“Do not speak of Soahm!” Sonara spat. “We must stop this, Wanderer.”
“I don’t care about Soahm!” Karr practically growled the name.
Sonara retreated a step, her back pressing against a metal coolant pipe. “This very space,” she said softly, “is where he was taken.” She pointed at the open hatch in the floor, where the atlas orb spun. “That doorway opened wide, and a blue light carried him from the sand up into the ship. This is where he was taken.”
It couldn’t be the truth, for that would have been ten years ago, and if it was… that meant his parents were still alive, captaining this ship. It would have meant they’d been using a transporter, working with illegal tech and kidnapping an innocent Dohrsaran prince.
“It can’t be true,” Karr said.
But he knew it was, for why would a Dohrsaran know about transporters, and how they worked? It was a tech that should have been alien to Sonara… and yet she’d just explained it clear as day, like she’d never forgotten the moment her brother was stolen.
Karr sat down on the ground, his energy gone. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, back into the winding metal maze of the engine room. Somewhere above, Markam was left unconscious, and the doorway to the storage bay would soon be blasted open. Cade and his soldiers would come through, and this little charade would be over.
Perhaps it was truly the end of Karr’s last stand against this whole damned job.
“Thali once told me something I did not believe,” Azariah said.
She stepped forward, slowly, to peer at the atlas orb.
Her eyes, pools of endless black, reflected the orb’s pure ocean blue.
“She said that if one can only find a reason to give themselves over to the magic given to us—the bit of the planet’s soul that courses through our Shadowblood veins—there is no limit to the power we can unlock.”
She removed her gloves and dropped them on the floor, forgotten.
“Azariah,” Sonara said. “Don’t touch it.”
“Those are my people down there,” Azariah said. She reached out her hands, her bare palms facing the atlas orb as if she were holding them over a warm fire. “And it wasmyfather who joined with the Wanderers to cage them. To make them prisoners, to cut apart the Bloodhorns until they discover its very heart.”
She smiled to herself, closing her eyes as she seemed to bask in the moment.
“Thali did a great thing today, in handing herself over so that we could gain entry to this space.”
“Azariah,” Sonara said. “Don’t—”
The Princess turned to smile at her. It was the kind of smile that belonged to a queen. A woman who deserved to rule, not with an iron first, but with love and light and respect for her people. “I am sorry, Sonara, for the second life you’ve lived on the run. But should I survive this… when I become queen, you will always have a place in my court.”
Before anyone could stop her, she took another step forward.
And with a greatheave,Azariah’s magic erupted.
Chapter 32
Sonara
Fire exploded into Sonara’s senses.
Beside her, Azariah stood with her hands outstretched, her skin glowing blue as her power struck the atlas orb.
Sonara’s hair stood on end, her curse screaming as it was filled withsmoke, the scent of an ancient city burning to a pile of ashes on the ground.
Azariah’s lightning smashed against the orb, blue against blue, a Dohrsaran curse against Wanderer science.
Death,the voice inside of Sonara hissed, as she sensed Azariah’s life, her very energy, like a candle burning low. The Princess screamed, her lightning crackling against the power-source in an endless death blow.
If she did not stop soon… she was going to burn out.
The atlas orb flickered. A tinyblipin the energy that Sonara’s curse sensed as a momentary wave of smoke, like a candle guttering before growing strong again.
