“Many thanks, Wanderer, for leading me here,” Eder said to Cade.
“A traitor,” Rohtt hissed. “A worm that should be squished beneath—”
Eder moved like a wraith as he spun in Thali’s body, slicing the sword clean across Rohtt’s neck.
Rohtt’s head tumbled from his shoulders, a clean cut. Blood slung in raindrops against the tip of the drill as his torso teetered. Then it fell forward against the cave floor with a wet smack, to fall at the prisoner’s feet.
“But you…” Cade sputtered. “You swore to be on my side.”
“Wanderer fool,” Eder growled. “Now it is your turn to die.”
“Stop him!” Cade shouted.
The prisoners swarmed Eder like a wave, hefting their axes and shovels, their faces blank as they responded to Cade’s command.
Eder slashed out with Gutrender, so quickly Sonara almost didn’t see the blade swing.
Prisoners fell in his wake. The floor was littered with fresh bodies to mix with the dried bones.
All the while, Cade stood to the side, horrified.
Sonara had heard about Jira’s conquests with Gutrender, why they called him the Scorpion King. She’d wielded the blade herself in Stonegrave, but she’d never seen it in action with her own eyes… never truly understood it until now, as she saw Gutrender at work.
Little by little, Eder began to descend the gold steps.
The power he held, and not just from the blade…
It was dark magic.
A power Sonara had never beheld before.
“Stop Eder!” she shouted to Karr and Azariah, as Wanderer bullets fired in the background and resounded throughout the cave. Sonara felt them rumble in her chest, and sing in her blood. “Stop him and get the sword before the gets to the heart!”
The cave turned into a bloodbath, a blur of bodies dropping and bullets firing, the rest of the Dohrsaran prisoners clustered together in the back, waiting blankly for Cade to pull them into the fray.
Eder slashed with Gutrender, stopping the bullets, flattening them before they hit the ground with a plink.
“Wanderer weapons against the might of the planet.” Eder’s voice boomed over the chaos. “Against a mere portion of the heart. Imagine what the entire heart could do if it were mine.”
Gutrender swung left and right, arcing and twisting as Eder sliced through bullets, stopping them before they could hit Thali’s body. Somewhere in the fray, Cade was now standing with his soldiers, shouting commands for them to stop him.
One by one, they lost to Eder. The sword was too mighty, too full of the planet’s power from that one small stolen piece…
Eder’s boots were on the second step of the amphitheater now.
Prisoners continued to fall as he walked, spinning and felling them in his wake.
Save me, Sonara’s curse whispered as it picked up on the planet’s terror. It was ripe upon her tongue. Save me, my soul, save me.
Eder was halfway down the steps.
Sonara backed up, her heels scraping the heart. She could feel its pulse inside of her, resounding as her own heart hammered in her chest. She could not fight an unfightable blade. Not with a regular warrior’s sword, even if it had once been Soahm’s.
There were so few prisoners now. So few soldiers. Only fifty left, perhaps, but still, they came.
The golden sword swung as Eder turned and leapt the last few steps, aiming for the heart, almost in slow motion.
Sonara lifted Lazaris, ready to take the hit. Certain that she would die trying to defend the heart.
But before Eder could cut her clean in half…
A jolt of electricity struck the sword. Gutrender smashed into it with a resounding ring, pushing the blade off balance.
Sonara looked to her right. There Azariah stood with her palms outstretched, a smile on her beautiful, lethal face, as she walked to join Sonara.
“I shared everything with this monster,” Azariah said, her eyes sparkling. “It’s time for it to die.”
Eder swung, but Azariah’s lightning struck the blade again.
“Shadowbloods,” Eder growled, whirling to take out two more of Cade’s prisoners before he faced Azariah again, and readied for another strike.
But next a set of bones rose to life, as Jaxon lifted his hands and screamed into his power. All around, the skeletons began to rise from the steps. They slunk across the amphitheater like an army, holding back Cade’s prisoners, creating a wall so that none could pass.
