Cade laughed harshly, the sound reverberating off the walls. It sounded a bit like the laugh Thali had given him inside the ship’s brig. He silenced himself, checking his temper. He turned his gaze away from Karr, onto the Devil instead. “What did you do to him?”
“The question,” she said softly as she drew herself to a standing position, her sword in her fist, “is not whatIdid to him. But whatyoudid.What your parents did, the secret you kept. He’s not your brother. Not fully.”
Cade tilted his head.
Something squirmed inside of him. A feeling of sickness, of unease. How could she know the truth? It wasn’t possible. Beside him, Thali seemed to perk up, listening closely for the first time since they’d entered the cave.
“What are you talking about?” Cade didn’t have time for this. “Karr! To my side.Now.”
The Devil drew her sword, a pathetic attempt at a threat from the bottom of the amphitheater, when Cade stood above withrealweapons. But she snarled up at him, and said, “Do not speak to him as if he’s yourbeast,forced to sit at your feet and lick the blood from your wounds. He’s not yours to command. He never was. Not since the day your people replaced his heart with Soahm’s. Not since the day you swore to keep that secret to yourself.”
That squirming thing broke free inside of Cade.
It was terror. Terror, because how could this girl know the truth? For if she did… that meant…
“I know everything,” Karr said next. He looked back at the Antheon, his fists clenching as he stepped away from it. When his gaze swung back to Cade, it was full of so many things. Sadness. Horror. Disgust.
“All these years, you knew, Cade,” Karr said. “You knew that theonlyreason I am alive is because of a boy our parents abducted from this very planet. And now you dare to come back here, to the place I owe my life, and destroy it by ripping the very heart from it.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Cade whispered.
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Karr said. “I saw all of it. Iseeall of it, and I keep seeing it, even when my eyes aren’t open. It’s the very worst when I look at you.”
“I didn’t choose,” Cade started. “I didn’t chooseanyof it, Karr! They did!Theystarted this!”
Karr held up a hand. “Stop,” he growled.
And as he did… the ground trembled.
Cade thought he imagined it. An aftershock, perhaps, from the drill breaking through the mountain.
“You are my brother, Cade,” Karr said. “We share a lifetime of pain. A lifetime of things we did not deserve, but our parents brought it all onto us. And then you decided to continue it, when you made a deal with Jeb.”
How did he know? How could he know?
Cade realized, suddenly, as his body felt dipped in ice… this was not Karr standing before him. This was a monster wearing Karr’s skin. Perhaps hisrealbrother died that day on the sand, when the Devil turned her sword on him and drove it into his chest.
The Antheon had brought Karr back. Geisinger said it had the power to do such things.
But what if it hadn’t? What if it brought back a monster instead, some twisted version of Karr, that saw all and knew all, and…
“Enough of this,” Thali said. “I’ve waited long enough.”
She stepped away from Cade, walking forward into the unclaimed space between the two groups.
“Thali,” the beautiful one called up. “It’s okay. We’re going to protect it from them.”
“Silence, Princess,” Thali hissed. “For so long, I have had to put up with your voice.”
The woman below gasped, and took a step back, shock spreading across her face.
“All these years,” Thali said. “All these years, I have sought to find a way to enter this sacred space. The heart lives. The heart breathes. It is so, so beautiful. I never thought…neverthought I would finally find it.”
“You shouldn’t be on their side, cleric,” the Devil said, her voice turning to a warning tone. “Care to explain what you’re doing with them?”
“Hello, Eona,” Thali said. Her wolf mask swung right, her eyes just barely visible in its shadows as she glared down into the pit to stare at the Devil. “How long have you been hiding in there?”
Cade watched, unsure what to do. Unsure when to command his people to move.
