Sorrow's Gift (Eternal Sorrows Book 2)

by Sarra Cannon

  He sounded tired, his voice almost flat. Maybe he was in shock.

  “Do you guys need anything?” Parrish asked. She hadn’t asked Crash if it was okay to start handing out his supplies, but she didn’t think he’d mind. They had plenty to go around for awhile, and these people had obviously been through some rough times.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Do you have water? Food? We have nothing left,” he said. He gestured toward his small group. “Most of us haven’t had anything to eat or drink in a couple of days other than some water we got out of the creek down the way and a few bags of chips and other junk food we had in our packs.”

  Parrish looked at the group of people on the tracks. Three of them were small children, no older than Zoe had been. Two others were women, probably in their twenties. There were five men of varying ages ranging from teens to middle age. She wondered if they were a family or just random people from Baltimore who’d managed to get out in time.

  “We’ve got a few bottles of water and some food we can spare,” Crash said.

  “How did the fire get started?” Noah asked.

  The man followed Crash toward the back of the Humvee. “We’re not sure what started it, but it originated somewhere downtown,” he said. “It could have been anything. Everything’s just…”

  His voice trailed off, but Parrish knew what he meant. It still just didn’t seem like normal, real conversation to be talking about bodies getting up and walking after they were dead.

  She went around to the back of the vehicle and grabbed a case of bottled water. She lifted it up and walked over to the rest of the group. She set it down on the ground and pulled her sword from her back then sliced through the plastic that held it all together.

  When she grabbed a couple of bottles and looked up, she saw the fear and awe in the eyes of all the survivors. She almost laughed. Yeah, it would probably be weird to see someone pulling out a katana to open up a case of waters. Everything had changed so quickly it felt like second nature to her now to use the sword.

  She put it away quickly, though, and handed out the water. They were guzzled down so fast, it made her stomach hurt just thinking about how scared and thirsty they must have been.

  Noah came over and started handing out packs of nuts and crackers.

  “You guys doing okay?” he asked the smaller kids.

  They nodded, but Parrish could see in their eyes that they were not okay. Something in her heart tugged at her to stay and take care of them. She would have given anything for the chance to take care of Zoe.

  Tears stung her eyes and she looked away.

  “Most of the walking dead burned up in the fire, I think,” the older man was saying as he and Crash walked over carrying a few more boxes of supplies.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Crash said. “We ran into a huge horde of them on the road a few miles back. The smoke and fire seemed to be pushing them away from the city. They could easily head this way. You guys need to find shelter.”

  “Where will you sleep?” Parrish asked.

  One of the women stood. “There’s a house just outside of town here that belonged to my mother. It’s been empty for a while, but it’s big enough for our group. We’ll be alright. We’ll be safe there.”

  Noah looked to Parrish and when their eyes met, she knew they were thinking the same thing.

  No one was safe anywhere. Not anymore.

  Maybe not ever again.

  Karmen sat in the back of the Humvee, her jaw tense and her legs crossed underneath her. The others were outside giving away half their water and food and she was stuck in the truck with the girl. She had a bad feeling about this girl, like she’d been keeping secrets from them.

  A headache pounded in her skull, and all Karmen really wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep. Connecting with that huge group of rotters on the highway had taken a lot out of her. And it had honestly scared her to her core.

  No human should have that kind of power. It made her feel dangerous, like she couldn’t quite trust herself.

  She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes.

  They had managed to get through that group of rotters by some miracle, but what happened if she couldn’t do it again? What other horrors were they going to face on the road?

  There was no way to know, but stopping to give away a bunch of their limited supplies to people they didn’t even know was not the answer.

  It wasn’t that Karmen was completely cold-hearted. She was happy to finally see some survivors, but Parrish and the others needed to get real about how the world was going to work from now on. It was every man for himself out there now. Karmen knew it even though they hadn’t had a chance to see it first hand. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the horrible things seemingly good people hid behind their perfect families and respectable jobs.

  There was no reason to hide the ugliness now. No one would send the bad men to jail, so why not show their true nature? Why not take the things they always wanted?

  No government. No consequences.

  People would be different now. They weren’t going to accept a couple of cases of water and say thank you from the bottom of their hearts.

  No, people would see that you had supplies and they would do whatever they had to do to take all of it. They would see kindness as a weakness, and they would exploit and manipulate. It was human nature, and with no government to tell people otherwise, the whole world would go to shit.

  Karmen scowled and glanced through the windshield. Noah, Parrish, and Crash were still out there talking to the group of soot-covered people. The older man pointed toward the road that led out of town. Maybe he was giving them directions to a safe place where they could stay. Karmen hoped they were wrapping things up so they could get the heck out of here soon. She did not want to be stranded somewhere on the road come nightfall.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The girl’s voice startled her, and Karmen tensed.

  “Why do you care?”

