Page 14 of Prince of the Phantom Sky

A croaky groan echoed from her lips as she peered at the crooked, shadowed reflection. Her hair had somehow grown, the matted lengths reaching the tips of her shoulders, and caked in dirt from being buried among the earth. Every angle of bone protruded from her pale skin, her freckles stretched over her cheekbones. Crusted, dead, flaking skin lined her dried, cracked lips, and her once captivating lapis lazuli eyes were sunken, shrouded by edges of death.

“I . . . I look like Jack.” Brushing back her hair, she winced at how sharply her collarbone cut through her clothes.

Blake frowned. “Who?”

“Jack Flint.” Kora caught his gaze in the mirror. “He looked exactly like this on Hell’s Serpent. So did his twin.”

Blake stilled, his pallor paling as the flickering light from the torches in the dungeon illuminated half of his body. Those shadows continuously danced behind him, taunting from the dark.

“You drained their lives, didn’t you?”

“I did what I had to,” he answered, choking. “Barron always pushed me to my limits, and if I didn’t leech from others, I would’ve died a long time ago. It was survival.”

“Barron wasn’t on my ship. He was nowhere near us, yet you continued to steal others’ lives. Don’t use him as an excuse. How many of my crew died because of you?”

“If I hadn’t, I would have been dead,” he repeated. “I needed to be capable of protecting you. I can’t let anything happen to you . . . I need you, asterya.”

“The only person I needed protecting from was you,” Kora scoffed. Blake winced, his shoulders drooping and those dark currents slinking around him, brushing his neck in comfort, increasing in size.

“Let’s keep moving.” The hooded figure—a dungeon guard presumably—appeared at the base of the stairwell, clutching a wooden torch in his slender, pale hand. His cool voice drifted through Kora’s mind, circling the drain of her memories.

As Kora pivoted to descend to her doom, the flickering light caught the shine of her metal collar in the distorted mirrors and she lunged to inspect her neck.

“No!” She shakily probed the tender flesh, cocking her head. “What did you do?” Her scar had spread, reaching down the side of her face in a thin, jagged sliver before arching across the left side of her neck and disappearing under her thick, metal collar.

“It’s his power.” Blake grasped her arm, all gentilities evaporating as he dragged her down the stone steps. Oh good, she hadn’t missed his mood swings. “That day on the ship, he used his darkest form of magic to pull you back, causing a wound to expand from his original infliction on your face.”

“It’s horrible!” Kora wept softly, tears flowing down her cheeks as moisture returned to her body. Yet, her essence was still empty.

“I didn’t take you as vain. It’s one of the few things I love about you.”

Love. As if Blake knew what love truly felt like, what it truly meant. In that moment, Kora realised neither did she. She loved her friends, her oddly put together family, but she’d never loved someone enough to call them hers.

Blake nodded to the dungeon guard, his creepy coolness returning in the presence of his father’s lackeys. The guard guided them to a cell near the steps, his face hidden in the shadows of his cloak and the sombre light of the dungeons. At least she wouldn’t be near the bottom . . . near death. A cold, sickening shiver consumed her as the torrent of waves roared at the base of the spiral, and the creaking groan of wooden planks replied in return.

“It’s his mark,” she hissed. “This is a reminder of everything I hate. And it’s on my face . . . forever.”

Blake grunted, signalling he was finished discussing his father as they arrived at a cell two blocks down from the staircase. It was larger than her previous one, and her legs quivered as the familiar stench of waste, rotting vines, and decomposing hay greeted her. The cyclone winds toyed with her hair, welcoming her return with menace as the bars of the cell door creaked open.

Her frail heart hammered, and she was sure it was visible through her bag-of-bones frame as Blake pushed her into the cell. Her boots slipped on the slimy floor and she collapsed to her knees, unable to stand any longer.

No, please, no!

“We’ll return tomorrow.” Blake removed his jerkin and tossed it through the bars. It landed in a puddle beside Kora, and she wasn’t sure whether the stench of petrichor or waste was worse. “Try to stay alive.”

Grabbing the torch from the guard, Blake’s footsteps receded. Kora knelt in the cavernous cell, surrounded by familiar black walls, and vines looping down from the underbelly of the earth above. The four walls of her recurring nightmare enclosed her, crushing her as she curled in on herself, smothering the anxiety blooming in the pit of her stomach.

Hold onto your life, Kora.

She could do this . . . right? She could survive this again. Thanos’ words wrapped around her, yet doubt crept in, fanning the flames of panic in her centre, threatening to snowball and swallow her with its perpetual fathomless.

“Cadell.”

Kora froze as a shadow appeared behind her. She craned her rickety neck, peering through the dim light at the guard who’d locked her in here. He knelt, revealing stained black leathers, and bloodied silver vambraces around his wrists.

Heart pounding, Kora gasped as Ivar pulled his hood back, his slender face scowling. Black eyes absorbed the darkness of the dungeons and his lips pulled back as he inspected the cell.

“You’re alive,” she whispered, barely loud enough for her own mud-caked ears. Thank the gods. Her nose wrinkled. “You smell like shit.”