“You’ll tell me where he is,” Sonara growled, and the words were bitter on her tongue. Full of her desperation, her rage. “Or I will drive this blade in deep, and this time, Karr Kingston, you will not come back.”
The space was silent.
She looked past his shoulder at the empty pod, certain that once she looked inside again, she’d see her brother waiting, that stupid sly prince’s grin on his lips, his laughter bubbling over.
I’ve waited for you a long time, he would say. I waited, and you finally found me.
You win, She-Devil.
You win.
“Sonara. He’s not here,” Karr said. “I’m telling you the truth.”
She crawled back inside the cramped pod. “Please,” she begged her curse. She no longer feared it. She needed it, could not go on without it. “Please, show me the way.”
A deep breath, from far within.
And then that ever-present voice whispered, The dash, my dear little Shadowblood. Just there, to the right.
Sonara reached out, realizing there was a small golden chain wrapped around the throttle of the ship.
Golden and… familiar.
Her hands shook as she grasped the chain. It was cool in her fingertips, clinking as she dropped the bauble into her outstretched palm.
She lifted it, gently, and breathed in.
There it was. The aura that had beckoned, that held Soahm within.
All from the stone. Not actually from him.
“It was his,” Sonara said softly.
She turned.
Karr stood there, watching her with sadness in his eyes.
“But that can’t be. It was my mother’s,” he said. “One of the few things she always held onto, was never willing to sell in all of their dealings and travels. She said it came from a friend. But I always suspected it meant something more. She was still wearing it when she was killed.”
“Not from a friend,” Sonara said, and she didn’t know why she felt so hopeless. “It belonged to Soahm. All his life, he wore it. He had it on the day he was taken.”
“Perhaps he gave it to them,” Karr offered. “If they were here, if they were still alive… we could ask them.”
“They stole him from Dohrsar,” Sonara said. “I saw it.”
“They wouldn’t have done it without reason,” Karr said. “They were good people, Sonara.”
“As good as Cade?” she asked.
His words died on his lips. He looked past her, at the dashboard. “I should get to work here… I should get ready to eject us once we stop the power source. Before Cade finds a way in.”
She felt like time had frozen, like her skin had gone numb, the feeling spreading from the outside in.
Ten years of searching…
Ten years of hoping…
She had her answer. She had a piece of Soahm here, the most evidence she’d ever been able to find to prove that he’d been taken, that this ship was the one who’d hauled him aboard. She should be elated, as if she were close to finding the rest of him.
But something felt final.
Like this was all she would ever discover of her brother.
Sonara placed Soahm’s necklace over her head, tucking the stone beneath her shirt to keep it safe. Soahm’s scent faded as she settled down on the ground beside the pod, trying to breathe in the last of him. But little by little, the aura was fading, as if it had held on long enough for her to discover it.
One breath more… and she sensed it no longer.
“I think I found the power source,” Azariah said.
Sonara glanced up, wiping her tears away.
The Princess stood over her, those dark eyes watching her closely.
“I am sorry, my friend,” Azariah said carefully. “We have both lost someone we love today, in different ways.” Sonara knew she spoke of Thali, her trainer and advisor and perhaps the only true family she’d ever had. “But we must finish the job we started. Only then, once the battle is won, can we take the time to sit and weep.”
The words were brutally honest, but there was not a hint of coldness to her voice.
Only strength without judgement, so far from how the royals in Sonara’s life had always behaved. And so different from Azariah’s own father, Jira.
“Come, Devil,” Azariah said. “Let’s finish this together.”
When she held out a hand, Sonara reached up and took it.
Chapter 31
Karr
Not long ago, he’d been in this very space alone, dreaming of another life.
Now Karr led the outlaws through the storage bay, past rows of tied-down crates that were now emptied. How long had Cade been planning this with Geisinger, while Karr drank his daylights out on Beta Earth, and ignored everything his older brother was loading onto the ship each night?
He hadn’t known the crates were hiding assault rifles, a massive electric drill, and—
God forbid he even think it—the mites that kept the Dohrsarans prisoner.
But then again, if he had… what would he have done, back then?
What level would he have pushed himself to, to stop Cade, before his eyes were opened by the people who walked with him now?
“It drops down lower,” Karr said, stopping before the small rickety ladder that led to the ship’s engine room. He’d spent plenty of time down here as a kid, hiding in the hard-to-navigate places.
Pipes slowly spat out steam, cooling the engine room as he climbed through the opening and down the rungs of the ladder, the others closely following.
“Cade can’t be running the force field on the ship’s power alone. That would have meant going into total shut-down mode, lowering the levels so that the only power was fueled towards the light-wall itself. And the mites… they’d have to have a constant source, too.”
“There is power in this place,” Azariah said, as she walked behind Karr, ducking around pipes and past the countless panels that blinked readings back at him. Too much for him to ever consider learning about beyond the basics he already knew.
This was always the mech’s job, a position that swapped out as often as Karr swapped out bits of charcoal for his drawings.
