“Enfider,” he replied. “To find the Whisperer and carve out its eye.”
Chapter 7
Windwhippedatherhair, tearing strands free of her braid. Adara gazed out at the vast ocean that spanned to the horizon, with her cloak billowing behind her and her arms resting on the port rail. She scanned the Plagued Sea for any monsters lurking beneath the ship. Just thinking about the possibility of a lykren attacking made her hackles rise and a shudder course through her. She doubted the ship’s cannons and weapons the Andreilians carried would do much harm to one of those hideous beasts.
She’d heard of them in Blemythia, but quickly learned more in Lykrios—the kingdom named after the deadly creatures due to its location along the coast of the Plagued Sea. Lykrens were the main reason people rarely returned after departing from Malryn. No one ever came across one and lived—except Damon Lunard.
The captain had said that this vile creature was a humongous, scaly beast with a long snout and rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth laced with its own blood. Its blood was poisonous to everything, an acid that burned through skin and bone, then infected the bloodstream, coursing through the veins. Its six eyes were pitch black. A soulless demon, Damon said. Its long neck towered over ships, casting shadows over pirates as it poised to strike. Spikes lined its back, armor that protected its behind. Two tentacles sprouted from its body—giant whips that crushed ships—along with clawed, webbed feet. The creature would flick its barbed tail, sending tiny needle-like spikes coated in venom into its victims. It was an impenetrable monster.
Blemythians believed lykrens were weapons created by Narelle, Goddess of the Sea, to protect her sea in a dispute between her and her brother, Daichi, God of Earth. The stories suggested returning the dead to the sea, where Narelle would nurture the sacrifice and return the lost blood to the lykren’s veins, and maybe, just maybe, the soul would find peace in the afterlife with the poison extracted from the body.
It unnerved her to think that those beasts could be lurking right beneath the ship and she’d never know until it was too late. What was even more unnerving was that Damon was willing to speak of a foul creature like a lykren, yet he always kept his memories of the King of Keys locked up tight. Adara shook her head. She shouldn’t be so concerned with sea monsters as she should be with the one captaining their ship.
A deep, cold disturbance sluiced through Adara, like ice coating her fire, as Dominic Nite stood next to her.That boy is incapable of making anyone feel anything other than fear and rage,Damon’s warning rang in her head.
What about love?she’d asked.
The love they think they feel for the Thief of Hearts is only an illusion. None of it is real.
“What are you really doing here?” Dominic asked, voice sharp and demanding. He rested his forearms on the rail, following her gaze out to the horizon, where the sun reflected brightly off the sea.
Sighing, Adara said, “I already told you, Nite. I need time, just like the rest of you.”
“Time for what, exactly?”
“What does anyone need time for?” she replied, tracing her signet ring around her finger beneath her gloves, finding comfort in the flame symbol etched into the band that matched the mark on her chest. “No matter how much of it we have, it will all run out in the end. Kairos doesn’t enjoy being made a fool of when we stop his power.” She turned her head to him and was met with his emerald eyes, sparkling in the sunlight, already transfixed on her. There was a whole ocean they were sailing across, a whole world to be seen, and he stared at her like she was all that mattered. Like he’d memorize every detail of her face with what little time they’d known each other before risking their lives in searching for the relics.
She tried to ignore that beguiling look, hating the way her cheeks flushed. “We are practically immortal, but even we will never have enough of it.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “Evenyou.”
“We’ll see.” He circled behind her, fingers catching in the loose strands of her braid, sending a tingling sensation through her scalp. “If you won’t answer that question, then who, exactly, are you?” His stare threatened to tear straight through her, as if hecould see all the horrid things inside her mind, rifle through her darkest secrets, and pick her apart like a vulture until nothing was left but a husk.
It felt like spiders skittered across her skin, and she suppressed the urge to shudder. She shrugged, maintaining her aloof composure, knowing it was the only shield she had against the King of Keys. “I told you,” she repeated, “I’m Adara Rhyes.”
He gaped at her askance, pulling his dagger from the belt and flipping it in his hand. “I don’t believe for a second that’s all you are.”
Adara scoffed, ignoring the idle threat.
She didn’t even know where to begin. An outlaw without a name. A soldier without an army. A princess without a kingdom. A Flamecarrier with a little too much fire. She’d been many things in the past nineteen years, but none seemed to fit her wholly. Every time she began to get a little too comfortable in a certain role, the world had been tipped upside down, and she was dragged under with it.
But Dominic didn’t carewhoAdara was. He wanted an answer about what power she held, other than simply saying she was a Flamecarrier. She wasPherralike him, like anyone who was gifted with magic by the gods. But mostPherraweren’t born with magic and were only able to manipulate one element, only controlling what was already around them. Flamecarriers and Darkcasters were different. They originated from Blemythia and were able to produce fire or darkness from nothing. They had power that stemmed from a god’s bloodline, chosen to carry a piece of divinity with them.Pherragained their powers from relics or events. Adara waschosen. Bornwith fire in her veins.The first product of the crown and the flame.
“I’m nothing,” she replied, blinking away the sting. The memory of her people, of Flamecarriers, had been washed away with Blemythia since it had disappeared from all maps andminds. She’d prayed that Dominic had known of Flamecarriers or the continent Blemythia or even the Kingdom of Ignatius. Her heart had sunk into the pit of her stomach when he’d told her he’d never heard of them. Truly lost was she without a way home. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that it was gone. Disappeared from every book, map, and memory after she’d fallen through a portal and landed in Lykrios.
She was a girl with nothing, who decided to risk everything in a game of love with the notorious Thief of Hearts.
“Oh, and by the way”—Adara lifted the key around her neck from its position tucked beneath her tunic—“not my key.” She remembered how he’d taunted her for wearing it so openly.
“I know,” he said evenly. “I didn’t sense any power.” He leaned back against the rail, arms folded over his chest, one ankle crossed over the other. “And no one who is ‘nothing’ just throws their key around in a game without a reason. You’re still holding onto something, in need of the power of a key and the Realm Fracturer.” Glad he didn’t ask whose key she wore around her neck, she placed it back against her chest, tucking the only piece left of Cal inside her heart and prayed the love—and grief—she felt for him would provide an impenetrable, stone wall against the monster in front of her trying to break in.
“Except you,” Adara said pointedly. “Because you’re the infamous Dominic Nite, who supposedly carved out his own heart. So much pain, so you wouldn’t lose in a time like this.” She didn’t believe the rumors. No one could carve out their own heart and live on. It must be another story made up by the Andreilians to intimidate others. Even if it were possible to live without a heart, Dominic had to have one. There had to be something deep inside fueling him. A feeling that drove him to such madness as attempting to forge the Realm Fracturer. She couldn’t quite place her finger on it, but it was there. No onewould search so obsessively for the relics that could get them killed unless they had some underlying reason for doing so.
Dominic nodded his head in agreement. “Except me,” he echoed her words. “And if you think ripping out my own heart is the worst I’ve done, I suggest you back out now before things get ugly.”
“Not a chance. I suggest you back out before you find that you’ve met your match,” she said with an air of arrogance that tested him.
A muscle in his jaw twitched in annoyance.
A chill breeze blew, like frost skittered over her bones.