Cade howled as he stood at the top, shouting for his people to fight, to find a way through the dead.
But Jaxon’s army of bones was too strong, his power surging from him as he held his hands in the air like a conductor. The bones wove together like a wall that stood, ever-strong, around the bottom few steps of the amphitheater.
There was only Eder now.
“Worry about Eder,” Jaxon said, as he looked over his shoulder at Sonara. “I’ll handle the rest.”
More bolts of lightning lanced from Azariah’s palms, forming shields of blue that appeared in midair to meet the blade as Eder growled and came for them again.
The cave was filled with the crackle—the boom—of Azariah’s power as she pulled at something deep inside herself.
Eder swung and sliced through the bolts with Gutrender. But when the electricity faltered, when Azariah didn’t get a shield up in time, breathless and bleeding shadows from her nose… a boulder shot into the path, knocking into Eder. Karr shouted in victory.
Eder rolled sideways, Gutrender still in hand.
The fight continued.
Sonara’s blade clashed against Eder’s, and when she faltered, she felt the jolt of Azariah’s electricity pushing Eder back. Azariah, her sister, and Karr, who carried part of Soahm inside of him.
Sonara fought alongside them, but Lazaris would not be enough. Soon it would break beneath Gutrender’s power, and then what would she have left to defend the heart?
Magic, Sonara’s curse whispered.
She closed her eyes.
There is no more cage, she told herself. There is no more holding back.
With a roar, she let her power soar from her to follow Eder’s every move. She pulled at his emotions, his ancient and rotting aura revealing every step before he made them.
“Karr!” Sonara shouted, as she sensed Eder angling the sword towards where he stood.
Karr dove as lightning shielded his body, cracking like the Wanderer wall once had. And then Eder was recoiling again.
“Jaxon, to the right!” Sonara said. A skeleton stumbled into Jaxon’s path, protecting his back as Eder lunged at him and cut the skeleton clean in half instead, the bones spilling only to quickly piece themselves back together again.
Rocks came up from the cave floor, as Karr called to the rubble. But Eder was too quick, spinning to cut right through the rocks, before turning again to cut through Azariah’s lightning.
It was slash after slash, rock meeting sword and bone and lightning slowing its path, a deadly dance of darkness and light and earth.
But when the Shadowbloods began to slow, Eder did not.
Help us, Sonara thought. She pushed her prayer towards the planet’s heart, not even sure it would listen. Help us or we’re all going to die.
As Eder swung again, a shot rang out.
Thali’s body jerked as the bullet went clean through Eder’s chest.
He turned, snarling, to stare at the one who’d shot him.
Cade Kingston, his rifle outstretched, smoke trailing from the barrel like a bullet’s goodbye kiss.
“Get away from my brother,” Cade snarled.
Eder turned, sword steaming from the heat of the electricity.
Cade shot again.
The bullet went through Thali’s eye socket.
“You cannot kill a spirit, just as you cannot kill a soul,” Eder said. He swung the blade. Bits of blood fell from it like a sparkling red rain. Then he ran. Sprinting not towards the hear
t, but back up the steps towards Cade, blade poised to swing.
And Eder did swing.
But the blade never made it to Cade’s chest.
Because the ground split open as Karr screamed beside Sonara, his body trembling as rage poured from him to create a deep crack in the ground. Eder stumbled, a foot caught in the crack.
Karr slammed his hands together, and the crack tightened around Eder’s ankle, trapping him in place. He fell, face-first on the steps, helpless. Gutrender fell from his grasp.
It was almost silent as Karr took the bait and sprinted up the steps to finish the job. Sonara shouted after him. It couldn’t be this easy.
She sensed the anticipation and decision on her tongue, knew that Eder was not ready to die… as Eder suddenly turned, aiming a small knife that had been hidden inside of Thali’s cloak.
Sonara saw everything fading before her, like Soahm being stolen in the night.
Gone. Soahm was gone. He would never sit upon their mother’s throne, take back his crown, give Soreia the king it deserved. Her whole life, she’d chased after the ghost of him, hoping she would find him, bring him home.