They passed the Starfall’s main engine; a beastly, greased-up thing that rumbled softly, ever-present in its power. But not near enough to keep the ship aloft and keep Cade’s tools of imprisonment running at the same time.
No, there had to be something else… something more that he wouldn’t have taken any notice of. For how long had it been, since he’d come to this darkened space? Cade wouldn’t have even had to hide it.
“It calls to me,” Azariah said. “From just up ahead.”
Sonara spat on the ground behind her. “It’s putrid,” she said. “The aura of it. Power like the volcano that lies in waiting out in the Black Waters. Like a sleeping giant.”
There were only a few dim red emergency lights that glowed softly in the upper rafters of the cramped room, but it began to lighten as they came to the very center of the Starfall, where the ancient transporter base sat.
Not the actual transporter, for that tech had been outlawed ages ago, every last transporter removed and destroyed from all ships in the ITC. It was dangerous tech, the kind that allowed ships to soar into spaces previously thought uninhabitable or unwelcome, and simply remove what they chose—a tech that had the power to scientifically lift an object from the ground with a tube-like force field that slowly drew them into the waiting ship.
Battles were won with it.
Cities were ransacked and picked clean.
“It wouldn’t be here,” Karr said.
But even as he said it, he felt sick.
For there was a dim blue glow, and a warmth in this space. And there were dark curtains hanging in the engine room that had never been there before, splitting the space in two.
“Here,” Azariah said. She held out her hands, her eyes narrowing as she nodded at the curtains before her, the blue light seeping under and around
the gaps. “This is what calls to me. This is what we must destroy.”
Karr’s stomach churned, nausea suddenly washing over him.
He stepped forward and drew the dark curtains aside, knowing already what he’d find. Another unraveling thread in the truth behind Cade’s plan.
Somehow, Geisinger had replaced the transporter inside the ship. Or redesigned it, perhaps, because what Karr saw now was tech he’d never seen on such a condensed scale, so perfectly balanced inside of a single starship.
An atlas orb; the kind of clean, endless energy that powered entire cities on Beta Earth, discovered by Geisinger’s great-grandfather decades and decades ago on a planet at the edge of the galaxy.
The atlas orbs were massive, back on Beta, but this one was no larger than a globe.
It hovered there over an open hatch in the engine room floor, the distant ground visible far below.
The atlas orb crackled with power, slowling spinning like a tiny planet on its own axis. Beneath the orb, past the open hatch in the floor, Karr could see the walls of Cade’s light-cage. They spanned from the center of the atlas orb, stretching far, far down to the ground like a cone, where it trapped everyone inside.
“What… is it?” Sonara asked.
Her face and hair were bathed entirely in cool blue; the exact shade Karr would have sketched her in, to paste upon the ceiling of his bunk.
“An atlas orb,” Karr said. “I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Turn it off,” Sonara said simply.
But as Karr looked at the orb, his eyes tracing the open hatch in which it hovered… he saw nothing that would give him any indication of how to stop it.
He’d never studied the atlas orbs, never knew how they were able to give such endless power, or if, once put in place, they could even be shut off. It was a job for scientists and specialists; a job for Geisinger, or perhaps Rohtt, who knew far more than he was letting on.
“I’m sorry,” Karr said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Sonara turned to him, hands on her hips. “We did not come this far…”
“I didn’t know this would be here,” he explained. “I didn’t know anything, though I’ve told you that before, countless times, about your brother, but you refuse to believe—”
“Do not speak of Soahm!” Sonara spat. “We must stop this, Wanderer.”
“I don’t care about Soahm!” Karr practically growled the name.
Sonara retreated a step, her back pressing against a metal coolant pipe. “This very space,” she said softly, “is where he was taken.” She pointed at the open hatch in the floor, where the atlas orb spun. “That doorway opened wide, and a blue light carried him from the sand up into the ship. This is where he was taken.”
It couldn’t be the truth, for that would have been ten years ago, and if it was… that meant his parents were still alive, captaining this ship. It would have meant they’d been using a transporter, working with illegal tech and kidnapping an innocent Dohrsaran prince.
“It can’t be true,” Karr said.
But he knew it was, for why would a Dohrsaran know about transporters, and how they worked? It was a tech that should have been alien to Sonara… and yet she’d just explained it clear as day, like she’d never forgotten the moment her brother was stolen.
Karr sat down on the ground, his energy gone. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, back into the winding metal maze of the engine room. Somewhere above, Markam was left unconscious, and the doorway to the storage bay would soon be blasted open. Cade and his soldiers would come through, and this little charade would be over.
Perhaps it was truly the end of Karr’s last stand against this whole damned job.
“Thali once told me something I did not believe,” Azariah said.
She stepped forward, slowly, to peer at the atlas orb.
Her eyes, pools of endless black, reflected the orb’s pure ocean blue.
“She said that if one can only find a reason to give themselves over to the magic given to us—the bit of the planet’s soul that courses through our Shadowblood veins—there is no limit to the power we can unlock.”
