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They rise from the ground, lifted by invisible wings. Side by side, they circle me wildly, one dark as night and one bright as the sun. I hate them both, and I slam down my rock.
I miss. I curse.
“Stay still!” I shout. I try again. I miss again. “Haven’t you brought enough misery to this world? This is the end. Begone!”
The pearl halves hum insistently, buzzing around me. I snap a thick branch off a tree and swing with all my might, but instead of hitting the pearls, I hit…a thread.
It dangles between the pearl halves, shimmering. It’s the thread of Hokzuh’s soul, a token of the promise he made me. The promise he has now broken.
The thread weaves toward me. One end loops around my wrist, and tugs, beckoning me to follow. I cannot see where it leads, but I have a feeling.
I tear through the trees, following the thread to its end: a wide thicket drenched in shadow. The night has gathered here, but there is no darkness that can protect the traitor who’s taken my sister from me.
“Khramelan.” The anger blistering inside me boils. “Awaken.”
At the sound of his true name, the demon stirs. His wings rustle against the vines of spindlebeard that immure him, and his red eye burns through the shadows. This is not the Hokzuh I knew.
When he sees me, he snarls. I meet him with a cold and unfeeling glare.
He struggles against the vines, but even a demon like him cannot fight the magic of the pearl.
He will hear what I’ve come to say, and witness what I’ve come to do.
He draws a sharp breath when the two halves of the pearl emerge from behind me.
One dragon half, one demon half. Together, they make up the heart he has so desperately sought. Yet they trail me, not him. And I’m beginning to understand why.
“A promise is not a kiss in the wind,” I say in my lowest, darkest voice. “It is a piece of yourself that is given away and will not return until your pledge is fulfilled. You have broken your promise to me. For that, I am owed a piece of your soul.”
The pearl halves float above my hand, spinning slowly, orbiting one another. “You have taken from me what I treasured most in this life. And so, shall I take from you. I claim your pearl, Khramelan.”
The invisible thread around my wrist suddenly snaps. It spools long, spinning itself around the two pearl halves, and with a great unseen force, it draws them together in a cocoon. In a blur of light the halves are united in one last flash, forming a broken sphere. A broken pearl.
Khramelan reaches out for it, but I take the pearl first. It turns black in my hand, and a sharp golden light emanates from its fissures.
“No,” he whispers. “Channi.”
The sound of my name jolts me. It sounds like Hokzuh.
The real Hokzuh. His blue dragon eye is throbbing, as though it wars against the other for control. “Channi,” he says again. He’s whispering, the words crawling out of his throat as though he’s fighting to speak. “Don’t do this. Forgive me. Channi.”
My shoulders fall. Never has the sound of my name made my heart ache as it does now. He sounds small and broken. Only hours ago, I held his hand, I held him to me. I trusted him.
A trace of sorrow slips through the cracks of my fury. What happened to Vanna wasn’t his fault; it was Angma’s, for unleashing the demon inside him.
Stay good, sister, Vanna told me. Love more, for me.
I lower my hands, bringing the pearl down to my side. It has been the longest night of my life, and my body beseeches me to succumb to slumber, in hopes that my dreams might somehow bring me closer to Vanna.
For Vanna, I hold the pearl out to Hokzuh. “You want it? Then use it to bring back my sister.”
Hokzuh is the master of the pearl. If anyone can wield its full power, he can.
He takes the pearl as though it’s a goblet of water and he is a man who’s been parched for weeks. But where his fingers touch upon the pearl’s surface, it sparks, and he draws back in pain. Again he tries. Again the pearl sends him reeling.
It will not have him. Just as it would not have Vanna.
The demon in Hokzuh resurfaces. His blue eye dulls into shadow, and he turns wrathful. “Give it back to me!” he roars, finally breaking free of the thorns with a burst of monstrous strength. “Give me the pearl!”
