Eona.
An enemy to the heart.
Sonara reached for Lazaris.
But her hands only scraped air. Her weapon was gone.
“You cannot kill me here, child,” Eona said. “Not until I release you. And even if you did, the death would not be true, for I no longer exist. I am only Eona’s spirit. The voice that speaks for Dohrsar.”
“You were the one who forced me to kill him,” Sonara said, looking towards Karr. “The one who has destroyed everything, time and again, taking my curse and acting like it’s some sort of plaything in your hands.”
“Oh, child,” Eona spat the word. “Goddesses above. You use your magic but you still call it cursed. Dohrsar was right to choose you. The perfect balance. Deep down, you want to do good. But you don’t fear the darkness,the acts you might have to do in order to protect the light.” Eona sighed, shrugging her delicate shoulders. “It is just as I was, a long time ago. For part of me… half, at least, resides inyou.”
Sonara blinked.
The boat slid soundlessly across the sea.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sonara asked.
Eona smiled. “Listen, for once, Sonara of Soreia, and the truth will be revealed to you.” She looked to Karr with narrowed eyes. “And you. Dohrsar has been waiting foryourfate to collide with hers, lost soul. For together, you are the answer to end an oncoming darkness. Dohrsar sensed it long ago, barreling across the stars. Such peace, Dohrsar once had from her place in the sky. But other planets have voices, too. They whispered to her, sent their warnings from star to star, until the message arrived. A call across space and time.The darkness is coming.”
Eona’s gaze deepened, the nebulas in her eyes churning like a raging sea.
“Those planets were unwise. They shriveled and died when the darkness arrived to them, for they did not create an army as Dohrsar did.”
“Shadowbloods,” Sonara said.
Eona nodded.
“I was the first. She gave me a choice, just as you both had… I looked at the darkness and light, and I could not choose.”
“But the story says you tried to slay Dohrsar,” Karr said. “You tried to take the heart for yourself.”
Eona balked. The boat rocked, suddenly, as the black waves came to life. Perhaps Azariah had been wrong about the story after all,the details she’d spent her life believing warped as they slipped from lips to ears and onwards again.
“This is exactly why I will never understand your kind,” Eona said. “I was once alive, like both of you. I have watched you, the living creatures that walk on Dohrsar’s back, plucking plants and animals from her without ever thanking her for her gifts. You allow things to get twisted, stories to shift and change like the sands of time, until only the tiniest seed of the real truth remains. I was her first Chosen. Her first protector. It was my fool brother, Eder…” Eona’s eyes narrowed, blazing bright. “Wicked, unworthy Eder, who managed to steal a part of Dohrsar’s heart. Without it, she cannot be whole. She cannot unleash the power she holds inside to fight the darkness away.”
“What darkness?” Sonara asked.
But Karr spoke next. “My ship. TheStarfall,and Cade’s plan.”
Eona nodded, her nebula eyes grave. “A darkness much like the darkness that arrived when I was a living child, in my first life. My father found the heart, and in his greed, wanted it for himself. But I heard the planet’s whisper. Heard the heart calling to me.Save me.Gentle and pressing but commanding all the same. My steed and I stood against him. Together, we fought with all that we had in our souls, for I did not want the planet to be stripped of what allowed it to exist. When I fell… Dohrsar brought me back. She gave me a piece of her own soul, the blood that roils with shadows. That part of her soul allowed me to have magic that was twofold. The ability to command the very land beneath my feet. And the ability to hear the planet’s voice. To speak to her, not through words, but through tastes. She brought my steed back with me, for he’d been slain trying to protect the heart, too, loyal to the grave.”
Sonara felt her very blood go cold, then.
Powers that were the same as hers. The same as Karr’s.
And Duran.
Duran had come back to life, too.
She listened closer, wanting to understand why, of all people, the planet had chosen a girl who was unwanted. A bastard princess from Soreia, who had never been anything special at all.
“Oh, yes,” Eona said. “You notice the connection. But the tale is not yet complete. You see, when I rose again—the planet’s soul like living shadows in my blood—I sensed an aura of terror upon my tongue. The planet was afraid. I commanded the ground to quake. The cave entrance collapsed, killing my family with it. None but my younger brother Eder escaped.” She looked past them, and in the sky came a flashing vision of the temple, the ruined arches and patterned stone strewn with skeletons. “This place became my home, for I chose to guard the heart with my second life. Because before Eder fled, he took with him the portion of the heart that my father had stolen. He declared that he would someday return and use that portion to take the heart for himself. I stayed for years, honing my powers, crafting a mighty underground temple to Dohrsar with my magic. Here, I worshipped her. In this sacred space, I listened to her whisper. She told me that the darkness she was warned of would someday arrive. So I began helping her craft an army. I crafted a door with my own magic, buried it in the earth and left the heart locked up behind it. I traveled across Dohrsar, where I helped to slay others, so that the planet herself could bring them back.”
“You murdered innocent people across the planet,” Karr said. “In hope that some of them would come back?”
Darkness, or light?
