Page 10 of Thief of Souls
I don’t have a locket.
I don’t have anything of my mother’s except for her pale blue eyes and silvery hair, my father once snarled.
And if I did, then I would kill anyone who dared touch it.
“Howdid you get this?”
“It was sent to me by the man I hired to track her down.” Keir continues, pouring himself a goblet of wine and then filling my glass. “You think she’s up to something, don’t you? You think her disappearing act is merely a ploy of hers… but I’m not so sure, Merisel. I think your sister is in trouble. And as much as you don’t care about the horn, you do care about your sister, don’t you?”
You son of a—
Stars suddenly ricochet through my vision.
It’s enough to make me blink.
What was that?
“Merisel?” Keir growls. “I asked you a question.”
“Cauldron’s piss,” a voice hisses. “Turn her over. Quick! The king has sent for her and we can’t deliver a corpse to him! He’ll have our lungs torn out through our nostrils.”
“My name is not… Merisel.”
I stagger out of the chair, trying to grab hold of the balcony. The whole world begins to reel around me.
“Then what is it?” Keir demands. “What’s wrong?”
“Zemira,” I whisper, staring down at my hands. “My name is Zemira.”
My fingers vanish.
It’s as if I’m evaporating into thin air.
“Zemira!” Keir shoves to his feet, reaching for my hand, but some strange force sucks me backward, until he’s merely a pinpoint of hot, flaming gold—
The world around me grows dark around the edges.
I’m wrenched into a world of shadows.
Hard floor beneath me. The burning ache of iron shackles around my wrists.
Pain screams through my shoulders and I choke and kick, my lungs spewing water as someone slaps me between the shoulder blades again.
I retch and retch, until my eyes are bugging out of my head. Just when I think my brain is going to explode from the pressure, it’s finally gone.Air. I can breathe again. And the first lungful tastes as sweet as Night’s Bloom—the most delicious poison I’ve ever tasted, and the most painful.
It was a dream.
It was all a dream.
Keir. The island. The cauldron.
Soraya.
Because the next words reveal the nightmare: “Get up, dog.” A boot drives into my middle, and I cry out and curl around it, as someone grabs a fistful of my hair and wrenches me close to his face. “The king wants to see you.”
3
The guards haul me to the throne room.
