Page 158 of Daughter of the Dark Sea
Barron barely glanced at him. “The power of the ocean isvital.As I said, you are the turning tide in this war.”
“Is having the power of the earth not enough for you?” She glared at Blake.
“His power is . . . temperamental.” Blake deflated at Barron’s words. “The ocean outweighs the land. I needyourpower. With it, we will be unstoppable. We will fulfil the prophecy and restore mages. Imagine . . . a fresh, new world. No pirates. No humans. No . . .vermin.Not even Azaria would dare challenge us. We will use the nobles for purity. We will become new gods, in this new world.”
Gods?He was more than insane.
“And if I say no?”
Barron tapped the metal collar around her neck. “Don’t forget, I own you.” As he walked back to his reeking guards, he clapped Blake’s shoulder as he passed him. “Something I can thank my son for.”
Son.
Blake’s shoulders hunched as she jolted in shock against her unnatural imprisonment.Son.The matching black hair, the sharp features.Son. The similar cold demeanour and tall frame.Son.Their eyes were completely different, as were their powers, but now that shelooked, they were mirrors of each other.
“Son?” she seethed.
“Oh, yes. I forget. You see, I couldn’t let you go running back to Galen. Your memory may be impaired, but I couldn’t severe your connection to them entirely,” Barron waffled. “I needed to keep tabs on you, without you getting suspicious.”
“You . . . no. I lost my memory from a pirate attack. I . . .” Barron’s sly, darkening grin halted her words. “You! You took my memory?” Kora sagged with disbelief.
We can’t lose her.
I’ll see to it that she doesn’t.
The memory slammed into her.
Thatthinglurked in the doorway to the room. Opulence of gold and moss covered every stone wall, every crevice.
She’d been to Mossfell Castle before—a bloody mess, with a giant gash down the side of her face. Erick had pinned her down as Barron entered the room, a living, writhing shadow that’d entered her mind.
And wiped everything away.
An endless, bloodcurdling scream ravaged her mind.
“It wasn’t pirates,” she whispered. Her words fell upon deaf ears as Barron rambled on.
“Getting our hands on you in the first place was difficult. Raiden and his jolly crew kept you protected on that island,” he spat with vitriol. “Once I finally had you, I had to make sure you wouldn’t go back. My son provided an excellentdistraction. I couldn’t lose an elemental. Not one like you.”
Galen was . . .innocent.
The Talmon Empire was theenemy.
Did Erick know?Had he been spun the same lies from Barron, fuelling his vendetta against rebels for Eleanore?
She’d been hunting innocents for ten years. Trained as a weapon against her own people. She was a murderer, a reaperof her own kind. She’d single-handedly tipped the scales in the empire’s favour by hunting pirates and rebels.
Her body screamed. Every nerve, every pulse, every pore cried with agony of what she’d so blindly,willingly, done.
And Blake was the real spy. The real enemy. Not Finlay. Not the Skytors.Blake.
She shot a venomous glare at him as she heaved against the vines, bark biting into her skin. With a raging cry, the earth shook, water oozing from the ground and mixing with the soil to create slick, watery mud. Droplets lifted into the air as the tree containing her cracked, and Blake flinched at the sound.
“Ah! I wouldn’t do that.” Barron gestured to the reeking guards, and they parted like a diseased wave, revealing a kneeling figure gagged and bound.
Erick was bleedingeverywhere.
His face had been beaten to a pulp, black and blue with bruises. His armour had been removed, leaving him shivering, his hairy, bare chest exposed, with only trousers covering his body. Kora paled. His back had been whipped and was crusted with blood and, around his neck, was a thick, metal collar.
