Page 110

“Where does that road go?” he asked bitterly. Slowly, he unbuckled the belt around his hips, and laid down the greatsword among Sorasa’s things.

She sat on the cramped bed, if only to give him room to move around the narrow cabin.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she huffed. “Better, probably.”

He quirked a blond brow at her. “How so?”

“You have good hearts, you and Corayne. You think differently than I can.”

“Is that a compliment?” he asked, confused.

Her laugh was menacing as she leaned back against a meager pillow, her eyes half-lidded.

“No.”

Dom pushed back against the opposite wall, folding his arms. The air stirred as the door eased closed, shutting them both into the cabin together.

“She’s had a three-week head start, and then some,” he said, watching the pink stars through the window. “If Oscovko survived, she could go back to Vodin.”

“Too many spies. Erida would know it soon enough and drag her out of the city.” Sorasa yawned into one hand. The other traced lines in mid-air, walking a map only she could see. “The Jydi might take her in. She would not go into the Castlewood.”

“Why?”

She shook her head sharply.

“That forest is Spindlerotten, too dangerous, even for her.”

Something needled at the back of Dom’s mind.

“What of Sirandel?” he asked.

Sorasa’s eyes flashed with rare confusion.

“There is an immortal enclave in the Castlewood,” he offered with a smug curl of his mouth. Part of him delighted in knowing something Sorasa did not.

Her face darkened with disgust. “We could have used them in Gidastern.”

Dom’s heart dropped in his chest. He could not help but agree, nodding.

“Ridha failed to sway them before,” he said bitterly. “Perhaps they have changed their minds.”

His cousin’s name was still a knife in his chest, always twisting. It was easier to ignore the pain of her loss in the escape, but now it returnedtenfold. As much as he tried to cling to happier memories, of centuries and decades past, he could not shake the sight of her dying. Her green armor awash in blood. Taristan kneeling over her, watching as the light left her eyes. And then, worse than anything Dom had ever seen—the light returned, corrupted and infernal.

Sorasa watched him carefully from the bed, her face still. He expected some sort of reprimand, or unfeeling Amhara advice.

Put the pain away, she told him once.

I cannot, he answered in his mind.No matter how hard I try.

“She did not survive,” Sorasa said quietly. “Your cousin.”

He stared at the floorboards, knotted and uneven, slightly curved beneath his boots. Silence fell over the cabin, but not truly. Dom heard everything above deck, from the scrape of rope through iron rings to the jolly curses of the crew.

“Worse than that,” Dom finally spat.

She made a low hum in her throat, almost a purr.

“No wonder you went back to kill him.”