She turned, and there was Markam. Holding her journal in his outstretched hands, a look of compliance on his face. “Don’t kick me in the balls, please. I do rather like their current form.”
Leave it to Markam to make her laugh, despite herself. Sonara chuckled softly, then took the journal from his hands, pressing it to her chest.
When she caught Markam’s gaze, that little spark of pride in his eyes, she relaxed her grip and placed the journal into her inner duster pocket. It was all she had left of Soahm.
“Look who’s rummaging around others’ belongings now,” Sonara said, swallowing and turning away as she repacked her bag, shielding her face with her blue curls.
“You dropped it. In the attack. A simple thanks would suffice.”
“I’m all out of thanks,” Sonara said, glancing past Markam to the Wanderer’s unconscious form. He was now tied against one of the spiraling rock pillars, his head slumped forward in sleep. That strange suit still covered the rest of his body, but without his helmet…
He looked like a Dohrsaran wearing a Wanderer’s skin.
She hated the very sight of him.
Azariah and Thali cleaned him up, using the cloths to wipe the dried blood from his forehead. They’d wrapped and bound the cut tightly. Thali held her bone-covered hands before her, murmuring softly as if she were praying over him.
A Wanderer, right here in the flesh, turned Shadowblood.
“You haven’t spoken much since we saw what he was,” Markam said as he sat down beside her.
Sonara sighed, and placed Jaxon’s hat back over her head, the scent of him now long gone.A sickening ache twisted in her stomach.
Goddesses, she was sotired.There was a weariness in her bones that just wouldn’t quit. “I never speak until I have words worth doing so,” Sonara said.
“What did you sense when we captured him?” Markam asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He raised a dark brow, and she knew he saw right through her lies. He always had, for how could anyone trick a Trickster? This was Markam’s game she was playing, not hers. “We were partners for years, Sonara. Lovers, too.”
She wanted to retch at that thought.
He chuckled as if he understood. But then he narrowed his eyes. “I know that look when I see it. It means something dark. Something dangerous.”
“It was nothing,” she said.
He reached out, lifting the brim of Jaxon’s hat with one finger, so he could better look into her eyes. “It wasn’t nothing.”
Sonara stood, tired of holding it back. She grabbed Markam’s sleeve and pulled him closer as she lowered her voice.
“Soahm,” she whispered. She pulled the journal from her pocket and flipped open the worn pages. Sketches of Wanderer loot flickered past as she went page after page, flashes of words sketched by hers and Soahm’s hands. But it wasn’t the drawings she’d needed. It was thescent,tangled up in the pages. “The Wanderer’s blood,” Sonara said, angling her chin at the unconscious boy. “The moment I drew it from his skin, it was like… like I could sense Soahm all over it. Like he was right there with me.”
“But you never knew Soahm’s aura,” Markam said, and for a moment they were their old selves again,no lies between them, and certainly no lust. Just two new Shadowbloods trying to make sense of their second chance in the world. “You didn’t have your magic when you were together in Soreia.”
“No, I didn’t,” Sonara said. “And stop using that word.”
“Sorry,” Markam glanced over his shoulder, where Thali still tended to the Wanderer like a mother beast. “The she-wolf won’t shut up about it.”
“She won’t shut up about a lot of things.” Sonara lifted the journal again, the aura ofcharcoal and dust, memories and dreamsfiltering into her senses. “But when he bled, I sensedthis.That same aura, every time I open the pages. It’s like…” She breathed deep now, but the scent hadn’t lingered this time. It never did for long. “Like he’s here with me, talking about doing so much more. Dreaming of being the leader our mother never was; someone kind and gentle and different from the warrior mold Soreia has always known. This journal was Soahm’s before it was mine, and I like to think it carries a piece of him with it. Like his soul is inside.”
Like the Antheon that can turn a regular man into a Shadowblood,Sonara reminded herself.That would turn a king into a conqueror, should Jira get his hands on it.
She was beginning to wonder where the line was, between fact and fancy. Lately, it had been blurring more and more. And now that a Wanderer had been chosen by the planet?
Blast, she couldn’t be sure.
“So you’re saying… what, exactly?” Markam asked.
