The whip came down again.
“Bastard!” the crowd shouted. “The Bastard Girl of Soreia!”
Another lash.
“You have no name,” the queen said.
Skin, torn away from Sonara’s muscles.
“You have no kingdom.”
Muscles, torn away from her bones.
And then the sentence came.
“Tonight,” the queen said, as silence swept across the throne room, “you will die.”
In her mind, Sonara escaped to thoughts of the girl Soahm had once spoken of: the She-Devil, the dream she should have grabbed ahold of when they’d thought it up together in the stables. She should have run far, far away.
Her other half-siblings, the princes and princesses of Soreia, stood with their arms crossed on the dais, the fringes of their robes flecked with her blood. They watched, unwavering as their mother beat Sonara to the end of breathing.
They left just enough life in her to perform the Leaping.
At dusk, Sonara was placed on an open wagon and carted to the edge of the kingdom in full view, so that the watching crowd could gaze upon the fate of a kingdom’s traitor.
They gathered and grew and followed to the edge of Cradle’s Cliff. It towered so high the clouds kissed it, moistened the earth like it had been covered in a blanket of winter’s breath. The ocean raged against the rocks below, sea-spray erupting in the air where it was picked up by the wind.
The salt air stung as it landed on Sonara’s open back. Her vision flitted from dark to light as the cart wheels groaned to a stop, and strong hands lifted her ruined body.
She could scarcely hold open her eyes as the crowd chanted.
But one sound broke above it all.
A cry. A mighty, beastly screech that forced her eyes open.
Duran.
Her heart sank. There he was, the beast that had become hers, fighting for freedom at the edge of the cliff. Two trainers held a rope, their feet scrambling for purchase against the moist earth as Duran reared and threw his mighty head about, trying in vain to escape.
They made her watch as they bound him, man by man, ropes on his legs, ropes slung around his strong neck. His red eyes were ablaze, sides heaving as he stood there, a captive.
He was hers.
And that made him as good as dead.
Fight, Sonara wanted to tell him, as she was lifted from the cart by strong soldier hands. She hung between two men as they dragged her towards Duran, feet scraping the earth. Oh, goddesses, just keep fighting.
But in her presence, at her touch, the mighty steed calmed. He allowed Sonara to be placed upon him, those very ropes used to bind them both together as the guards slung her on his back.
She knew this death: the Leaping.
A death reserved for a traitor. A coward. A deserter, tied to the back of their own steed, forced to ride over the edge of the abyss.
The crowd cheered, as Sonara slumped forward on Duran. They made a path, two sides that closed in, the nearer they got to the edge.
“Over the edge,” the queen said. “To a death that has no peace. No silence. No end.”
The trainers released the ropes, cracking the whip over Duran’s back as they commanded him forward.
His nostrils flared. But he steeled himself and did not move.
“Again,” the queen commanded. The tips of her blue braids danced in the wind, mirroring her cold blue eyes. Soahm’s eyes.
The whip cracked again, doubly as hard. Duran screamed as his skin split open. But still, he held his ground.
Tears streamed down Sonara’s cheeks. She had only enough strength to utter a plea. “Just me.”
But the queen only lifted her hand again, and the guards brought down the whip once more.
Duran finally took a step forward.
“Fight against them,” Sonara thought to him. With everything in her, she wished he could hear her words, could take comfort in her presence. “Don’t let it end like this.”
Another step. This one a lurch as Duran sidestepped, another lash open on his side. The motion sent pain rocketing into Sonara’s body, the wind howling, the cold salt spray like a knife reopening her wounds.
Part One
Blood
Chapter 1
TEN YEARS LATER
On board the Starfall
Outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy
Karr
It took less than twenty-four hours for outer space to claim Karr Kingston as its own. Seventeen hours and forty-three minutes, to be exact.
The problem wasn’t the warp speed at which the Starfall, the fastest ship in Jeb Montforth’s black-market legion of Graters and Streakers, traveled through light-years of space and stars.
It wasn’t even the two MREs Karr had downed right after he woke up on the ship, which could be more or less explained as eating freeze-dried cat, and may not have been one of his prouder moments.
It was the metal walls.
It was the feeling—the reality—of being so damn trapped. Again.
“Not for long,” Karr said, as he fumbled with a stubborn screw on a ruined escape pod in the belly of the Starfall. The pod was an ugly thing, battered and bruised and long since forgotten for flight.
Instead, it had been used all these years as one of hundreds of hiding places on board the massive ship.
The seats inside the pod had been torn open, the stuffing removed and replaced with sealed packages of smuggled drugs. They’d been sewn back together with an unsteady hand, as if a drunken surgeon had been given the job.
Karr sighed as he stared at the mess that would be his escape.
The cosmetics of the pod didn’t bother him. And besides, he wouldn’t have time to worry about the stitching on the seats when he was trying not to crash-land. All Karr cared about was the mechanics, those vital, running bits of the pod’s insides that would hold his life in balance when he strapped himself in and ejected himself from the belly of the Starfall.
Tomorrow, Karr thought. Tomorrow, I’ll get the hell away from here.
That is, if he could keep himself hidden until then. He’d shared plenty of false stories with the crew about his whereabouts, knowing that with their loose lips and watching eyes, he wouldn’t be able to hold the truth off for long. He’d even rigged the locks on the storage bay’s door so that when he was found, they’d have a hell of a time getting through.
The newly formed lump on his forehead throbbed as he thought of the Captain’s wrath. If he was discovered… he’d never make it back to Beta Earth.
Heaven, Karr thought.
Or, at the very least, it had felt like it for the short time he and the rest of the crew had been docked there. Karr had traveled all his life, bounding around from one end of the Milky Way to the other, never staying on any one of its 8.8 billion planets for more than a few weeks at a time.
But Beta Earth?
They had stayed for five blessed months, while his captain was investigated by the Interstellar Trade Corporation for allegedly smuggling and selling illegal goods to black-market collectors across the shadier parts of the galaxy. They had no idea who turned them in for the crime.
Their Interplanetary Exploration license was put on hold, the Starfall was docked indefinitely, and even though it was true, and they were guilty as hell… the Captain had described the entire extended investigation as complete and total spacetrash.
Karr, on the other hand, had been given a gift by association.