Page 56 of Abducting Sarah

“I hope his life is worth more than just the absence of a bone knife in my throat.”

She laced her fingers together on her lap. “How is Gram, anyway?” she asked of her brother. “I haven’t seen him in a week.”

“What makes you think I’ve seen him lately?”

She laughed caustically. “Who else but my baby brother would have told you where I live?”

“He’s good,” I told her. “Stupidly selling bone knives, but he’s good.”

She almost smiled. “And Drift?”

“Your cousin is doing great on Deacon’s ship.”

She nodded, looking pleased. “Glad to hear it.”

I tipped my head curiously. “I thought you hated the Skir side of your family tree.”

“Oh, I do,” she said, then sipped her water with herbs. “but they’re still family. And Drift never stood a chance at the academy, not without Deacon in his corner. The Ladrangs are good Ladrians. I imagine you’re working for them again?”

“Among others,” I said, then got back to business. “I need information, Omen. Will you help me?”

“That depends on what information you want.”

“The conduit who is foretold, what do you know about that?” I asked.

A thought flashed through her eyes, before she feigned innocence and asked, “A conduit who is foretold?”

I nodded slowly. “I understand there is a special conduit who makes the others nervous. She’s foretold to bring about some kind of change, and by the look on your face, you know exactly what and who I’m talking about.”

She looked away and muttered, “This is why we could never be friends, Jac. You know me too well.”

“Some would say that enhances a friendship.”

“Fools.”

“What do you know about the special conduit, Omen?” I persisted.

“What makes you think I would spill the secrets of the sisterhood?”

“Because you hate them as much as I’m starting to,” I growled irritably.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, she began to sing. It wasn’t words, or maybe it was a language I didn’t know, but when she sang, my head vibrated from the inside. I held my ears to make it stop, but it didn’t matter. She was inside my brain. Pain drilled through me there and something dripped down my face from my eyes. I closed them tight.

Then she stopped.

When I opened them again, either her house had changed or we had transported, but we were inside of a ship. The walls were gray and covered in finger-sized panels.

She said, “Enlightenment, show us Text 8:62.” Then, she tossed me a piece of fabric. “Wipe the blood from your face, Jac. It’s unseemly.”

I did and the ship’s panels morphed together into one image of text. It was theHoly Script—a book I had only ever heard of and no one but conduits had read. I knew it in my bones as soon as I saw the image. There was no reason for her to be so secretive otherwise.

I read it aloud, “The contra will come in the guise of an ally. She shall be unlike the conduits of Orhon in stature and breeding yet filled by royal blood. Her ways will be strange, and you will know her by her essence. She will bring an end to the power of Orhon conduits, if she is not destroyed. Beware, my daughters.”

Royal blood? That’s not Sarah. The fuck?

I needed some kind of confirmation. “What does this even mean?”

“Seems rather obvious to me.”

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