Sonara’s grip tightened on Lazaris. She could swing. She could lift her brother’s old sword and swing right now, stab that beautifully honed blade against his armor. Perhaps it would work.
But then she would leave without her answers, without Soahm.
So she swallowed the taste of bile in the back of her throat, telling herself that an outlaw was only as good as their self-control.
Revenge wasn’t always best served cold.
Sometimes it needed to fester and fever like an old war wound.
“I only want the truth,” Sonara said, snapping back the reins on her rage. She tapped the drawing of the flaming bird again. “Is this not the very same symbol on your ship?”
She thought she saw him sigh, as he took a step closer. “It’s the exact same bird. Maybe… it’s possible that my parents once came… but of course, there’s no way that they would have taken someone. Something,always, but someone?” He spoke like he was trying to solve a riddle in his own mind.
The others suddenly joined him, five Wanderers in their crimson armor, faces hidden beyond heavily darkened visors.
“Karr!” A woman Wanderer, judging by the voice, but far, far taller, stopped just behind him. “Is there a problem here?” Her hand flinched, as if she wanted to reach out and place it on his shoulder. She lifted it instead, signaling the others to step closer.
The short Wanderer,Karr,glanced backwards. “It’s fine, Jameson.” He lifted his own hand into a fist.
The others stopped.
As ifhecommandedthem.So strange, for his voice and his face were far younger, his size so much smaller than the group behind him. “We’ve never taken a soul from any place we visit. Talk to the Captain, if you don’t believe me.” He pressed a hand to the side of his red helmet. “Cade, there’s someone who’d like to speak to you.”
A pause.
His hand dropped, and Sonara assumed he was speaking to her again. “I’m sorry. I’ve nothing to offer you, and the Captain is otherwise engaged.”
She was about to speak again, to choose her next question wisely, when a new aura suddenly grabbed her curse’s attention.
An ancient and furious presence, gnashing its teeth, like the last warm trickle of sunlight before an endless, frozen winter.
It was the very same one from the journey here, the one that had sent Sonara tumbling to her knees. She wobbled, feeling the world tilt sideways and back again before she steadied herself.
“Sonara?”
Behind her, she felt Jaxon’s presence as he stepped from the small crowd that had gathered, but she could not speak.
Her eyes watered from the pure power of the aura. She tried to swallow it away, but before she could, it surged again.
More insistent this time, like it was pushing her to pay attention. For a moment, she felt whisked away from her body, cast into her curse as it pounded its fists against the cage and roared. She could sense her own sword. Not theblood and metal and bonebut the ancient steel within it. The hands that had once forged it, female and long forgotten and laid in a deep sandy grave.
It was impossible.
The aura flared outwards and away from the pommel, beckoning her towards the Wanderer boy. It landed where his heart pulsed in his chest beneath his red armor, his blood sharp as iron as her curse inhaled without her consent, breathing him in.
It laid out a path for her. A path she felt she was compelled to follow.
From sword to Wanderer heart.
Kill him,her curse whispered.
It sounded, suddenly, like the voice that had spoken to her ten years ago, when she’d been cast into an otherworld of half-darkness, half-light.Choose,the voice had said then.
Kill him,it said now.
Terror surged through her. For she tried… Sonaratriedto push it back, to harness her curse and force it inside of its cage. But she was helpless to its spell.
The hair on her arms stood on end as she felt her own hand responding to the order. She looked down, horrified as she fought back to no avail. That aura and the voice that came with it, so strong her curse would not relent, commanded her very motions.
