Beat.
Karr looked skyward. For suddenly the sound was growing louder. And coming closer.
Beat.
…Beat.
…Beat.
He was certain,certainthere was something above him. He heard it,feltit, his hair moving as if caught in a strong breeze. But there was nothing above him save for the sky, the rings of Dohrsar still glittering bright, the monumental red rock towers off to the right.
“You’re losing it,” he told himself, over the sound of the wingbeats.Perhaps the airwaspoisonous. Perhaps it had gotten to his brain.
Not a second later… Karr’s helmet fell from his hand and landed with a dull thump against the loading dock.
For out of the sky, a monster appeared.
It burst into existence, a wyvern as black as night. Its wingbeats carried it closer, dark scales and sinews undulating as it stroked its mighty wings once, twice, then tucked them close to its body and spiraled down towards the ship.
There were two riders atop its back, outlined in the last dregs of sunlight as the day shifted into cold, unfeeling night.
The first was a man wearing a hat, a leather duster coat rippling behind him as it caught the wind. The second was the very same blue-haired woman who’d driven a sword through his heart.
He stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet as he tried to get to the airlock. The wyvern landed before him. Its mighty claws screeched against the metal, black jaws oozing as if it couldn’t wait to swallow him whole.
“P-please,” Karr gasped, holding his hands before him as the young woman dismounted, swift as a river, and strode across the landing dock to stand above him.“Please.”
He wanted to scream, but his voice had been stripped from him in the face of fear.
“Oh, look at that,” the woman said, raising a blue brow as she frowned down at him. “The beast begs.”
Terror washed over Karr, freezing him to the spot as she took the very sword from his nightmares, spun it around…
And with a single hit across his skull, sent him spiraling into the dark.
The last thing he saw was his own blood, pooling across his vision as he fell.
Not crimson.
But dark as night. As if it were made of living shadows that danced away on a hot desert wind.
Chapter 22
Sonara
The Wanderer boy bled red like the rest of them.
Sonara had seen it with her own eyes, felt the warm wetness of it melt into the spaces between her fingers as it oozed down Lazaris.
Red—like the bird painted on the belly of his ship. A crimson that spoke of Soahm’s mystery.
Hehadbled red. Sonara was certain of it.
But when Lazaris’ pommel hit true on that landing dock, and the skin atop the Wanderer boy’s scalp split open…
Her curse went wild.
For it wasn’t crimson that seeped from his wounds, like the last time she’d drawn it from him. It wasshadows.Shadows like her own, not pooling from beneath his skin, but soaring. Little ghosts formed out of the darkness, sprouting wings and taking flight.
