Chapter 26

Karr

He was in the half-place again.

But today the scenery had changed, a throne room swapped out for the shores of an ancient, endless sea. The waves were split down the center, rolling towards where Karr stood, barefoot upon a grey sand shore.

He stared out at the sea, wondering which side, given the chance, he would choose.

The left half of the sea was dark and furious, the wind raging, the white waves tossed about until they exploded upon the sand.

The right half was calm. A gentle ocean of dark waves. They barely kissed the shore as the wind danced like a delicate thing, in time with a song that was unheard.

Both sides collided against each other. One crashing furiously, the other gently lapping.

Together, the sounds made a word.

Choose.

But he’d already chosen.

The grey sand was warm beneath Karr’s bare feet. He wiggled his toes, feeling as if he were home.

“It is far more interesting than the last place,” a voice said. Delicate, like the tinkling of bells or a wedding song. “Memories are fascinating things. You never know what sort of picture they might paint.”

Karr turned, and there she was.

The child made of starlight. He hadn’t the chance to look at her closely, the last time he met her in the half-place. But now he saw her in full. Little glowing planets rotated across her skin as if she were their axis. They swam through the starlight that made up her long coils of glowing hair, then danced across her collarbone, into her arms and her fingertips and back again.

“I chose,” Karr said.

The child rose a shimmering brow. “Did you?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess not.” He glanced back at the half-sea. “What is this place?”

“The center of us all.” She pointed her finger at Karr’s hand. “May I?”

He lifted his palm and held it out to her.

A tendril of starlight shot from her fingertip, a tiny galaxy stretched like a rubber band. Heat seared his skin as the starlight sliced a cut along his palm, drawing that strange, ghostly black blood. It soared off into the sky, half splitting towards the white sea. The other, barreling towards the dark.

“The shadows,” Karr said. “What are they?”

The child laughed. Her eyes were like nebulas, swirling with colors he could not even name. She motioned for him to follow, and together they walked along the grey shore. The half-sea followed them, always crashing in part darkness and part light, always keeping them in the center of the two. “Not shadows, my heart. They are tendrils of soul. They dance within us, always keeping the balance. Half-darkness. Half-light. It is what sets the Shadowbloods apart. What keeps them worthy.”

“Shadowbloods?” Karr asked.

“Yes, my heart. It is your second chance.” Her smile was tired. The starlight that made up her skin seemed to dim, some of the lights winking out, some of the planets growing still. They walked in silence for a time.

Karr knew he was asleep, lost inside of his dreams. But it felt real, the warmth on his bare toes, the stinging pain on his palm, the little scab of black beginning to form over his cut.

They stopped when shapes began to form in the distance.

A castle the color of sand, on the fringes of a city that unspooled towards the sea. Like a child’s seaside creation; a fortress that felt vaguely familiar to him, as if he’d seen it in a storybook, flipping past the pages with his mother and father before their lives were cut short. He gazed at it for a time, wishing he could run to it. Lose himself inside of the castle halls, discover the secrets that waited within.

“What is this place?” Karr asked the child.

“Memories,” she said. “Every Shadowblood has them.”

“But they aren’t mine,” Karr said.

“My dear lost soul.” The girl’s nebula eyes met his, and there was sadness within her gaze. “You do not remember. But there is one who does. Soon you’ll discover the truth. When you do, you must be ready.”

“For what?” Karr asked.

The star child smiled. “The end, my heart. You must be ready for the end of the end, where there will be another choice. And this time, you must choose a side.”

She reached out, placing her fingertip upon his chest.

It went through him, searing past his skin, past his blood and his bones, into his rib cage, where she removed his heart.

Not flesh, as he had suspected.

But solid black.

The Antheon that Cade was after, but today, it pulsed in the child’s grip.

Like a still-beating heart.

When he woke, Karr Kingston’s captors had prepared a feast for him.

Or so they’d said.

But by the looks of the hideous creature rotating on a makeshift spit over a fire, its jagged teeth poking out from a charred, fleshy head… he wasn’t so sure.

