Page 42 of Sea of Stars

they didn’t I would be thrown against the iron bars. The pronghorns slowed slightly as they trotted down the stairs. Then they picked up their pace, running at full speed toward the desert, their home, while Denton and I hung on as tightly as we could.

I turned my head and spotted one of my guards pursuing us on a large mountain dweller. "Mikado," I said under my breath. “Denton, we have a tail. Faster!”

I squeezed my heels into the pronghorn's sides so he would increase his pace. Denton was trying hard not to fall off as he looked behind him to see who was following us. The awkward angle was putting too much pressure on the pronghorn’s right side and he was beginning to slow. Denton was already a rather big guy, and I was worried his pronghorn wouldn’t be able to run very long as it was. I was just about to yell to Denton to ignore the guard, but he had righted himself. He was now bent low to minimize wind resistance.

It was impossible to steer the pronghorns, so Denton and I were riding far apart. A long while after the castle had completely faded from sight I was finally close enough to talk to Denton.

“What’s the status?" I yelled over to him. "Will we be able to lose them?”

Denton stayed quiet for a few moments, pondering the question. “Today, yes. Pronghorns can easily outrun mountain dwellers in a race. Mountain dwellers are slow but their pace is steady. Eventually the pronghorns will have to rest, though. I fear that the guard will be upon us by morning.”

“If he can find where we went,” I protested. We had reached the desert. Even though the pronghorns were leaving deep indentations in the sand, the wind would soon make the footprints disappear.

"Mountain dwellers are some of the only animals smart enough to hold a grudge,” Denton said. “He has your scent, so he’ll track you until he finds you.”

His words made me shiver. Many nights I had spent awake in my bed hearing the mountain dweller roar. He wanted to drink my blood after I had spilled so much of his.

"Well, if he catches up to us we can just tell him to turn around. He has to listen to me, I'm his king."

"He's already disobeying your orders by riding Mikado. I'm not so sure he's one of our guards."

"Then who is he?" I asked.

"Hopefully we won't have to find out." Denton's pronghorn veered away from me, ending our conversation.

My thoughts returned to the Assassin’s Dagger and the evil it spewed. With the dagger in hand, I had tortured Mikado in order to make him move faster to the castle and away from Mahlia. It was as if I had no control over my actions when I held the thing. When we had finally arrived at the castle, a Divinare had stitched up Mikado's wounds and he had quickly healed. But now he had long, nasty scars covering his body, leaving awkward hairless patches. He looked even more monstrous than he had before.

Even thinking about the blade conjured feelings of power and greed. I began to wonder what exactly I was chasing. I had left the castle with the idea that I wanted to save Mahlia, but was it possible that I just wanted the dagger back? I gulped. I was beginning to believe that I was still corrupted. I would forever lust for the blade's power just like Mikado lusted for my blood.

Denton had convinced me that I shouldn’t carry the dagger around with me. I wasn’t born with the gift of the Moira, so I could not control its power. He had warned me that the blade was evil and that I was evil when I held it. So I locked it up in the drawer in my bedchamber. But some nights, before bed, I had grown accustomed to taking the dagger out of the drawer and holding it, feeling the strength course through me. I had become addicted. And I was panicking now that it was gone.

I had told myself that it wasn’t just the power that made me look at it. It was what it had said: “The one you love shall rise and then fall. Challenge the fates and the Lords shall call.” I had let Denton look over the dagger and he had confirmed the words, but he had also warned me that Moira predictions were hard to decipher. There could be several meanings laced within the symbols. However, to me there was only one interpretation, especially intertwined with Mahlia’s scars. If Mahlia’s predictions were true, the next ruler would be slain by Mortwar. It was meant to be her. She was the true heir to the throne. I could not let her life end in his hands, not after she had suffered his tortures for years and then finally escaped. So I had taken her place. I had been waiting for Mortwar to attack the castle, counting the days until he defeated me. And when he ended my life, the Lords would call my body into the heavens for judgment.

My hands gripped the reins tightly as the pronghorns raced onward. They were fast and graceful on their feet.

The only problem with my prediction was that the dagger should have changed immediately after I had claimed the throne. It should have shown my morbid future, but every time I had looked at it, the saying remained the same. Now I feared that I had deciphered the words wrong. A new interpretation of the symbols' meanings had made me run away from the castle. Maybe she was dying right now. She had risen against me, and gained support. Now Mortwar must have found her and the Lords were calling her to the heavens instead of me. And it was all because I had challenged the fates. The daggers original words had completely vanished this morning because it was over. The predictions had come true. I was foolish to think I could change destiny. I wanted to believe that I was riding through the desert to help save Mahlia. I looked ahead at the barren horizon. The sand stretched for endless miles. I feared all I was riding toward were her remains.

Chapter 16

“The humans were right,” I said, staring at my hands. We had stopped for the night to let the pronghorns rest. I picked up some sand in my hands and let it slowly fall between my fingers.

“That’s unlikely. But about what exactly?” Denton asked. The two of us weren’t an exception to the mistrust of other races.

“The gift of the Moira is dangerous and unpredictable. They were smart to abandon their allegiance to us.”

Denton scoffed. “The elders are fantastic at interpreting the predictions. They lost faith in us because King Averis didn’t listen to the gifted readers.”

My hair perked up. I had never heard anything about this before. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “He was a great leader on the battlefield, but not so great of a king. When he didn’t like a prediction, he simply made up whatever he wanted to be true. And a lot of his predictions were slanderous to the other races. He banished any readers he didn’t agree with and any divinare that questioned him. He went a little crazy at the end of his reign."

“Where did you hear that?” We had grown up together, and I had never been taught very many details about King Averis, except for his assassination.

“I read about it in the healer’s hut. She had a ton of books, remember?”

I nodded. The stories I had heard about the king’s assassination had led me to believe that the readers were the ones flawing the predictions.

Denton continued, “All those books were just one divinare’s opinion. Still, I’m worried that Mortwar’s heard similar rumors. I don’t know if you noticed, but in his raid against our village, he only took the elders.”

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