“What is your plan, boss?” Edmund lights his pipe.
Calder slams his hand along the side, coating the ship inseidrice. “Catch Rolf. Brutally kill him. Save the Princess.”
“Solid plan.” Thora withdraws a set of throwing knives and begins methodically sharpening them along a small whetstone hung around her neck.
Edmund exhales a cloud of smoke from the pipe propped in the side of his mouth. “You killed Guy, but Odo is still a problem. What if we don’t reach them before they hit Skalor?”
Calder also lights his pipe and growls low.
“You underestimate how many lives I will ruin to keep that girl safe.”
16
AURA
September 5th, Year 21, 10th Era
Somewhere on the South Sea
Aura’s stiff body sways in tandem with the rigid planks beneath her back. The motion of what feels like waves jostles her further into consciousness.
Am I aboard a ship?
Nausea rolls through her stomach as she shifts her position along the slick wooden boards that smell of saltwater. They must be sailing on the South Sea.
Haughty laughter fills her ears, and the fishy scent of the sea overrides her senses.
Her eyelids fly open, revealing the clear night sky. The events leading up to Rolf injecting her with Azure spiral through her mind. How had the realms overturned itself on her?
As she awakens, the ache in her chest throbs as she realizes how truly alone she finds herself.
Isabel ruined her only opportunity to become a Drengr, jeopardizing her future and her life as a Sigvidsson in Salt.
“I cannot believe you are my daughter.”To think she has failed her father so wretchedly.
Did he survive? Or will he join Grandpapi in the Depths and look upon her with all the disappointment she showed him in life?
“I could never be with someone like you. I don’t want you, Aura.”
The other gut punch from the one person she believed she could trust feels like a dagger to the heart.
Colorful green lights with a hint of pink dance across the darkness.
Lights of the Dawn.
The Gothi claim the rare colors in the sky signify a significant event.
Her parents always say the lights danced above Salt the night she was born to welcome her soul to the mortal realm—a superstition she always found to be a load of horse shit.
But now, lying on her back on an enemy ship bound for Skalor, she takes peace in the strange lights. Perhaps something good would come of the last several weeks.
If she could not escape Rolf and Isabel, they would sacrifice her on an altar from which even her godly grandparents could not save her.
“Wakey, Princess.” Isabel kicks her in the side with a chilling smile that cuts through the evening.
She clutches her stinging side while her fuzzy mind struggles to readjust from the Azure Blooms departing her blood. Questions arise as she glances from her position along the bow to the forty slumbering warriors resting in the hull.
“Where are we going?” Aura asks, knowing full well they are venturing to Skalor but needing the bitch to confirm.