But perhaps he’d come back on his own.
Not fully. Not the way he should have been.
But as she watched Eder swing that blade at all that was left of Soahm… something inside of Sonara broke. All her sorrow, all her hatred for the Wanderers boiled within her, mixing and tangling until her own magic shifted.
She’d caged it her entire second life. Feared it, deep down, because she believed it controlled her. Like everything always had. When all this time, she could have been controlling it.
She pointed her magic—not a curse any longer—at Eder.
At the rotting, stinking thing that roiled within Thali’s old veins.
Pain, she thought. The aura of pain…
And as she thought it, as she pushed it outwards with a scream, thinking of Soahm, thinking of the death he’d endured, the life he’d given so Karr could stand again…
Eder screamed.
Screamed, and that same pain Sonara had imagined poured from him. The aura she’d come up with, had manipulated into existence.
Sorrow, she thought, pouring her own emotions into her magic, wanting to use it to turn it into something more.
Eder began to weep, his aura pouring with sorrow as he felt what Sonara wove with her magic, tangled up in the crushing sadness from the loss of Soahm.
“Azariah,” Sonara said, as she closed her eyes and imagined terror, the very same that the planet felt with Eder so near. “Get the blade.”
Sonara shoved that terror outwards, sent it soaring on shadow wings. As it went, she threw herself along with it, until she was seeing through her magic, the very same way she had when she’d once taken a sword and shoved it deep into Karr’s chest.
Into Eder’s open mouth her magic soared, down into his rotting core.
Sonara told her magic to sing, to scream terror into Eder’s very soul, and sing it did.
Terror, like Soahm’s scream in the night. Terror, like Duran leaping from the edge of a Soreian cliff. Like a whip lashing upon a girl’s open back, a kingdom full of people watching with hatred in their eyes.
Sonara laughed, as her magic sent Eder into the fetal position.
He curled himself up like a bug and trembled beneath the weight of the emotions she wove into him. Slowly, Karr called to the ground, widening the crack around Eder’s ankle.
Pulling Eder deeper and deeper into the earth, as if Eder was now a part of the golden amphitheater steps.
“You cannot stop this,” Eder growled, now only his face visible in the steps as they closed around him.
But Sonara told her magic to give him the aura of terror, like a Soreian prince being stolen from a dark, once-silent shore.
Eder screamed beneath the manipulation.
Azariah joined Sonara’s side.
“Melt the sword,” Sonara said.
Because Eona’s words were coming back to her. The planet… it would wake. If given a chance, it would wake, if made whole again.
Azariah placed the sword on the cave floor. She pressed palms to it, and they began to glow. A soft blue at the start, then so hot they turned white. The sword, so powerful, so famed, should have melted beneath her magic.
And yet it remained.
Sonara dropped to her knees, her magic fizzling. Eder howled, thrashing against Karr’s entrapment. The ground began to crack around him. He got an arm free, a rotting arm that reached towards the heart as Eder screamed.
“I can’t hold him,” Karr ground out. “I can’t hold him, Sonara.”
“Melt it, Azariah!” Sonara yelled.
“I’m trying,” Azariah said.
She was sobbing as she pressed her hands to the sword, her power finally sapped.
Sonara sent another aura towards Eder, this time turning it into that blissful, beautiful glee she’d once felt, when Markam pressed his lips against hers. When all she wanted to do was sink into him, lay back, and do nothing but savor the moment.
Eder relaxed, giving Karr’s own magic a chance to breathe.
Azariah sank, hands smoking.
Still the blade remained. “I can’t break it,” she whispered. “I have nothing left.”
The blade was white-hot. “Take it,” Sonara said. “Pick it up, Az.”
The Princess nodded and scooped up the sword.
Sonara turned, practically blind from the intensity of using her magic, as she tried to force another wave of emotion Eder’s way. But the creature only laughed.
“You cannot save the heart,” he growled. “It will be here forever, beckoning the darkness to draw near. Someday, someone will arrive and claim it.”
