My breathing picks up. I want to kill. I envision knives sticking through his skin. Blood dripping from a dozen cuts. His look of agony just before his eyes go blank …
A morsel of sense wheedles its way through my murderous thoughts. I start to inch my way toward the exit, taking careful steps, ready to back away should Threydan prove to be a dishonorable liar.
When I reach the tunnel entrance, Threydan moves as if he means to follow, and I raise my knives higher.
“I’m not about to stay in here,” he says, looking around. “It’s all right, Sora.”
That nickname coming from his lips almost makes me double over. I haven’t heard it in over a decade. I didn’t give him permission to use it.
Consequences be damned, I raise one of my knives and fling it. It lands square in his throat.
But Threydan doesn’t choke.
Doesn’t fall.
Doesn’t die.
He pulls out the knife and examines it.
Kearan’s cursing comes from behind me. And I inch back another step.
The sound of cracking ice thunders around me, and there is a rumbling above my head. Threydan and I both look at the ceiling. I register the ice above us crumbling, just as I realize I must have stepped on another pressure plate I missed the first time around.
A large shard of ice tumbles down, shattering against Threydan’s head and sending him toppling to the ground. At the same time, hands grip my hips fiercely and pull me backward.
Kearan hauls me out of the tunnel. When we reach the cavern on the other side, he shoves me ahead of him and yells, “Run!”
Just this once, I obey.
I slip onto my arse three different times as I try to make my escape back through the rooms of frozen skeletons. Kearan is not so quiet as he keeps up with me, just a step behind, though he sometimes manages to keep his feet better than I do.
Because I’m still reeling from the encounter. I saw things I shouldn’t have. I was distracted enough by them that he was able to kiss me. And I don’t feel right in my skin anymore.
I can’t feel the freezing temperature around me. There is nothing except my heart, which feels too hot within my chest. I would swear it has its own sentience. Pounding and turning and writhing with heat. It isn’t painful exactly, but it’s impossible to ignore.
And then I remember the moment my dagger pierced his heart. The way it changed me. The way it was drawing some sort of essence out of me. My stomach turns.
I shoot out through the last tunnel, finally landing aboveground. I fall to my knees in the snow and wretch and wretch and wretch. Up comes my breakfast and last night’s dinner and anything else that might have been within my system.
My ponytail is pulled behind my back the moment I start to heave, Kearan holding it out of the way from behind me.
When I think I’m done, I grab a handful of snow and shove it into my mouth. I know it should feel so cold against my teeth that it burns. But there’s nothing. No registering of the temperature.
Yet it still melts, and I swish it about and spit. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Don’t think about the fact that snow doesn’t feel cold anymore. That’s the least of your concerns.
“Did he … kiss you?” Kearan asks.
My body convulses again, but there is nothing left to upend.
“He did something to me,” I say when I can speak again. “Something is very wrong.”
“It’s all right,” Kearan says. “He’s dead now. No one could have survived that cave-in.”
I shake my head. “He’s alive.”
“How do you know?”
“I put a dagger in his heart and another in his throat. He’s still walking and talking.”
And then there’s the bit I don’t want to admit to.
The fact that I can feel him.
I don’t know exactly where he is, but I know that he is. We are connected somehow. From the moment I struck his heart.
“He called you Sora,” Kearan says.
“That was my family’s nickname for me.”
“How could he have known that?”
“I—”
The point of a spear juts under my chin from where I still kneel in the snow. I was so distressed that I didn’t realize we were no longer alone.
And then it happens again.
“You took something that wasn’t yours to take, Threydan. The siren artifact is the property of the king, and you will return it immediately.”
Spears were pointed directly at me from a dozen different directions, but I only laughed at their presence.
“You can’t kill me. You can’t take the artifact. I am the panaceum now.”
A spear embedded into my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel the pain of it. There was only numbness as I pulled it from my skin. It dripped blood onto the green earth, but my skin was already healing, the blood replenishing and the wound disappearing.
Then Irushed them, determined to kill every last one of mycrewmates. They chose their side.
When the memory subsides, I look up to see more weapons pointed at Kearan. It’s the men returned from our distraction, finding us at their camp.
I can’t find the proper fear within me right now. Not when my body and mind no longer feel like I control them. That’s far more distressing.
One of the men says something in that unfamiliar language, but my eyes widen as my mind translates the words.
“You’ve woken him.”
Why can I understand him now?
What did Threydan do to me?
I stand slowly, so as not to get stabbed, and stare down the man who spoke.
“What is he?” I ask, somehow speaking their language back to them.
The man’s eyes widen in shock. “He’s already changed her.”
“What is going on?” I ask.
A different man steps forward, presses his spear against my cheek, and slices across my skin.
Kearan tries to leap to my side, but burly men restrain him. One throws a punch into the center of his stomach, toppling him. Meanwhile, my head whips back from the sting of the cut. I feel my blood drip down my face, though I can’t feel the cold air against the open wound.
“She still bleeds. He hasn’t performed the ritual yet.”
“What ritual?” I ask.
“Sorinda, what’s going on?” Kearan asks. “How are you talking with them?”
“We need to make sure he doesn’t find her body,” the one who spoke before continues.
“What do you want done?” another asks.
“To the deep with her.”
Something hard crashes against the back of my head, and everything goes black.
Chapter 13
WHEN I REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, my eyes feel so very heavy, so I keep them closed.
And then I realize I must be dreaming.
For I feel weightless, and my body drifts as though it were floating.
At least I’m not falling, I think distantly. Or having some nightmare about the night my whole life was ripped from me.
I think it curious how muted and strange everything feels. Sounds seem too far away. Or perhaps too close? There’s a whooshing that sounds nothing like wind and a pressure on my skin that has no temperature.
And finally, I register the sensation at my heart. That warmth that seems contained. Out of my reach. Yet vital somehow. My entire life force held within one spot.
And then I remember Threydan.