Page 65 of Fate Breaker

Sorasa bit back an exasperated scoff. The last thing she wanted was another interrogation, especially under the circumstances.

“How didyou?” Sorasa replied.

“We didn’t escape, we were captured. After—” Sigil faltered, her dark eyes wavering to Dom.

Behind them, Dom loomed in his usual way, a storm cloud of contempt. His expression darkened beneath his stolen helmet. Rage and sorrow warred across his face, made even more severe by the shadows. Sorasa remembered the last she saw of him in the city, turning to fight alongside his immortal kin.

“I don’t remember getting out of the city,” the assassin forced out, filling the silence for Dom’s sake. “But I remember Corayne, riding alone through the city gate, out onto the road.”

“Why did you leave her?” The deep, familiar timbre of Dom’s voice rumbled in her chest.

Sorasa’s face went warm, her cheeks flaming with shame.

“To buy her a chance.”

I expected to pay with my life.

Their silence was answer enough. Even Dom knew what she meant, his eyes flickering in the torchlight.

“And then I was on a boat,” she sighed, walking on. “Tethered somewhere between sleep and waking. Everything smelled of death, and the sky looked like blood. I thought I was in Lasreen’s realm, wandering the lands of the dead.”

The days on the river were hazy at best. Sorasa had used what will she had to pray to Lasreen, her deity above all others. She even searched the heavens, looking for the shape of a faceless woman or Amavar, the dragon companion of the goddess.

Neither came, and the days wore on, wavering in and out.

“I reached Ascal in darkness, leaving the smell of death at the edge of the city. I know now it was the corpse army, Taristan’s horde.” Sorasa tried not to picture it, the rotting soldiers of the Ashlands, the brutalized people of Gidastern. All bound to the red wizard, ensnared forever. “They wait in the countryside, ready to obey their master.”

Sigil pulled a face. “How many?”

“I do not know,” Sorasa answered.

Her hand twitched in annoyance, wishing for her familiar bronze dagger. Like her other weapons, it had been taken away weeks ago. Instead, she gripped the hilt of the knight’s long knife.

“Unfortunately Taristan and his wizard think highly of the Amhara, and knew to keep me bound throughout the journey.” She shook her head. “It took some time for me to resurface and return to a useful state of mind.”

Both bounty hunter and immortal chewed her words, wounded by them. Sorasa knew enough of their tempers to see the twitching distaste on their faces. They went quiet, their boots the only sound as they rounded another corner.

Among the echoes, Sorasa remembered.

Ronin brought her back fully for his interrogations. By then, it felt like a reprieve. Sorasa preferred pain to oblivion. The red wizard asked stupid questions of her, most of them useless. She resisted them anyway, drawing out the process of his so-called torture. As with the cells, she’d faced worse among the Amhara. Sorasa Sarn did not fear a pulled tooth orsplinters shoved under her fingernails. Ronin resorted to neither, hesitant to pursue anything that would leave real damage. He relied upon forced drowning mostly, putting a bag over Sorasa’s head and dumping buckets of water over her. She knew well enough how to suffer such things. With every punishment, she set the bar for pain as low as she could, reacting to the slightest discomfort. She made a show of it for Ronin’s sake, her eyes rolling, her body jumping against the restraints.

It was only his magic that truly concerned her. Against that, she had no training.

Her only respite came from the interrogators and the changing guards. They did not intervene on her behalf. But they were useful, whispering to each other, carrying news from the palace above them. Even as she screamed, spitting out water, choking against a garrote, locked in an iron maiden, or dancing on her toes with her wrists bound up, she listened.

Sigil finally spoke up, shattering the tense quiet.

“If the Queen is returned, she moved quickly, to make it all the way back from Madrence,” she muttered. “I wonder why?”

“Calidon is too mountainous to attack in winter, but Siscaria and Tyriot kneeled without bloodshed,” Sorasa replied neatly, grateful for the change of subject. “She had no cause to linger in the east, exhausting her army. Her soldiers will be grateful to go home, victorious and drunk on glory. Besides, there’s a coronation to be had. She’s Queen of Four Kingdoms now, and she’s going to show Galland exactly what that means.”

Sorasa felt the incredulous looks of both Dom and Sigil.

“All this you learned in the dungeons?” the Elder growled.

Sorasa braced for his usual suspicions. She was long used to them by now.

You are ruthless and selfish, Sorasa Sarn. I know little of mortals, but ofyou, I know enough.Dom’s words echoed in her head, too sharp a memory. His distrust stung then. It burned now.