Sonara, the blue-haired woman had called herself. She’d dragged him here by his ropes, setting him before a stack of unlit wood, where the rest of the group sat. Dirty and not heavily armed, there were only four of them in total.

The beautiful one, with black, depthless eyes, had held her hands before her, her dark brows knitting together as she concentrated.

“Find your peace with it, Azariah,” the small-framed one, in the wolfen mask, leaned forward and seemed to sigh. “Settle your soul into the depths of the Great Mother and let your power soar.”

A spark of blue shot from Azariah’s palms, sparking the fire to life in an instant.

Karr hardly believed it—for that was magic, living and breathing, in front of his very eyes.

Magic the likes of which he himself had achieved yesterday. Impossibly, he knew it was his magic that had done it, his power that had split the cave floor.

He remembered that awful heat, that roiling darkness that had broken inside of him, tumbling into an abyss in his soul where something living had been waiting for him to open it.

That great surge of power had shoved the very cave walls aside, revealing a crimson door, as if it had been there in hiding.

The firelight spread further, revealing that very door now.

There it stood in the rock, sealed shut.

He had done that.

But how had he done that?

The question made him look at the group differently, for this wasn’t any normal prisoner-of-war situation.

Something had changed drastically in himself, and it made him desperate to try to discover what other secrets this group, this planet, might be hiding. For was it possible the people who’d taken him captive were all like him? Was it possible that others, on Dohrsar, had this hidden magic?

He looked to Sonara, who sat cross-legged on the other side of the flames, her hand resting on her black-and-blue sword.

“Why did you kill me?” Karr asked cautiously. “And why did I come back changed?”

She picked at her teeth with a bone. “I ask the questions. If you answer mine, you’ll earn the right to ask me one back. Is that clear?”

Azariah simply ran her hands through her tangled hair as if trying to remove the knots. The one in the wolf-skull mask was motionless, looking towards the red door in the rock, and the man beside her, whose eyes danced with mischief as he twirled a dagger between his fingertips, was watching Karr like he might bolt.

Like he dared him to bolt and see just how far he could run before he sank that menacing dagger between Karr’s shoulders.

“Fine,” Karr agreed. He’d play her little game.

Sonara tossed the bone behind her and sat back in a casual, relaxed lean. “What business do your people have on my planet?”

He chose his words very carefully. “I’m not in the business of taking people captive. I’m not in support of this mission at all.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“My captain didn’t offer me the truth about the mission. All I knew is that we were to come to your planet, dig for a black substance called Antheon. He never explained the details. Never said it would come to this, to taking your people captive and using them as workers. If I’d known, I would have tried to stop it.”

He hoped she believed him. He hoped her magic sensed his honesty, his truths.

She nodded. “Alright. Markam?”

Markam sighed and stood to approach him, his hand on the dagger at his hip.

“I-it wasn’t a lie!” Karr said, as he watched the dark-eyed man approach with a sickening swagger. “I told you the truth.”

But instead of reaching for Karr with some horrible magic that would squeeze the air from his lungs or suck out his eyes… Markam only turned the spit, removing the hideous creature from over the flames. “Relax, Wanderer. You’ve earned yourself a meal with that first truth.” He ripped off a roasted ear from the creature and held it out. “The first taste.”

“Oh, goddesses, hold me,” Azariah groaned. “You said you were done with torture.”

Markam raised a brow. “I beg your pardon, Princess?” He tossed the ear into her lap. “Perhaps you’d like the first bite?”

She swept it from her lap as if it were on fire.

“Enough.” That was Sonara again, drawing the situation back to her. She grabbed the ear and popped it into her mouth. Her gaze flicked to Karr, who realized suddenly that he was relaxed. That his heart rate had slowed, no longer on edge.

For in that small bit of chaos, the situation had shifted again. He’d seen more than captors in these strange, magic-bearing Dohrsarans.

He’d seen humanity.

And at that glimpse, he saw hope.

Perhaps they would see reason, decide to set him free, if he could convince them he’d had no part in it.

