“But would you have wanted them?” Eona asked. She clicked her teeth. “No, my soul, I do not think you would have. For your destiny is worth more than some pathetic mortal crown. You are the savior of Dohrsar. Well, half of you. The planet could not place all of her faith into one person again. Dohrsar made that mistake with me, for still, that missing piece of her heart is out there. I never got it back.” She sighed. “So the other half of my soul went to an equally worthy person. A Soreian prince who was kind and pure to his heart, but willing to do what needed to be done to guide his kingdom to true light. He was named Soahm. Your brother.”
Soahm.At the sound of his name on Eona’s lips… Sonara felt like she was ready to shatter. Ready to break. “You’relying,”she spat. She looked at Karr, begging him to agree with her. But he only stared at Eona, unblinking. “Azariah was correct, that Eona was the enemy to the planet, and she’s twisting stories even now, trying to decipher a way for us to bring her back. To give her the power of the heart.”
“Do you sense lies in my words, Sonara?” Eona asked. She shook her head. “No. Because inside you know I speak the truth. You’ve known from the very moment you became a Shadowblood that you were worth something. It is why you always fought for life. Why you fight for freedom, even now, for the ones who don’t see value in you. Because you want them to believe you aren’t a Devil. You want them to know that deep down, you aregood.”She sighed and turned to face Karr.“This is where your destiny mingles with Sonara’s and Soahm’s, my sweet lost soul.” She truly did sound sorrowful, as if she hated the words she would speak next.
“Me?” Karr asked.
Eona nodded. “The darknessdidarrive. Not once, but twice. It is here now, to carry out the end of the end. But it came before, searching for a savior of its own. It found that savior in Soahm, and it stole him away, taking with it the other half of my soul before he could meet his death on Dohrsar, and become a Shadowblood. Before he could reach his destiny.”
“But… that has nothing to do with me,” Karr whispered.
Eona gently inclined her head. “It has everything to do with you, Karr Kingston. For inside, you carry the other half of my soul. Inside… you carry Soahm’s heart.”
Chapter 38
Karr
“No,” Karr said. Beside him, Sonara had gone still and cold. So still he could no longer see her breathing, could no longer feel the warmth of her skin beside his. “I don’t understand.”
“You have the answers inside of you,” Eona whispered. “I’ve given you the history, the memories… so many lives, my soul, mixing inside of you. It is no wonder your dreams are full of confusion, carrying you to so many places.”
The frozen throne room, the floor of theStarfall,where his parents were murdered. The rocking sea, and the sand caves…
“You have lived not twice, as many Shadowbloods do,” Eona said, “butthreetimes, Karr Kingston.”
“No,” Sonara breathed out the word. “No. It can’t be.”
“The reality of it is painful, but that pain does not make it any less true.”
“How?” Sonara asked. She was shaking now. Karr could feel her body trembling beside him. Her hands curled into fists as if she wanted to grab her sword and tear apart Eona, and the heart with it. “I need to knowhow.”
Eona looked to Karr instead. “You know, Karr. Deep down, you already know… but time is fleeting. So I will show you.”
She reached out again, pressing the tip of her star-finger to Karr’s temple. He did not feel pain, as he normally did at her touch. Instead, it was like he’d been dipped into cool water as she pulled a strand of starlight from his temple.
She let it fall into the sea.
The water rippled, morphing from black to silver as the boat rocked with the waves.
“Come,” Eona said as she knelt. She took Karr’s hand, and Sonara’s next, and pulled them down with her until they knelt, too. “It begins with me.” She released their hands, then reached over the edge of the boat and ran her fingers through the silver water.
It rippled, and suddenly it was no longer a sea, but a memory.
They looked down at a land painted in white. A castle was carved right out of the ice, glimmering like it was made of fractals and glass. The scene zoomed forward, tearing right through the castle walls. Inside, he saw a young girl with pale, snow-white hair and a crown of stars upon her head, as she entered that very throne room Karr had seen in his dreams. The Child of Starlight, in the flesh.
“Eona,”Karr whispered.
This memory came fromherpast, the part that her soul carried with it.
The image changed, colors morphing and swirling together until it cleared again.
In this memory, Karr saw that same sand castle in Soreia, but this time he was up close, staring down at the blue-haired young man he’d seen on the beach beside Sonara.Soahm.The prince was younger,standing on a balcony, a worn journal in his hands as he sketched the landscape, a sprawling kingdom by the sea. His rich blue cloak flapped behind him in the wind. He smiled as he focused his charcoal on a beautifully crafted stable that stood in the castle’s shadow. Inside it, a blue-and-brown-haired girl with dark eyes, shoveling waste out of a steed’s stall.
The image rippled, morphing again.
Until Karr saw himself. His own memory.
A child, so young at the time, but he recognized his own face. More specifically, the people standing over him as he lay in a hospital bed, sound asleep. His parents.
