“Where is Soahm?” the girl asked, instead of answering his question.
“I just told you. I don’tknow.”How could he make her believe him? She seemed intent on exactly the opposite. “There’s nobody on board my ship with that name, nobody but a bunch of grunts from across the galaxy and—”
“You lie,” she said. “His scent is all over you.”
She pointed the sword at him.
“I didn’t lie!” he yelled. “I don’t know Soahm! He’s not on the damned ship!”
“Lies,”she hissed, leveling that blade ever closer.
Karr yelped in sudden panic, his hands grappling for something,anything,but the ropes were too tight, and all he got was a sharp slice on his palm from a bit of rock protruding from the ground.
He stared at his hand in horror.
Because something was wrong with the image before him, as his palm throbbed from the cut. He felt like he was in someone else’s body, wearing the skin of an imposter as he looked down.
The blood on his hand was all wrong.
Karr stared, open-mouthed, as he watched it soar from the wound.
Not drip, as it should have done, as it hadalwaysdone. Butsoar.Like it was weightless, smoke trailing from a candle just blown out.
It was not blood.
It was shadow.
“What’s happening to me?” His voice sounded distant.
“You bleed shadows,” the woman hissed. “Shadows that have the very same aura as him.”
“What did you do to me?” Karr gasped.
His hands were shaking beneath his bonds.
He wanted to get free, wanted to scream and run but he feared that his body was no longer his, that even if he tried, he would not be able to control it.
“Tell me where my brother is.” She stood and drew closer, her sword swinging back towards him. “Tell me where you’re keeping Soahm of Soreia.”
“I don’t know!” Karr said, shaking his head.
The atmosphere was poisonous. Had it turned his blood, addled his brain so that he thought he was speaking her language? He could hardly concentrate as he saw the deep, dark blood slip from the wound, as if it had been hiding inside of him like some sort of living poison. Shadows whisked away into the darkness, gone in a puff of black.
“Your ship stole Soahm. Ten years ago, in the night, I saw the red bird fly away with him. And now you’ve returned, and your scent carries his. Lie to me again, and you will never forget Lazaris’ name.”
“Please,”Karr said, shaking his head. “I don’t know! My helmet, oh God, where’s my helmet?”
It was terror that wrapped him up now, and he was sinking, falling into an abyss he feared he would not come back from.
He was dying, surely, from the poisonous atmosphere. And if he didn’t die from that, he’d die when this woman killed him for good.
The panic roiled.
Deep inside of him, he felt something shift; a rift, forming in his chest. As if a beast had been in slumber, and now his own terror was forcing it to awaken. His skin crawled, as if his blood was boiling inside, and if he did not let it out, he would burn to ashes.
“He had blue hair. Blue eyes.” She towered over him like a monster. “He had a family and a future and a crown—and it was all stolen from him.”
“Please,” Karr begged.“Please,I don’t know a thing, just let me go.”