“My brother took the mission of his own accord,” Karr said. “He was hired by a man named Geisinger, a king in his own right, from a planet called Earth. Cade brought us here, said he was going to have a crew waiting to dig beneath the planet’s surface to find the Antheon. Said Geisinger had set it all up. I pressed him for answers, but he gave none. And then when we got to the Gathering, and you,” he looked pointedly at Sonara, “killed me… I’m guessing it set things into motion. Now it’s my turn. Why did you kill me?”

He felt so strange asking the question, speaking of his own death as if it were a casual topic. As if they were old comrades sharing a drink together by a warm hearth.

Sonara cracked her neck. “To understand the truth, you must know the origin of it all. I’m a Shadowblood, brought back from death to live a second life.”

That word.

The Child of Starlight had spoken it, in his dreams.

Karr leaned forward, holding onto her words, desperate to understand them.

“My blood has been replaced by living shadows,” Sonara said, “and those shadows have granted me a curse. Each Shadowblood’s curse is different, perhaps pulling at some strength they may have had in their first life. With mine, I can sense the auras of others. Their truths and their lies, their emotions, their anticipation before a swing. Before they try to escape.” She smiled wickedly at him. “I killed you because my curse deemed it so. It directed me to end your life, for some reason deeper than us both. And now here you sit before me… A Shadowblood, made anew.”

A shiver of fear ran through Karr. But it was also followed by something that seemed to slip past the fear. Curiosity.

“Why?” he asked.

Karr’s heart was pounding in his ears again, like a tub of water set churning down a drain.

“The Great Mother chose you,” the woman in the skull mask said. “The planet itself. Dohrsar. She lives and breathes… and chooses. And you have been chosen, Wanderer. The planet commands all magic. Commands all things. I believe it spoke to Sonara. Urged her to make the choice, taking hold of her magic so that it could set things into motion. Just as it urged your magic to reveal that door to us.” She looked over her shoulder at the crimson door nestled into the rock. “For whatever reason… the planet needs you here. Your fate is intertwined with Sonara’s.”

Karr swallowed. Was this girl, this Child of Starlight in his dreams, some incarnation of the planet’s soul? It was impossible, but so was magic such as this…

He’d seen plenty of strange things in all his travels.

He’d met plenty of people that believed in things others would call ridiculous, religions that he’d never given much thought to, while others gave their entire lives to the cause.

Eventually, one of those religions had to be found to be true. He just never suspected he’d be the one to discover real proof.

“And all of you,” Karr asked, “you have been chosen, too? You have this shadowed blood?”

“It’s terribly complicated, I’m afraid,” said Azariah. “When I was only a child, my father murdered me. He slit my throat in a golden temple of his own making, and I came back as one. Most of us meet a horrific end before we’re brought back.”

Karr felt like he might be sick. And not just from the smell of the smoldering cave rat.

Thali spoke again. “It appears you have Terra magic. The depths of your abilities, we cannot yet be sure. But they all have their own. Lightning runs in Azariah’s veins. Markam can make illusions appear true.”

Sonara glared at her. “Details, cleric. Hold your tongue.”

But Thali did not seem fazed by the command. There was something unique about her, beyond her appearance. It was the ease with which she carried herself. The calm certainty. “He is one of us now. Even if he came from that ship.”

“The ship that has taken our people captive,” Sonara said back. “And still holds Jaxon and Soahm with it. They took everything from us.” Her gaze became icy, the same way it had when she’d nearly taken her blade to his skin. “Everything.”

“He did not,” Markam corrected her. “You told me that yourself. He spoke true, about Soahm. He knows nothing.”

“But his people do,” she said. “I’m certain of it.”

“Certainty and desperation are two very different things,” Thali said softly. “You would be wise not to confuse the two, Devil.”

Silence fell between them.

“Continue to speak truths, Wanderer,” Sonara said to Karr again. “Or you will die.”

“He will not,” Thali’s voice hardened beyond her bone mask. “No Child of Shadow will be harmed on my watch. Harming him would be to cause harm to yourself, because for whatever reason, Devil, you and this Wanderer are bound by fate. Do not test the planet, by hurting him now.”

