“You don’t look different to me,” Garreth said.
It was a lie. I’d only glanced at myself once in the last week, as I washed in the makeshift privy that had been erected adjacent to the camp. Splashing water from a pail, I’d noticed my reflection wavering along the surface. The water revealed someone far older than her seventeen years. My face had lost its softness, shadows clinging to the sharpened angles of the bones beneath. Where an innocent girl used to live, I’d found a hardened woman staring back.
Garreth and I arrived at an outcrop near the camp, where Zabelle and several other nomads were securing the prisoner. “He can’t be coaxed into confessing anything,” Garreth said. “The Frozen Sun beasts are hard and heartless.”
Heartless beast. He wasn’t speaking of Reyker, yet I couldn’t help but bristle. I put a hand on my brother’s arm. “Let me question him. Maybe I can reach him.”
Not only because I spoke the invader’s language, but because I understood his training, his culture. Thanks to Reyker, I knew my enemy well.
The Dragonman appeared to be in his midtwenties and looked just like his brethren—tall, muscled, with long yellow hair. He growled and snapped at the nomads, calling them foul names even though they couldn’t understand him. He grinned when I stepped forward. “I know you. You’re the bitch the lordling tried to hide from the Dragon.” He scanned the faces around him. “Where is the traitor? Does he need his wench to do his fighting for him?”
The question caught me off guard.
The invader read my expression and grinned. “Dead, is he? Pity. I hoped I’d get a chance to sink my axe into his skull.”
“This axe?” I took the axe from Zabelle, held it up beneath the invader’s nose, and spit on the blade. A grave insult, disrespecting a Dragonman’s weapon. They believed the Ice Gods blessed every blade, and each man was as possessive of his own weapons as he was of a lover.
The invader thrashed against the ropes binding him. “You filthy little—”
“What is your name, Dragonman? Tell me, or I’ll have the others piss on your precious axe.” I started to hand it to Garreth.
“Andrithur,” he said through gritted teeth.
“An-dree-thur,” I repeated, and the invader glowered at my clumsy accent. “I’m Lira.”
“I don’t care.”
“Where will Draki strike next? What is he planning?”
Andrithur laughed. “Do your worst to my axe. Do your worst to me. Even if the warlord wouldn’t kill me for it, I would tell you nothing. Your island is overrun with spineless dogs. I will die smiling, knowing you’ll all end up skewered upon Ildja’s fangs, suffering at the whims of the serpent goddess and her Destroyers for eternity.”
I switched back to Glasnithian. “This will take time. Give me a week, then perhaps—”
Garreth shook his head. “It cannot wait. We’re heading south soon, and we must ensure there won’t be Dragonmen waiting to ambush us. You don’t need his permission to get answers.”
Read his soul. It wasn’t an order, though it might as well have been. Like our father and our clan, Garreth wasn’t above using my gift—using me—to get what he wanted. But I wanted vengeance, a way to stop Draki, a way to hurt him. I wasn’t above using my gift to get what I wanted either.
“I’m going to put my hand over your heart,” I told Andrithur. “And you’re going to be still and let me do it.”
“Trying to seduce me, wench? That might have worked on the lordling fool, but I have higher standards than most Dragonmen. I’d sooner mount a dead horse than touch a Green Isle whore.”
I smacked my palm into his chest.
My mind was open. Andrithur’s protests, Garreth’s threats, the shuffling of nomads, every footfall of human or beast—it all faded.
Everything was quiet, just for an instant. And then a tidal wave swept over me.
My senses were inflamed, every bit of Andrithur’s essence—memories, emotions, sensations—slamming into me. Where I usually waded through someone else’s consciousness, here I was instantly sucked under. I wasn’t reading his soul, I was being pummeled by it, suffocating in it. His love and pain and fears and lies shredded me apart.
I tried to scream, but I had no mouth. Tried to cover my ears against the roar, tried to pull my palm away from his chest, but I had no body.
Too much. It was too much. My mind was coming undone.
So was his. We were both weapons, slicing at each other. As the Dragonman’s soul flayed me, I ripped and tore through it like cobwebs. I’d seen this before, when I touched the soul of a Dragonman I’d stabbed. I’d felt his soul die. That’s what was happening. I was killing Andrithur from within.
Just as suddenly as it started, the crushing sensations ended, the darkness lightened. I was back in my body, my hand outstretched in front of me, the space between it and the Dragonman growing. Garreth’s arm was around my waist, hauling me backward.
Andrithur was screaming, a glowing red shape burned into his chest: a handprint. My palm was bright as a blacksmith’s forge—a tiny, blazing sun.
Garreth let go of me. “What is it, Lira? What happened?”
Soul-reading was an ability bestowed by the True Gods, but the Fallen Ones’ powers coursed through me now too. I was a paradox, with gifts from antithetical forces. “I think the fallen gods’ power changed how my ability works. I couldn’t control it.”
I felt as if some invisible weight was pressing down on me, realizing what it meant if I was right.
“My gift. It’s broken.”
CHAPTER 4
REYKER
The dream washed over him, cresting waves of pleasure that dumped him into a trough of pain. She was alive. She was dead.
Where are you, Lira?
The black river woke before he did, already screaming inside him, boiling his blood, leading his hands to his weapons. He was on his feet, sword raised, before he remembered where he was: the Tangled Forest, on the northern tip of Glasnith.
Three Dragonmen entered the thicket he’d bedded down in. “Little lordling,” one of them said. “The warlord requests your presence in Dragon Harbor.”
Dragon Harbor. Because Stony Harbor was gone, its homes and people burned to ashes and bones.
Reyker flexed his fingers around the sword’s hilt. The knuckles he’d broken, punching them against Draki’s invincible face, throbbed dully. “I’ll show you where the warlord can stick his request.”
The men edged closer, lifting their axes and swords. “It would be better for you to come with us. If you force the Dragon to hunt you himself, you’ll pay for it.”