“Close it,” Sonara said. “Close the earth.”
Sonara could almost hear the world sigh as the ground trembled and closed fully over Eder.
The only sound left was the heart.
Thumping, slowly, as its aura whispered, Save me, that constant background noise that had not stopped since they’d entered this place. Silently, Sonara walked past the bodies on the floor. Past Karr, who lay there, watching, his brother beside him, the Dohrsaran prisoners gone.
“It’s time to end this,” Sonara said. “To put the heart back together again for good.”
Silently, she took the sword from Azariah’s hand. Her palm burned against the heat of it, but she sensed that pain inside of her hand, and breathed it in. So easy, to remove that feeling, the aura of pain that came with it. With a breath, she forced it away.
Her skin smoked as she held the blade and marched across the cave.
With a final bit of strength, Sonara drove the famed blade, with the original piece of Antheon, right into the heart of the planet. Just as a gunshot went off.
As something pinched against her back, and shadow blood leaked from her chest, soaring past her vision so quickly she thought she’d imagined it.
“NO!” Karr screamed.
Sonara fell, catching a glimpse of Cade.
He stood with his rifle aimed at her as the pain from the bullet wound finally hit her.
She’d been shot.
Chapter 42
Karr
Karr screamed as Sonara fell, the sword sticking from the heart of the planet… and yet it had not worked.
“No!” Karr screamed again. “No.”
He scrambled to his knees, but then Cade was turning. Leveling the gun on him next.
Karr held up his hands. “Cade. Please.”
“I want to believe you, Karr, but…” Cade sniffed. There were tears pouring down his eyes as he stalked past Karr. “But all I see is a monster wearing my brother’s skin.”
Azariah and Jaxon moved towards Sonara, but Cade fired another shot. It struck the ground beside Sonara’s body. “Nobody touches the Devil!” he shouted.
They held up their hands.
“Take the blade. Remove it from the heart,” Cade commanded. “Or she’
ll die.”
“Cade, please,” Karr said.
Cade glanced at him, and his eyes were not his eyes. They were overtaken by pain and sorrow, by hatred and a burning rage. “You are not my brother. Not fully. Not anymore.”
“I am,” Karr said. “Cade, I am.”
“This place, this hideous place… it’s changed you, Karr. It’s turned you into something I no longer know. And now I’m going to destroy it.”
He marched onwards, his rifle still aimed at Sonara, who lay on the floor beside the heart, holding her side as shadow blood leaked out.
“You,” Cade said, pointing his rifle at Azariah. “Remove the blade and toss it to me.”
“Don’t,” Sonara ground out. “Azariah, I swear to the stars, if you remove that blade, I will come back and haunt you forever once I’m dead.”
“Remove it!” Cade hissed.
Azariah reached out.
“Cade,” Karr said. “You raised me as your own.”
“Stop talking,” Cade growled. He looked to Azariah. “The blade.”
But Karr wouldn’t stop. “You used to tell me stories each night before we went to bed. We shared a blanket at Jeb’s place and I always got mad at you because you stole it, tossing and turning in your sleep.”
“You have his memories, but you aren’t him,” Cade said.
“You told me once that we would be kings if we came to Dohrsar. But I never wanted to be a king, Cade. I just wanted to be free.”
Cade was crying now. Karr could see his shoulders shaking, but he kept the rifle aimed upon Sonara. Still, he refused to believe.
“You can still stop this,” Karr urged him. “We can find a way to escape Geisinger’s path, start a new life somewhere, be together like you always wanted.”
“There is no us,” Cade said suddenly. He looked back at Karr. “There is no us, not after this.”
He turned, pointing the rifle at Azariah again. “Take the blade. Use it to cut out the heart, piece by piece.”
Behind him, Jaxon’s skeletal army began to crumble.
Bone by bone, they tumbled, and Jaxon sank to his knees, unable to hold them any longer. “I’m sorry,” he gasped.
“DO IT NOW!” Cade shouted.
With a sob, Azariah moved forward to pull the blade out.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 36