Sonara crossed her arms over her chest and stared across the flames at Karr.

Beneath her gaze, he felt like he was in someone else’s skin. He stared back at her, unblinking, looking at the lines of her face.

This wasn’t happening to him, truly. Was it? But he could feel that the strange sense of the power in him was real.

“Fine.” Sonara sighed. “You will not die today, Wanderer.”

“Child of Shadow,” Thali corrected.

“My apologies,” Sonara shot back. “You think you know so much about the planet. Why in the hell would it bring back a Wanderer? Seek and find that truth.”

Thali’s next words were a whisper. “I will not pretend to understand. But it remains the same. We took him captive, but he is not what he once was. He’s not an enemy any longer. He shouldn’t be bound.”

“He will remain so until we decide where his loyalties lie. For now, they’re with his people.” She looked back to Karr. “But you should know that it wasn’t my choice to kill you. And if what Thali says is true—as much as I’m inclined to disagree—then the planet decided for me. It felt like something gripped my power and pushed it forth.”

“Yesterday,” Karr said, putting aside the fact that she still looked like she wanted to kill him, “I split the cave floor. I did it, but it felt like my… my magic… was doing it of its own accord.”

Azariah nodded. “It lives, just as the planet lives. It’s a part of you now, just as the shadows are.”

“What are they?” Karr asked.

“The planet’s soul,” Thali breathed from behind her mask. “A gift granted to you because in the place of darkness and light… you did not choose.”

How could she have known what happened to him when he died?

“We all went there, in death,” Markam added, as if he were reading Karr’s mind. He shrugged. “A terribly boring place. Lonely.”

“The details change,” Sonara said, “depending on your memories. But the half-ness of it is the same. Part darkness, part light.”

Karr suddenly had a flashing image return to him. Like a snapshot taken by a camera, displayed on the ceiling of his bunk inside the Starfall. “I wouldn’t say it was lonely. The child was there.”

A pause, as the Dohrsarans all looked to each other. There was something shadowed in their glance, like they were holding onto a secret Karr hadn’t any idea how to unlock.

“What child?” Sonara asked.

“A girl,” Karr explained. “She told me the half-place was made up of my memories.” He saw the girl in his mind, heard the ghostly recall of her voice. But the exact words she’d spoken had faded like ashes on the wind. “There was something ancient about her all the same.”

Markam shook his head. “There’s no child in the half-place, Wanderer.”

Thali’s pale eyes met Karr’s from behind her mask. The firelight danced in them, a blazing inferno that had him locked in her gaze. “What did she look like?”

Karr shrugged. “Like starlight incarnate.”

Her eyes seemed to dim for a moment.

“I heard a voice when I was there,” Sonara said. “I have heard that voice every day since. It is the whisper of my curse, the voice that begs me to pay attention. But it never had a form. Never a body. Certainly not a child.”

Silence swept across the cave like a heavy blanket.

“So… why am I here?” Karr asked softly. “What do you want with me?”

Markam plucked a limb from the rat and began to gnaw on it, the only sound in the cave besides the crackling fire. “You’re a ransom, Wanderer. But for now, we need information. In exchange for offering it, we’ll let you live for the time being, until your captain meets our demand.”

“A fine reward,” Karr said darkly.

Again, he thought of Cade. Of what would come when the Antheon was distributed across the stars, Geisinger’s new creation.

“What do you know of this Antheon my brother seeks?”

It was Azariah who answered. “It… changes a man.”

“In what way?”

She swallowed, looking about the group. They watched her closely, as if they too were waiting on her answer.

“I do not know. Not fully. But to see it land in the hands of this Geisinger, and of my…” she cleared her throat, “of the king… I fear it would give them a great deal of power. A great deal more than they deserve.”

“You have a mighty power,” Thali said. “The both of you, for whatever reason, are being called. Your fates are intertwined. I suspected as much with you, Sonara, but… but now, it seems the two of you are called. Joined.”

“The heart of the planet,” Sonara said. “The place Eona found.”

