“There’s another dead person,” I say. “Only this one is inside some sort of ice coffin. And he’s … not a skeleton.”
Far from it. His skin is pristine. Smooth yet hardened, like a boy who’s just become a man. His eyes are closed, each of his dark lashes visible underneath the inches of ice that separate us. His torso is bare, his legs in some sort of leather breeches. He doesn’t wear any boots. The man is well built, with tanned white skin, brown hair shorn close to his scalp. His jaw looks sharp enough to cut the glass around it. His nose comes to a soft point, and his brow is on the small side.
Why is he tanned if he’s in this place? Is this another prisoner who was captured? If so, why did they take the time to place him in a tomb? And why is he still made of flesh while everyone else is made of bones?
“What is he, then?” Kearan asks.
“Looks like he was frozen minutes ago. His skin doesn’t look pale, like the dead. His cheeks have some pink to them. He looks … alive but in ice.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m just telling you what I see.”
“Is there a lid to the ice coffin?”
“You want me to open him?”
“I’m just asking if it opens. I think it’s a valid question.”
I reach out a hand to touch the ice coffin, testing for a seam.
“Yes. It opens.”
He says nothing, and I say nothing.
After some deliberating, I announce, “I’m opening it. He looks like he’s still alive. Maybe he’s from the Wanderer.”
“Be careful.”
As if I’d be anything else.
It takes both arms and bracing a leg against the wall, but eventually I’m able to shove at the icy lid. It skids loudly, until it lands on the ground and cracks into a few pieces. The noise doesn’t rouse the man in the tomb.
I reach for a blade and place it near his lips. It doesn’t come away foggy.
“He’s not breathing.”
“Maybe check for a pulse?”
Right. I reach down my free hand to the side of his neck.
The second my fingers touch his skin, his eyes open, which should be a good thing. Rousing him is exactly what I was trying to do.
Except those aren’t human eyes. They’re a blue as iridescent as a peacock’s feathers, and they’re glowing. My body floods with cold, and instinct moves the hand holding the knife.
I stab it right into his heart.
The blade doesn’t skim bone and sink into a soft organ. Instead, it makes a chinking sound as if I’ve struck metal.
And then the room before me disappears.
I peered into the room where my little sister slept, knowing it might be the last time I saw her sweet face. I always liked to see her when she slept, because it was the only time she wasn’t in pain.
She was twelve, and the doctors were sure she wouldn’t see thirteen.
Unless I did something about it.
I had a plan. The ship would leave tomorrow, and there were already whispers about what we would find when we made port.
The panaceum. The cure to any ailment. Just what Kayra needed to survive.
I was going to find it. I was going to steal it for myself. I was going to keep my family together.
And I wouldn’t let anyone get in my way.
I know the memory isn’t mine, but I’m transfixed by it all the same. The determination and love of the owner fills my whole being. It’s akin to the warmth I remember feeling with my own family. That sensation of belonging gathers under my skin. It moves toward my chest, as though all the warmth within my veins is pulled to the very center of me, leaving my limbs numb from the lack of it.
Everything that I am, everything that I have—it’s all contained where my heart is.
And then it moves upward, a gentle tugging that I barely recognize, until there’s a pressure at my lips.
I wrench away so forcefully that I nearly drop my knife as it pulls free from the man’s skin. My eyes shoot open to find him sitting up now, and his lips were—
They were on mine.
My free hand wipes at my mouth while the one gripping the dagger prepares for another strike. Except that the last time that happened …
I halt the attack and instead back up from the tomb and the being now standing free from it.
“Sorinda, what is going on in there?” Kearan sounds exasperated, as though he’s been calling my name for quite some time. I hear ice cracking, and I think he’s trying to force his way down the tunnel, but I dare not take my eyes off the threat to check.
“Lourech nem construnun mzchen nuow.”
The words should mean nothing to me. I know they’re in a language I do not speak, but my mind offers the translation: Thank you for freeing me.
“Get out of my way,” I say in Manerian. No, not Manerian. The world is Maneria, and it is far larger than we ever even imagined. I am of the Seventeen Isles, so I suppose I speak Islander.
The being’s gaze lands on my mouth. His eyes constrict, his pupils growing a darker blue, and he says, this time in my language, “You taste like hope.”
“The hell?” Kearan asks, his voice echoing lightly in the cavern.
I want to repeat Kearan’s question, but the being in front of me is looking me up and down in a very uncomfortable way.
“I said move,” I say.
“My name is Threydan,” he says instead of moving. “We’re going to do amazing things together, Sorinda.”
“The actual hell?” Kearan says, “Sorinda, get out of there. What are you waiting for?”
Threydan eyes the tunnel over his shoulder, and I take the chance to attempt leaping around him, but he moves with me, keeping himself between me and the exit.
“He’s in my way!” I call back to Kearan.
“Then gut him!”
The man called Threydan says, “Yes, gut me.”
If I was hesitant before, I’m now determined to do no such thing again. I don’t feel right. It’s almost like being sick, with every limb weakened from the body’s fight with the disease.
Except, instead of feeling weak, I feel nothing.
Something is very wrong, and it happened after I stabbed him. What would become of me if I did it again?
I pull out another dagger, just so my free hand can have something to hold.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Sorinda,” the being, Threydan, says. He tries to approach me, and I bring my daggers together in an X to ward him off. He halts. “Tell me your heart’s greatest desire, and I swear to let you pass.”
The hair on my arms stands on end, and I am overcome with the need to get out of this room now.
“I’m looking for some missing people,” I say, because what else can I possibly do? I’ve never had a situation I couldn’t get out of with something sharp.
Threydan steps away from me until his back hits the ice wall, leaving the exit clear. “I will help you find them. Then you will help me exact my revenge. I have it on good authority you excel at that.”
Horror seizes me in place for a full second as I realize he must have seen one of my memories just as I saw one of his. “What did you see?” I ask, tightening my grip on my daggers.
“You were so little, yet you dealt death so beautifully.”