  The girl shrugged and looked toward the front windows. “I just wonder if these people are your friends or if you somehow got stuck with them and can’t seem to get un-stuck,” she said. “At first, I thought you guys were all close friends from before, but you don’t seem to particularly like them much. Especially the other girl. Parrish.”

  Karmen swallowed and shifted her legs on the seat. “What about her?”

  The girl’s eyes seemed to see right through her, and Karmen squirmed under the feel of her gaze.

  “You guys were friends before this all happened?” she asked.

  Karmen looked down at her fingers and picked at the pink nail polish she’d just put on the other day. It was already ruined from her messing with it, and she realized she’d left the bottle at Crash’s. “We were frenemies, I guess.”

  The girl shook her head. “What’s a frenemy?”

  Karmen rolled her eyes. Seriously. What planet did this girl grow up on? She seemed to be about their same age, but she was clueless. They’d had to teach her every card game yesterday, as if she’d never played in her life. Then there was that weird cloak in her bag. What was her deal?

  “Friends, but enemies,” Karmen said.

  “How can you be both at the same time?” the girl asked.

  Karmen shrugged again and peeled another long section of paint off her nails. “I guess you really can’t.”

  She looked up to see Parrish and Noah squatting together by the supplies, their eyes locked on each other. It twisted her stomach to see them so lovey dovey. They should just kiss already and get it over with.

  She pressed her lips together and swallowed her feelings of regret. She’d liked him for such a long time, but it had been his best friend Aaron who had shown interest in dating her. Not Noah.

  Never Noah.

  Karmen had really only gone out with Aaron to try to make Noah jealous. She’d thought maybe if he had to see her with another guy every day, he would realize how much he liked her.<
br />
  That plan backfired horribly. She should have known better, really. Noah wasn’t the type to ever betray a friend. Once she agreed to go out with Aaron, she was pretty much guaranteeing that Noah would never go out with her. Even if he had liked her.

  Which she was sure now he never had. Not in that way, at least.

  Thinking back, it seemed that he must have always had a thing for Parrish.

  Why had she never realized that before? And why on earth had he never acted on it? Even now that they were all together and were literally, like, the last people on earth, he still hadn’t told her how he felt about her. At least not that Karmen could tell.

  She peeled the last of the paint off her nails and sighed. She needed to get over it. She couldn’t torture herself with this forever. Especially if she was going to be with this group for the rest of her life—however long that might be.

  She couldn’t even imagine being parted from them anymore. No matter what else happened, they were in this thing together, for better or for worse. And whatever was happening between Parrish and Noah, it was right somehow. Meant to be.

  That didn’t mean she had to like it, though.

  “I was wrong,” she said to the girl. She watched as Parrish touched Noah’s arm and smiled. “I think you actually can be close to someone—maybe love them—even if you don’t always like them.”

  The witch watched as Karmen stared longingly at the others.

  These people were so easy to read. They wore their emotions on their faces like badges of honor.

  This girl, Karmen, obviously had a thing for Noah, even though he didn’t return her affection. Still, there was a part of her that felt sorry for Karmen. When she’d touched her arm earlier, she’d seen visions of the horrible things the girl’s father had done to her.

  The witch understood that kind of pain. The pain that came from betrayal by the very ones who were supposed to protect you.

  She hadn’t expected to feel such a connection to Karmen. She’d judged her as a selfish girl with no concern for anyone around her, but the truth was that she kept everyone at a distance in order to protect herself.

  The witch had done the same thing for most of her own life.

  She was supposed to hate the guardians. To destroy them at all costs. But now that she knew more about Karmen’s past, her feelings of pity confused her.

  She wanted to tell Karmen to move on. No matter what she might feel for Noah, there was no hope of a romantic relationship with him.

  Noah and Parrish had always been a couple, lifetime after lifetime. Whether they realized it or not, the witch knew the stories about the guardians. The leader and her lover. Their relationship and the sacrifices they’d made for each other were legendary.

  Back home, the two sides didn’t mix. The Iceborn lived on an island to the north, while the Fireborn lived on the southern island. The two races rarely spoke or mingled unless they had business in the Middlelands.

  It was forbidden for an Iceborn and a Fireborn to fall in love and start a family. The danger of producing a hybrid child were simply too great.

  Hybrids, capable of wielding both sides of the world’s powers, were rare but extremely powerful. And extremely dangerous.

  One power was often dominant, but the most disciplined and powerful hybrids had learned to control both sides, some even learning to combine them, creating an entirely new strain of magic.

  After the Dark One was banished to the human world, the elders declared that the very existence of a hybrid was dangerous to everyone in their world. They created a law forbidding Iceborn and Fireborn to marry or have a child together. Any baby born a hybrid under the new law was sentenced to death, so for the most part, the people obeyed, afraid of a power too great for them to understand.

