His soldier ran off to give Rohtt the command: to lock up the woman in the wolf-mask—who’d been acting as Karr—to torture her, if need be, and discover why the hell his little brother had takentheirside.
Cade stood at the railing, looking down at the prisoners below, furious at himself for letting his brother get stolen in the first place.
He didn’t have to guess what happened after that. Karr had probably been tortured by his captors. But then, as he always did, he’d wormed his way into their minds. Found a way to speak to them, figure out their plans, and then decided to take matters into his own hands.
Somewhere along the way, Karr had sided with the Dohrsarans.
Now he’d shut down the atlas orb and had soared away in his battered escape pod to do whatever it was he had planned for next.
Cade should have known. The moment Rohtt came aboard the ship,Karr had seen through the man, seen the darkness in him, and probably decided right then and there that he would stop this.
Karr… troublesome, clever, good-to-the-soulKarr,Cade thought sadly.You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve joined the wrong side of a war you cannot win.
Cade walked towards the brig, feeling weary. Burdened. His steps were heavy, his breaths uneven.
“She’s asked for you.” Rohtt’s voice pulled Cade from his trance as he escorted him down the stairwell to the brig. “Only you.”
“Then we’ll give her what she wants,” Cade said. He crossed his arms with a painful wince.
God, he should have told Karr everything from the beginning. Or better yet, he should have just left him behind, safe on Beta. If he had… it never would have come to this.
Cade peered inside the glass door that led to the brig. The wolfen girl was strung up by her wrists, which were covered by bone gauntlets. No one was inside with her, for she was laughing. Over and over again,laughing,like the electricity they’d used to question her had gone to her brain.
“There’s something you should know about her, before you go in,” Rohtt said.
Cade gave him a sideways glance.
“We’ve shocked her with so much, you think it would have killed her. Hell, it should have killed her three times over again. But she’s still alive. Still just… laughing.”
Cade swallowed and typed in the code, then slipped inside the brig.
The woman was waiting for him.
Her laughing fell silent when he entered. The smell of lightning was strong, like burned hair and singed skin. The girl’s eyes, pale and pupilless beyond her wolf mask, fell on Cade.
“Youfool,”she hissed. “You have no idea what you’re doing to this sacred space.”
Cade took a stool from the corner of the brig. Its legs scraped against the metal floor as he placed it before her and sat down.
“Who are you? What were you doing with my brother? And why do you think you’re vital to helping me complete my mission?”
Oh, the things she told him in that room.
She cracked like an egg and spilled all the contents: where Karr was, what he was doing, who he was with. Themagicthey all held. A woman with lightning in her veins, a devil who could taste emotions on her tongue and decipher truth from lies, and a trickster who could weave illusions like a spider would a web.
She admitted to him that she had no powers of her own.
But she had the answer… could tell himexactlywhere the Antheon was. And how to take it, once they got inside its hiding place, in the Bloodhorns. For the battle would not be simply in finding it. It would be in ripping it out of the Dohrsaran ground.
All she asked for in return was a sword.
A golden sword that had been taken from a Dohrsaran’s hand in the aftermath of the Gathering,as if it had been cast aside. Cade had kept it in his own private quarters, fascinated with the scorpion for a hilt. Masterful work, a blade he thought he could sell for hundreds of thousands when they got back to Beta Earth. Collectors there were fascinated by ancient alien artifacts.
“Why?” Cade asked. “Why make this deal with me?”
“Because,” she said, “I’ve sought the planet’s heart my entire life. But I haveneverbeen able to get inside of the sacred space that hides it.”
Cade thought about it.
