.”
“Not from a friend,” Sonara said, and she didn’t know why she felt so hopeless.“It belonged to Soahm. All his life, he wore it. He had it on the day he was taken.”
“Perhaps he gave it to them,” Karr offered. “If they were here, if they were still alive… we could ask them.”
“They stole him from Dohrsar,” Sonara said. “I saw it.”
