Page 75 of The Dawn of the Cursed Queen

The owner of that voice sat hunched over on one of the logs furthest from the fire. He was in shadows, his silhouette large and burly, a worn blanket wrapped around him, covering his head and obscuring his face.

“No,” I said. “Recently joined. Nismera took my family from me.”

It wasn’t a lie, a twist of the truth maybe, but not a lie. She had taken my family, and my involvement was recent. The snap of the logs filled the silence, and I wondered who this man was that the others seemed to cower as he spoke. I couldn’t see his features, and by the way he held himself, he didn’t want to be seen, but I caught the reflection of cuffs and chains securing his wrists as he pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders. It was a brief glimpse, but enough that I knew they were not the same as the ones we wore while traveling. I wondered what they kept at bay.

“She takes everything she wants.” He grunted, and I felt the relief of the others as if they had been waiting for him to lash out in some way. “They call her a madman, a butcher. Many think she keeps something beneath her city of gold and happiness to create monsters.”

“Monsters?”

He grunted in agreement. “No one knows how, but we assume Blood Scorn helps. Now that the other brother has returned, he will make her beasts, and then there will be no stopping her. We are doomed because our only hope now bleeds into the sky.”

One of the prisoners sighed, placing his bowl down as if the reality made him queasy.

“Blood Scorn?” I asked, and they all looked at me. “They don’t use titles as such in The Eye.”

Another prisoner spoke up from across the fire, half of his face covered in scars. “I imagine they wouldn’t. Blood Scorn is the one that can kill you without even touching you. I saw it once when she sent him to a rebel village in Napila. He popped a guy’s head off without even flinching. He had eyes made of blood.”

Ig’Morruthen. Isaiah. He could control blood. I glanced down, flexing my hand. It explained why I didn’t bleed out when he took my hand back on the remains of Rashearim.

A prisoner slurped his soup before pointing his spoon at the others. “You shouldn’t pinpoint one. It won’t matter if he comes for us or all. She has five now.”

There was a murmur of hushed whispers, but he went on. “Two Kings of Yejedin remain, along with her brothers and the one he made.”

The hooded figure from afar spoke next. “There’s not five.”

Another prisoner laughed. “Seems like counting may not be your strong suit, my friend.”

His back straightened, and I realized he was far taller than I originally thought. “There are six.”

Everyone started talking again, gaining the attention of even the prisoners who sat at other fires. Orym shushed them, nodding toward the guards, suddenly eyeing us with interest.

“Six?” the dwarf said. “Can’t be. One Ig’Morruthen is enough. If she has six, that’s practically the start of the new age. She’d be unstoppable.”

“She already is,” the hooded figure said, drawing back into himself.

I swallowed the growing lump in my throat as they looked toward me for reassurance, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t, give them that. I couldn’t tell them of her.

“I’m more worried about the general being back here. He slaughtered the World Ender, and now his life force is dancing in the sky,” the dwarf said.

“The realms brought something back with it. Something with the blood of the ancient. The first. The fires in the East weren’t rebels,” the hooded figure said.

“The East?” I asked.

“Yes, her soldiers were slaughtered. They thought it was you guys, but I heard remains were scattered, spelling out a message that enraged her,” Orym said. “You’d been long captured by then.”

I nodded as if listening, realizing he was trying to keep my cover for me by stretching the truth. Fires in the East with a haunting message screamed Dianna, but when would she have had the time for it? We had been together. Unless it was while I was still unconscious when we first arrived. No, she would have told me. The spoon tapped the side of my bowl as I thought about her expressions when I mentioned certain things. She was a terrible liar, and I’d been too wrapped up in thinking she was lying about her feelings for me to contemplate it could be so much worse.

A younger prisoner laughed and said to the hooded figure, “You’re just listening to fables and myths. No Ig’Morruthen would turn against Nismera. They’d have to be insane. The weapons I hear she has could destroy worlds.”

“You think I lie? I feel it in my blood. All of us do,” the hooded figure sneered before standing and sauntering off to a tent on the other side of the camp. No one spoke again for a few moments, and then the conversation shifted from Nismera and her legion, focusing on what they were eating and whether the prison would serve better food. But my gaze remained on the tent the hooded figure had stepped into.

Orym nudged my shoulder, and I turned to him. He tipped his head toward the tent and said quietly, “They say he is the first prisoner she has taken from the Otherworld. They say he can turn into a beast with three tails. I don’t know anything else, only that he killed and ate his future cellmate.”

That would explain the chains and why he spoke the way he did. He truly would feel an Ig’Morruthen since they derived from the same place. I nodded but said nothing. The flames grew higher as I sat deep in thought, twirling my spoon in the mush.

A crack of thunder split the air. The sound was loud enough that it startled everyone in camp. Prisoners and guards alike stopped and studied the night sky, a few mumbling prayers in their native languages. I turned toward Orym, his mauve skin a shade lighter. Many prisoners stood and started putting out fires, suddenly ready to retreat to the dubious safety of their tents.

“What’s the matter? Has no one heard thunder before?” I asked.

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