She removed her gloves and dropped them on the floor, forgotten.
“Azariah,” Sonara said. “Don’t touch it.”
“Those are my people down there,” Azariah said. She reached out her hands, her bare palms facing the atlas orb as if she were holding them over a warm fire. “And it was my father who joined with the Wanderers to cage them. To make them prisoners, to cut apart the Bloodhorns until they discover its very heart.”
She smiled to herself, closing her eyes as she seemed to bask in the moment.
“Thali did a great thing today, in handing herself over so that we could gain entry to this space.”
“Azariah,” Sonara said. “Don’t—”
The Princess turned to smile at her. It was the kind of smile that belonged to a queen. A woman who deserved to rule, not with an iron first, but with love and light and respect for her people. “I am sorry, Sonara, for the second life you’ve lived on the run. But should I survive this… when I become queen, you will always have a place in my court.”
Before anyone could stop her, she took another step forward.
And with a great heave, Azariah’s magic erupted.
Chapter 32
Sonara
Fire exploded into Sonara’s senses.
Beside her, Azariah stood with her hands outstretched, her skin glowing blue as her power struck the atlas orb.
Sonara’s hair stood on end, her curse screaming as it was filled with smoke, the scent of an ancient city burning to a pile of ashes on the ground.
Azariah’s lightning smashed against the orb, blue against blue, a Dohrsaran curse against Wanderer science.
Death, the voice inside of Sonara hissed, as she sensed Azariah’s life, her very energy, like a candle burning low. The Princess screamed, her lightning crackling against the power-source in an endless death blow.
If she did not stop soon… she was going to burn out.
The atlas orb flickered. A tiny blip in the energy that Sonara’s curse sensed as a momentary wave of smoke, like a candle guttering before growing strong again.
Incredible that Azariah was able to stand against it. And if she could keep going, there might still be a chance.
Like an extension of her body, a bit of her soul, her lightning forked from her outstretched palms and clashed against the atlas orb. The orb pulsed like a living thing, fighting back against her power.
Azariah dropped to her knees, her body trembling as she screamed against the power surging from her palms. Her arms had turned utterly black, with blue lines of lightning digging into her charred skin like etched burns. Slowly, the burns snaked upwards. Palms to wrists. Wrists to elbows. Elbows to shoulders.
She was giving everything, everything, towards shutting down the atlas orb.
So why wasn’t it going out?
Release me.
Sonara suddenly heard the whisper inside of her; the call of her curse.
Release me and let me fight with her.
Take away her fear.
Take away her pain.
Years, Sonara had spent hiding from her curse, locking it inside its cage, for it was an uncontrollable beast. Years, she’d feared it, deep down, for the power it held over her.
But as Azariah screamed, as her lightning burned its way to her shoulders, the retort of each slam against the atlas orb like a whip cracking over and over again…
Sonara knew that each surge of power brought the princess closer to death.
Memories flickered through her like snapshots as she leaned closer to the power source, palms outstretched.
Sonara saw herself as a new Shadowblood, standing beside Duran as he drank from the Briyne. Tears poured down her face, and her head pounded with the effort not to breathe, not to sense all the auras spiraling past her, trying to claw their way into her s
enses.
The power source rippled as tears poured from Azariah’s eyes now.
Sonara stepped closer to her.
Sonara, hands shaking as she tied a bandana tight around her own face, closed her eyes, and willed her senses to dull, to no avail.
Sonara, seated in a bar as she drank bottle after bottle of oil to try to dull the pain.
She could no longer hear Azariah’s screams over the crackle of power, the fight against the atlas orb. But Sonara felt her own body turning hot, sweat pouring down her skin as she looked at the princess.
The burns stretched upwards, to her neck.
Sonara, years later, her heart slamming against her ribs as Markam pulled her into the shadows behind a saloon. She laughed as she kissed him, as his teeth tugged at her ear. He pressed a hurried kiss along her neck, and she no longer felt alone.
Not until the aura of lust, verging on love, was so strong, her curse trying to break from its cage that she shoved him roughly away.
“Why do you do it, Sonara?” he asked. “Why do you always push everyone away?”
She’d never kissed anyone again, after that night.
The memories sped forward.
Sonara, moving to the corner of a lively saloon, pulling her hood over her head to drown out the sounds of the music. Jaxon, laughing as he downed a mug of oil and asked her to dance, but she said no, always no, for the joy between them would do nothing but awaken her curse until it begged to devour the auras whole.
The only time she let it loose was when she swung Lazaris, when she cut through victim after victim, using her curse only in the moments it could help her win a fight; help her grab a payday; help her survive.
Laughter, joy, happiness… it was all too much to bear.
The strongest emotions, the purest ones, only begged her curse to break through its cage even harder.
It was fear she could squash most easily, anticipation or little white lies that she could force her caged curse to ignore. Still, the pain she got from releasing it would throw her down to her bedroll each night, for ten years, swearing to herself that someday she’d find a way to rip it out of her body.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 29