Page 49 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
Is it possible…
Therat extended a hand toward the scar, fingers twitching as the air in his lungs grew heavy. A foul, bitter taste played on the edges of his tongue. He hesitated for a moment before brushing aside the tangle of honey-blonde hair.
There, on her temple and almost obscured under the dried blood, was a symbol carved with fine precision into her flesh. A straight line cut down from her scalp, looping up, down, and up again. Two lines ran at an angle down toward the curved base, connecting in a v-shape with the rest of the scar.
A jolt of white hot pain shot through Therat’s hand. He yelped, backing away from the woman. He had seen this before. Had tried in vain to forget the strange symbol carved into his father’s chest before a dagger plunged into his heart. Hooded figures in masks commanded a woman in rags to commit the heinous act, tears streaming down her face as she begged for forgiveness from the gods. Therat shuddered at the memory.
He stared at the scar until his eyes hurt, trying to see if it could unlock anything else. Anger flushed his face. The shadows convulsed in reply, sending a lurch through his stomach. The sickening dread of losing control seeped into the corners of his fragile mind. He took a deep breath of arid air, letting it suffocate the dull roar of voices.
A hush fell across Therat’s mind. The sudden quiet was jarring. Years spent listening to the voices croon their bloody songs left him hollow when they left, as if a piece had gone missing.
The winds shifted and something—whether random chance or fate, he could not be sure—pulled Therat’s gaze to thesouthern horizon. On the farthest dune he could make out the shape of a person hunched over, watching him.
A shiver ran over his addled mind. Unease settled into muscles already twitching with anticipation. The figure stood, a thin line on the horizon. Something sparked of the familiar, though Therat could not make out anything about the person. They stood, unmoving, Therat staring back in turn.
Therat took a cautious step forward, ready to confront the stranger. The Shadow-weave thrummed around him, a deep black cloak waiting for his command. The dark watcher did not move. Gathering his speed, Therat raced toward the dune, sand flying around his feet. He looked up, now closer to the figure, to see a woman draped in black.
The face of his Mireithren flashed by, her dark brown eyes sparkling in the sun, a coy smile playing on her red lips. Therat stumbled and lost his footing before scrambling upright again. His gaze lifted in time to see the woman in black step through a shimmering opalescent portal.
Mireithren’s face burned in Therat’s vision. Four long years wandering the vast desert could not erase her haunting visage.
It cannot be her, I do not want it to be her!
Terror seized his heart. Had she returned at last, like she promised she would? Come to claim him for whatever dark deeds her twisted mind told her to do. Would they raze another city to the ground? The entire desert? The world?
No. I cannot let this distract me. A mirage, it was only a mirage.
Tearing his eyes away from the ridge with a groan, Therat trudged back to the wayside shrine. Crimson blood stained the once pristine black and white stones. The hungering shades descended when Therat left. Blackened, putrefied flesh sloughed off bone as they devoured the woman. He could do no more; no weave of harmonics could return life to the desecrated form.Therat choked down the rising taste of bile and forced himself to look for any other clues the dead might share.
His gaze drifted over the woman, never lingering long on the fresh cuts and bruises from their fight. Around her left ankle, he saw a thin chain of golden links, somehow untarnished despite the woman’s ragged appearance.
A shiver crawled down his spine at the sight. He had seen this before. Wrapped around the ankle of his parents’ killer, the slow drip of his mother’s blood from her dagger an image he could never forget. A wave of nausea crashed over Therat.
“It cannot be,” he breathed. He took slow, deliberate breaths, trying to calm the roil of emotions inside. Therat sat looking at the sinking sun as the panic subsided.
A trembling hand reached for the golden anklet, fingers curling around the chain. Colder than anything Therat had felt before, an icicle of pain drove deep into his bones. It settled over skin accustomed to the relentless sun, and Therat forgot the meaning of warmth. The shadows within fled to the far recesses of his mind, shrinking in fear from the unearthly cold.
The world lost its finer details at the edges. The once-vibrant colors seemed muted. Hollow. Lifeless. Disconnected from the First Harmonic, existing in a world of gray fog. Whatever emptiness Therat may have felt before could never compare to the absence eating away at the world now. He waded through the thick mire filling his limbs and pulled on the chain with all his might.
With a desperate heave, the chain broke free, knuckles white from the effort. Fragments of gold flew through the air. An amber glow blanketed the wayside shrine. For the briefest of moments, a divine melody echoed around them, a harmony lost to time. The memory of warmth returned to skin and bone as the world around Therat turned to color once more. It was as if thechain had drained him, suppressed the harmonics weaving his very soul.
A cloud snaked in front of the sun and the glow faded, taking with it the ethereal music. Therat dropped the chain in disgust. A chaotic flurry of questions and half-answers tore through his mind as he stared at the wretched thing.
Why did any of this happen? Why does this torture never end?
twenty-five
Hunter
Opening her eyes, theworld slowly comes into focus. As the haze lifts, an ache settles into the woman’s heart. Each quaking breath catches in her throat, the rise and fall of her bare chest erratic. She leans forward; teeth bite down on soft lips, drawing a whimper from the man beneath her. They sink in further, searching for the metallic taste of hot blood. A groanhums along with the pressure building until it morphs into a whimper as blood greets her tongue.
“This is wrong, all your fault.”The voice slithers out from the woman’s wicked mouth, mauve lips curling into a frown.
The man looks up with pleading gray eyes, blood dribbling onto rich brown skin, raining down onto the smooth plains and deep valleys of his chest. Tendrils of Shadow-weave snake over his body, flaying skin from muscle. He grimaces and cries out.
“For-forgive me, I beg of my queen. I,”the man stops, breath stolen by the shadows. They force him to his knees, the rocks below a hundred daggers waiting to carve punishment into the man “Nnnuh, you cannot. You siren, you temptress!”The man’s eyes turn black, a deep void of nothing staring back at the woman.
She leans in and kisses him again. Harder, desperate. Fingers trail down his back. He does not flinch, does not cry or moan at the soft touch.