“Who the hell is Eona?” Markam asked.

“The first Shadowblood,” Sonara explained. “She tried to steal the planet’s heart. To take it for her own and wield it. To become the most powerful person this planet has ever known.”

A face flashed in Karr’s head suddenly.

Cade, standing beside the Dohrsaran king as they looked at their prisoners cutting into the mountainside, a hunger for more always shining behind his eyes.

“The heart,” Karr asked slowly. “Is it a true heart?”

“The source of all things,” Thali said. “When a Child of Shadow is chosen, she lends to them a bit of her very soul. The heart… well, as the records show… it has no limit to its power. It can do all things.”

“In the story,” Azariah explained, “Eona was drawn to the heart. The pulse of its power was too deep for her to resist.”

“Like your magic,” Thali said. “When you reached a place of great fear, it struck out as raw as a babe’s first cry in the world. The heart of the planet, I believe, is calling you and Sonara both. Beckoning you to pay attention. To listen close. The heart is a beautiful gift, the source of life. But to others, it is a dangerous weapon, the kind that only a monster would want to control. To take it would be to kill the planet. To take it would be the end of the end.”

The end of the end.

Only a monster would want to wield the planet’s heart.

A monster like Geisinger.

A monster like Cade, now that he’d taken the wrong side.

“We have to stop him,” Karr said. “If the heart exists. If it’s true…”

“Of course it’s true,” Thali said. “The Great Mother’s beauty is upon the very door you revealed.”

“The source of all things,” Karr said. “The source of life, with great power.”

He pieced it all together.

The energy source that was constantly appearing on Cade’s scanners.

Like a pulse.

A beat.

A beating heart.

He felt sick, suddenly understanding it all, even though he’d never heard the full story. Even though this planet was not a place to call his own. It had changed him, that much was true, with this power that roiled beside his blood and bones.

“We have to stop Cade,” Karr said. “I think he’s after the heart. He doesn’t realize it—he thinks he’s just seeking out Antheon, this powerful substance, but if Thali is right… what happens if the heart is removed?”

The woman in the mask pressed her hands to her chest as if she wanted to calm the racing of her own heart. “The planet would cease to exist. For what living being can survive without a heart?”

He had to stop it.

For this place may have been where he’d died at Sonara’s hand.

But it also gave him a second chance at life.

To see it fall at Cade’s hands… his brother had no idea what he was about to uncover. What he was about to destroy. All these people, these creatures, the ringed planet that looked like a glittering jewel nestled among the stars. All of it would fall, if it was true. If Cade discovered the planet’s heart.

How many other planets were out there, like this one?

How many others had a source of life, and Geisinger was sending missions out across the stars, conquering entire worlds, enslaving their people and devouring the very planet’s source of life?

Karr knew it would take all of the group’s magic combined to shut down Cade’s mission. To destroy the Starfall’s energy source and set the prisoners free from his brother’s command.

But Karr would do it, for something in Cade had changed the moment he’d taken the job from Geisinger. When he’d discovered Karr trying to fix up the escape pod in the belly of the ship, there was a new light in his eyes. Karr had mistaken it for excitement, for the promise of freedom.

Now he realized it was hunger.

A hunger for power.

For money.

For a life that offered more.

Some part of him wondered if they’d ever be able to get out from Geisinger’s fist once he stopped this job. But Cade wasn’t buying them freedom. He was just placing them in thicker shackles.

“Tell me the story of Eona,” Karr said. For he feared that it would mirror Cade’s greed. “All of it, please.”

Thali nodded.

She motioned for the others to join her. Azariah helped Karr stand, and they all led him towards the door, where Thali sat close, examining the details on the rock as she spoke.

“The first Shadowblood was a young princess named Eona,” Thali said, her voice mixing in with the sound of the crackling fire. “She discovered the heart of the planet, and died trying to steal it for herself, so that she could conquer the world…”

As she spoke, Karr gently pressed his hand to the door.

The story of Eona washed over him, and he could have sworn he felt a gentle pulse beneath his palm, coming from the other side.