Page 68 of Vengeance of the Pirate Queen

“He did something to me,” I say when I can speak again. “Something is very wrong.”

“It’s all right,” Kearan says. “He’s dead now. No one could have survived that cave-in.”

I shake my head. “He’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“I put a dagger in his heart and another in his throat. He’s still walking and talking.”

And then there’s the bit I don’t want to admit to.

The fact that I canfeelhim.

I don’t know exactly where he is, but I know that heis. We are connected somehow. From the moment I struck his heart.

“He called youSora,” Kearan says.

“That was my family’s nickname for me.”

“How could he have known that?”

“I—”

The point of a spear juts under my chin from where I still kneel in the snow. I was so distressed that I didn’t realize we were no longer alone.

And then it happens again.

“Youtooksomethingthatwasn’tyourstotake,Threydan.Thesirenartifact is the property of the king, and youwillreturn it immediately.”

Spears were pointed directly at me from a dozen different directions, but I only laughed at their presence.

“You can’t kill me. You can’t take the artifact. Iamthe panaceum now.”

A spear embedded into my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel the pain ofit. There was only numbness as I pulled it from my skin. It drippedblood onto the green earth, but my skin was already healing, the bloodreplenishing and the wound disappearing.

Then Irushed them, determined to kill every last one of mycrewmates.They chose their side.

When the memory subsides, I look up to see more weapons pointed at Kearan. It’s the men returned from our distraction, finding us at their camp.

I can’t find the proper fear within me right now. Not when my body and mind no longer feel like I control them. That’s far more distressing.

One of the men says something in that unfamiliar language, but my eyes widen as my mind translates the words.

“You’ve woken him.”

Why can I understand him now?

What did Threydandoto me?

I stand slowly, so as not to get stabbed, and stare down the man who spoke.

“What is he?” I ask, somehow speaking their language back to them.

The man’s eyes widen in shock. “He’s already changed her.”

“What is going on?” I ask.

A different man steps forward, presses his spear against my cheek, and slices across my skin.

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