Azariah’s words, strangely, made sense. For if the planet really had given her some of its soul, then that would mean her cursewasalive. That it could possibly find a way to slip out of her control, to remove the leash she’d kept it tethered to all these years. That it could possibly even grow strong enough to commandher.
There was both comfort and unease in considering that. Perhaps that was the answer to why her curse had exploded at the Gathering. But if that was true, then why did theplanetcommand her to kill a Wanderer… someone who wasn’t even from here?
“What happened to Eona after she became a Shadowblood?” Sonara asked suddenly.
“There are many stories about her. Many accounts that she walked the planet, using her magic to seek others like her. Powerful Shadowbloods...some of which she created herself, by slaying those who had unique giftings in their first lives. Who knows how many of them were blessed enough to be chosen and come back a second time?”
Sonara shivered at that. The torch was nearly gone now, the flames having eaten it whole. Soon it would burn to embers.
“What happens if we find the heart?” Sonara asked.
Azariah stood and picked up the dwindling torch. “I suspect that you came here because, perhaps, like Eona… you’re hearing the planet’s call. It sings to your magic, beckoning it to grow stronger, and answer.” She pressed her hand to Sonara’s arm, gently. “You must be careful, Sonara, which path you choose to take.”
Chapter 23
Karr
Karr dared not move.
The intruder was still there on the bridge, kneeling over his parents’ bodies while his knife dripped with their blood.
Plink.
A droplet upon the grated floor of theStarfall.
Plink.
A droplet on the silver pistol that his father had not been able to fire in time, now discarded beside his dead body.
“Hurry up,” a voice hissed.
A new pair of boots entered the bridge. Pretty, polished things, a triangular symbol stamped into the leather on the side of the heel. “Find the keycard and let’s move.”
Karr sank further into the shadowed space beneath his father’s pilot chair; further away from the pool of blood, and his mother’s outstretched hand.
Her eyes were still. Unblinking, as she lay on the grated floor, her lips parted, her gaze distant. She had always watched Karr closely,with a look that only a mother could give. One that was full of equal parts lesson and love…
But now she looked past him. Through him. As if she no longer saw him at all.
“Not here,” the voice said.
“Then check the husband.”
The first pair of boots, unpolished and worn, turned. “I already did.”
“Well, it’s not here.”
“It has to be.”
“Then find the damned thing!” Karr began to shake.
The men were growing angrier. He could sense it in their tones, the urgency of their harshly muttered words as they searched the bridge, throwing journals from their casings beside the dash, opening his father’s lunch crate, tossing aside his mother’s hand-knit blanket she kept slung over the back of her chair for long trips through hyperspace. A framed photo, normally magnetically held to the dash, was thrown to the floor. It shattered, the glass splitting across the faces of the Kingston family.
The boots stopped moving.
A pair of gloved hands scooped up the broken frame. “Oh, hell. Kids, man. There’s kids.”
“Not on board, I didn’t see—”