  Legends say that before the war, most hybrids either went insane—killing everyone in sight and destroying entire villages with their rage—or they became too powerful for the Councils of Fire and Ice to control.

  The Dark One had been the first, most powerful hybrid of all, threatening the Councils’ rule. She’d been born back in a time when marriage between the two sides was still permitted. Before the world knew how dangerous it might be. When her parents discovered her gifts, they worked with her tirelessly, training her in both sides of her power day and night.

  As she grew older and stronger, her abilities grew beyond her parents’ wildest dreams. She wielded the very power of life and death. She could heal someone who had been pierced through the heart with a sword, bringing them back from the dead. And she could kill the most powerful sorcerer with nothing more than a flick of her wrist.

  By the time she was an adult, there were whispers of her overthrowing the elders of both councils and becoming Queen of both kingdoms, uniting them for the first time under one ruler. The elders made the mistake of trying to lock her away, and their actions had started a war that lasted more than a hundred years, leaving both kingdoms in poverty and ruin for decades after.

  It was the guardians that had ended the war, finally banishing the Dark One to this world and trapping her inside an icy prison beneath the earth. Their names were still celebrated centuries later, and they were regarded as heroes. The saviors of their people.

  But not everyone agreed that the guardians were right.

  The witch grew up hearing tales of the Dark One whispered in the shadows among some in the city who believed she was wrongly banished. As a young girl, the witch came to idolize the Dark One, wishing that someday her own name would be spoken in such reverent tones.

  Of course, growing up, these tales of guardians and war seemed more like a fairytale. Legends had sprung up over the years, and no one really knew which stories were true and which were not.

  But the Dark One was real.

  And she wanted the witch to be her most trusted servant.

  She should be happy, but she hadn’t expected the Dark One to be so cruel. The witch cradled her burned arm against her body. Hadn’t she done everything the Dark One had asked of her? Hadn’t she been the one to break the magical seal that kept her mistress from casting magic? The entire virus and the Dark One’s growing powers were because of her.

  Why did she torture her this way every time they spoke?

  The guardians, on the other hand, had been nothing but kind. They had risked their lives to save her, given her food and shelter, and included her in their group without question.

  Was she really on the right side in all of this?

  The witch straightened her shoulders and filled her lungs. No, she would not let her devotion waver. The Dark One was her path to glory, and she wouldn’t mess that up. Not now. Not after everything she’d done.

  The elders would be brought to their knees when the Dark One returned to exact her vengeance, and the young witch would be there at her side, showing them all that they should have never underestimated her.

  In the end, her pain would be worth it, just to see the looks on the elders’ faces when she brought them down.

  The only thing standing in the way of her dreams now were the guardians. If she could keep them from each other long enough, the Dark One would go free and they could return to the homeland.

  But how was she going to do it?

  They were just children, really. Without their mentor and their memories, they were practically harmless. The witch knew her most important duty was to make sure they never reunited with the true fifth. She had to distract them from their mission and their dreams and find a way to tear them apart.

  She had to figure out their weaknesses and find a way to destroy them. She couldn’t let their kindness sway her.

  Besides, one of them had been through her bag. She’d noticed her cloak was crumbled up, not neatly folded the way she usually did it. How kind could they be if they were going through her things without her permission?

  At least they hadn’t found the stone.

  She would need to get rid of the cloak, of course. It was too suspicious and
strange for this world, and it would bring up questions. At her first opportunity, she would have to slip into a clothing store and switch it out for normal human clothing. She already mourned the loss of her cloak. It was her most beloved possession, but she had more important matters to deal with now.

  As she watched Karmen’s face, seeing the agony of unrequited love, the witch knew exactly where she needed to start. Their powers were growing and as long as they worked together, they would not be so easily destroyed by hordes of rotters and fire and pestilence.

  Their weakness was in their emotions. Their trust and vulnerability towards each other.

  A few well-timed lies and any human could be manipulated to feel whatever you wanted them to feel. Jealousy. Fear. Heartache.

  As the rest of the group climbed back into the Humvee, the witch looked from Noah to Parrish and back again. The relationship between those two was the strongest of any in the entire group. The closer they got to each other, the more likely they were to risk everything to keep the other safe. They would work together, and if there was one thing that was true about the ancient guardians, it was that the more they worked together, the more powerful they all became.

  Parrish was their leader, but without Noah, she would be weak. If the witch could make them doubt each other now, before the full memory of their love emerged, the entire group might fall apart.

  Karmen moved to the back of the Humvee and Noah took the seat up front with Crash. When he glanced back to ask if they were all ready to get back on the road, the witch caught his eye and smiled.

  He paused in his words, as if he’d momentarily forgotten what he was trying to say. Then, slowly, he smiled back.

  She held his gaze for a long moment, feeding him with their connection. Making him believe there was something important between them. Her powers of coercion and manipulation would be easy to use against someone so innocent and caring.