Page 59 of Prince of the Phantom Sky

“Your humour always amazes me,” she purred. Aryn’s finger slid down his bowstring as he eyed the female. Gods, Kora hoped he also wasn’t bewitched by her beauty. Or maybe he also wanted to impale her with an arrow. Laughter echoed from Skylar and Cassidy as they covered their mouths.

“What do you want, Sirona.” Raiden’s bluntness rivalled Blake’s cold detachment, and a pang broke through Kora’s chest at the thought. Blake danced through her mind, dragging memories to the surface and she wobbled slightly. Raiden’s stare slid to her, concern etched on his face.

“Are you alright?”

Kora shook her head, screaming internally for him to get out of her mind. She clung to her mask as Sirona also glanced at her, disturbed by Kora’s sudden reaction. Blake’s whispers, his light touches across her body, his broken promises, swarmed her until her hearing faded, despair, pain, and horror consuming her mind.

Something rumbled beneath her feet, and a faint cry rang in the far distance. Sirona was speaking, but Kora couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t hear anything but the sound of her own heart breaking, caught in a loop. Black tendrils that hissed like snakes slithered across the ground, wrapping around Sirona’s feet, threatening to bite her. Kora balked, blinking rapidly at the illusion.

“. . . report you read on Kora, we need to discuss it.”

“What?” Hearing her own name, Kora plummeted to reality, using her familiar captain’s mask to suppress the terror within. The snakes vanished, a shining pearlescent floor glittering at her instead. Cold numbness spread throughout, anchoring her enough to comprehend the conversation. Just one tone from Raiden and her world had spiralled. The urge to flee to her chamber, to hide beneath the fluffy blankets and duvets was so palpable.

But Kora had struck a deal with the King of Galen, the foremost heir to Haizea. She could hide no longer.

“This is for the prince only,” Sirona remarked as she produced a folio with pristine, polished, painted fingernails.

“If it’s about me, I need to hear it,” Kora said. Sirona’s smile tensed as Aerion nodded.

“Of course.” Aerion gestured for them to follow him. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

Skylar joined the group, a permanent scowl gracing her slender face, with Cassidy slipping into the mystery room behind the reinforced doors.

Aerion led them to a cumbersome study hidden behind the staircase through a secret door in the wall. A warm, cosy room, with sweeping rear doors leading to the castle gardens, and wooden furniture with intricate carvings and plush, autumnal-toned furnishings.

“You might want to sit down,” Aerion advised Kora, as he took the folio from Sirona and opened it on the desk in front of him.

27

Kora

Aryn sat beside Kora as she sank into a maroon leather chair, with a high back and wide armrests. It swallowed her frame as Sirona stood beside Aerion, her nose upturned. Raiden lingered behind Kora, and Skylar leant against a bookshelf on the other side of the room, pulling at her gown, fidgeting beneath the layers of cream skirts.

Indeed, ballgowns were in Kora’s fuck-no list. Behind Skylar were gaps in the bookshelf, books missing from periods of history about Galen, pirates, and Devania. This had to be Aerion’s study, and her chest warmed slightly that he’d donated her books from his private collection.

“Are you comfortable with everyone here?” Aerion asked, as his fingers leant on the open folio. His eyes flickered to Aryn briefly. Kora paused, stunned at the consideration, and she slowly nodded. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

The atmosphere was thick, the silence dreadful, and Sirona’s cold smile added to the tension. She radiated with glee at the dark look shadowing Aerion’s face. Her eyes repeatedly marked Raiden, purposefully dazzling at him, as though she were screaming her intentions.

“What’s going on?” Kora asked as Aerion swallowed, his eyes flickering over the report repeatedly. “I’m not . . . ill, am I? I feel fine. I don’t think I’m ill.” Thanos had declared her fate, she couldn’t be dying already, surely?

“I sent our healers to check you over that first day. You’d been suspended in a state verging on death for a long time, such a thing can do a lot to someone’s mind and body.” Aerion’s methodical voice unnerved Kora. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before. This was the prince.

“They decided you were clear, with some minor side effects from the suspension that will fade. However, they noticed something deeper, and that’s why they kept returning to you.” Aerion flipped a page, and Kora’s stomach soured at the number of notes and scribbles that filled it. Sirona rocked on her heels, positively vibrating with energy.

“Something happened, when Barron first corrupted your mind.” Aerion gestured to the scar lining Kora’s face. “I’m not sure how to explain this, but when he severed your memories, he didn’t erase them, but rather tainted them, warping them until they became a kind of parasite in your mind.”

Kora recalled the void she’d travelled when she’d met Raiden, how tendrils of darkness hissed at her. He’d called them a disease left behind by Barron. Even again, when Thanos encouraged her to recover her memories, her mind was always unable to reach the end, always met with that familiar inky magic, twisting and reshaping the memory into something . . . else.

That something else had taunted her with visions of Agatha. She was sure of it.

“What are you saying? There’s something in my head?” Kora’s quiet voice seemed loud in the silence of the room.

Sirona scoffed. “No, don’t be silly. You’re not infected. Simply put, Barron created a split within your mind. Your old self, Kordelia, trapped behind his power, and your new self, Kora, filling the gap he left. He couldn’t erase your memory like he wanted to, so he severed it.”

“What?” Aryn whispered, his jaw slack. Skylar stood straight, her sharp stare narrowing on Kora. Raiden cursed under his breath behind her, his hands tightening on the high back of the leather chair.

“You mean . . . I’m somehow two people?” Kora’s throat dried. Her water beast within scratched at the walls, and she was suddenly all too aware of the moments an internal voice whispered to her—nothing like Raiden’s—encouraging her to do dark things, to kill. How it felt like she had two selves warring for control, for their own desires.