Page 17 of Blade Breaker (Realm Breaker 2)

“She’s also the goddess of death,” Sigil muttered, folding her muscular forearms. As if she could defend her body from Lasreen herself. But there was no wall the goddess could not climb, no fortress she could not overthrow. There was no escape from Blessed Lasreen.

Even the realm itself might not escape her hand.

Sorasa scoffed. “I’m very aware. Life and death are two sides of the same coin.”

“So we’re being dragged off to a death-worshipping cult,” Dom rumbled, his emerald eyes going black.

“Lasreen’s Chosen honors life as much as death, light as much as darkness,” Sorasa answered.

“Will the Heir try to kill us?” Corayne asked around a wide yawn. Despite the hood she wore all day long, she sported a blush of red across her cheeks and nose.

Frowning, Sorasa shook her head. “Like I said, we’d be dead already, Corayne. And you should sleep. You may still have the energy for your relentless questions, but I do not.”

At her side, Andry chuckled into his hand. Even Dom’s lips twitched, threatening to pull out of his usual scowl.

Corayne drew herself up straighter, blinking fiercely. “Beforeyou came to Lemarta, before you and Dom found me—I arranged buyers for everything my mother smuggled or stole. One of the last shipments I sent was a crate of Jydi furs. Bound for the royal court of Ibal. I thought it was odd, a desert king buying wolf pelts, but he paid well, so I didn’t question it. But now...” Her eyes sparked with realization. “The King of Ibal has been in the Mountains of the Blessed for months, and he intends to stay there for a long time.”

A chill stole through Sorasa, the desert air cooling on her skin. She tried to think, sifting through snippets of memory. Only a few months old, but now those days seemed far away.

“I heard rumors the royal family left the court citadel at Qaliram early, but...”

Corayne nodded along. “You thought nothing of it. Just royals with their strange fancies. I thought the same.”

“Zimore is far to the south, over many weeks of harsh terrain,” Sigil cursed, naming the summer palace in the southern mountains. She got to her feet, pacing, her heavy boots making furrows in the ground. Again, she glared at the watchmen in the dunes. “Past the Sands, the headwaters of the Ziron, then up into the mountains themselves—”

Sorasa gritted her teeth, her frustration cresting. “Thank you, Sigil. I’ve been there.”

Corayne opened her mouth for another inevitable interrogation, but Sorasa glared her off. She remembered the palace, if barely.

One of my first contracts. I never even breached its walls. I didn’t need to. He was only a bumbling boy who liked to chase sheep in thehills. The kill was quick and easy, and perhaps inevitable. There were so many cliffs, a danger to any intrepid prince.

“Royals are strange,” Andry offered, shrugging his lean shoulders. “Like Corayne said, they have passing fancies.”

Corayne shrugged back at him, her arms wrapped around her knees. The Spindleblade lay sheathed at her side, half wrapped in her cloak. For once, she looked her age. Small, unassuming. A girl among wolves. After Nezri, after the kraken and the closing of the Spindle, Sorasa knew better.

The assassin set her teeth, her mind racing. “In season, Zimore is a sanctuary from Ibal’s blazing summers. Every year the Ibalet royals sail south along the river, leaving their shaded citadels and perfumed lagoons for the mountains. But the winters are brutal. Feet of snow. Windstorms in the hills. Even spring and fall are dangerous.”Not even the most brainless royal brat would go to Zimore on a whim. Let alone the King of Ibal.“It’s no place for an aging king and the many branches of his blessed tree.”

But with the Spindles torn, with Taristan of Old Cor seeking to ruin the realm to rule it, Sorasa wondered,Did the king know something was amiss before I did? Before Corayne? Before even Dom?

“But they left months ago, before this all started,” Andry said, his dark brows furrowed in confusion. After days in the desert, he wore a fresh crop of freckles like black stars in a warm brown sky.

“And when exactly didthisstart?” Sorasa answered, cutting a glance at the Elder hulking over them.

Dom met her gaze, silent, his lips pressed to nothing. He was never difficult to read, too removed from emotion to know how to hide it. Sorasa saw doubt in him, clear as the empty blue sky.

“When the sword was stolen,” Corayne offered. “Somehow my uncle made it past the immortal guards of Iona and into their vaults. He took a Spindleblade for his own, and set to tear the world apart.”

The assassin did not drop her stare, tiger eyes meeting emerald gone to black. After a long moment, Dom relented, unsticking his tongue.

“It began thirty-six years ago,” he muttered, and Corayne whirled to face him. “When a pair of Corblood twins were born, their mother dying to give them life. Two boys, two paths. And only one fate the Monarch could foresee.”

For once, Corayne was silent, her breath ragged through her teeth.

But the question she could not ask was obvious.

Sorasa asked it for her.

“What fate was that?”

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