Karr’s posture was rigid instead of lazy. His smile was wiped clean from his lips, and his eyes… they looked up at Cade with a burning intensity that they had never held within.
It was almost like hatred.
Cade couldn’t look away from Karr, couldn’t stop feeling like the brother he’d always known and loved and protected, that he’d given all of himself for… wasdead.
Chapter 40
Sonara
Hello, Eona. How long have you been hiding inside of there for?
“You know?” Sonara asked Thali, as that greeting, more like a threat, entered her brain.
Her curse was going wild. It screamed at her, pounding at its cage from within. She let it out. She obliterated the cage door, let it fall to dust and rubble, for she no longer wanted to control it. Everything she’d ever hoped for, everything she thought she knew was true about herself, and Soahm… it was all a lie.
She didn’t care.
She wanted to burn down the world.
She wanted to destroy everything in the wake of her rage, because Soahm was gone. Not just stolen, butgone,forever. It was some kind of sick, twisted punishment for her sins that Karr carried her brother’s heart, her brother’s aura, right back to Dohrsar.
Karr lived because Soahm was dead.
Karr carried half of Eona’s soul because Soahm’s heart was cut right out of his chest and given to him as a secret gift.
Thali suddenly knelt at the top of the amphitheater, drawing Sonara’s gaze back to her. Giving her a place to focus her rage. And as she knelt, an aura filtered out from her.
That dusty, ancient scent, carried on the planet’s breath.
Sonara breathed past it, trying to decipher Thali’s next move. For the woman had apparently betrayed them, had secrets that went far deeper than anything Sonara expected. Secrets that tangled up in all the horrific truths Eona had shared with them.
“Thali?” Azariah called out to her once more.
Sonara swung her arm out, sword stopping the princess before she could move forward.
The Princess, somehow, was her half-sister. Another sickening twist of fate, that she’d had someone like her all along. A piece of her family, her blood, that she’d never been given the chance to get to know. She wouldnotlet harm come to Azariah today.
“Don’t,” Sonara growled. “She’s not who she says she is.”
Azariah paused, eyes wide, and for a moment, Sonara feared she would not listen. But the princess stopped. “Thali? Is this true?”
The cleric only laughed; a strange sound that had not come from her before. “You’re a foolish thing, so desperate for love. All along, I thought… I suspected it was you. Three years I wasted, trying to train you. Trying to help you grow your power, so that you could lead me to the heart. And all along, it was the Devil I truly needed.”
Azariah’s aura deflated at those words.Realizationandbetrayalfiltered out with each breath as she stood with Karr and Sonara and flexed her hands.
The hair on Sonara’s neck began to stand on end.
“Not yet, Princess,” Sonara whispered. “Hold it back. Save your strength.”
For what would she have left, at this point? Azariah nodded, and the electricity in the space fizzled.
“I did not suspect Eona hadtwopieces of her soul that survived,” Thali said. Her voice echoed through the cavern. “I know now that one of those pieces resides with him.” She pointed her gauntleted finger at Karr. “A Wanderer from afar. Eona’s spirit is always meddling, working with the planet, the two thinking they’re some sort of preposterous team. Was it Eona’s spirit that compelled you to kill Karr, so she could bring him back a Shadowblood? So she would make it harder for me to win in the end?”
“Who are you?” Sonara demanded, feeling like a beast whose hackles were standing on end. As if the piece of Eona’s soul that she carried inside was growling. Warning her without words. “Who are you truly?”
“A lifetime of worship and sacrifice,” Thali spat. She trembled as she removed her bone gauntlets, letting them fall to the floor with a hollow clatter. Sonara realized, as she watched, that she’d never seen the cleric’s arms or hands without them. The scent ofdecaypoured from her, that strange, dusty aura that Sonara had sensed on the woman the very first time she’d met her face to face, in the saloon. And now she realized why.
Thali’s skin was decayed beneath those gauntlets. Portions of her skin had been eaten away to hollow, holes of green, dying flesh. As if her body had been devoured, little by little, by some sort of poison.
