Son of Khyber: Thorn of Breland Read Free Page A

suppose. I carry it for the silver, but I’m not really comfortable with the weight. I prefer a knife.”
    “Then show me the blades you carry,” he said.
    There were six of them. Three were balanced for throwing. One was a tiny knife, only useful if poison was employed. The fifth was a simple battle blade. And then there was Steel. Fileon’s eyes lit up when he saw the dagger, and he picked it up to study it more closely.
    That was hardly surprising. Steel was certainly distinctive. Forged from blackened metal, he had a crimson circle inlaid on his pommel, and a red furrow running down the center of the dark blade.
    Fileon glanced over at her. “A fine weapon. Do you know its name?”
    “Name?”
    “This is an assassin’s blade, from Savean’s forge. It has been a long time since I’ve held one, but it is not a thing you forget. So you do not know its name? How then did you come by it?”
    Savean’s forge? The name meant nothing to her—and Steel had never spoken of his origins.
    She’d taken too long to respond. “You try my patience, sister. I warn you, should I deem you an enemy, you will not leave this place alive.” The mark along Fileon’s arm burned with eldritch fire. “There is power in you, but I have lived with this darkness for decades, and you cannot stand against me. Now tell me: where did you get this blade?”
    “Lharen. My … partner.”
    “Yes,” Fileon said. “I taste a hint of truth here. And did this Lharen give you the dagger?”
    “No,” Thorn said. “I took it from his corpse.”
    Fileon said nothing. He just watched her, waiting for her to continue.
    “He was my mentor. My guide.” My love, she thought, though she didn’t speak it aloud. “He taught me everything I know. And I killed him.” It was a lie; Steel had been given to her by her handler Zane, on her first mission after Lharen’s death. But it was close enough to the truth for her to draw on the emotion, reliving the pain and loss—and she saw Fileon respond to it.
    “Your first kill.”
    “Yes. The mission … it was bad. We lost the rest of the team. I was angry. Afraid. We were arguing, and I seized his wrist. And he screamed. I still hear that cry in my nightmares, see his face as he died.”
    Fileon nodded, watching and waiting.
    “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Thorn took a deep breath. She thought about the actual circumstances of Lharen’s death, and the tears came easily. “Without him … I’d have died years ago. But it was my fault. And I could feel this
thing
on my face. I panicked. I took his knife, and I ran.”
    “You are the Keeper’s handmaiden now, sister. You hold death within your grasp. You showed this with the ogre, when you used your touch instead of this brutal axe. So why not revel in this gift? Why carry a blade at all?”
    The answer was obvious. “The pain.”
    “Yes,” Fileon said, savoring the word. “Tell me of it. What do you feel, when you use your mark?”
    “Pure agony,” she said. “It overwhelms all other sensations. It’s as if the mark is burning through my flesh. Then that pain flows through me and into whomever I’m touching. It’s awful. It leaves me feeling … empty.”
    Fileon nodded. “Your gift takes a difficult form, different from my own. I doubt you will lose your eye as I have lost my arm. But yours is the path of madness. If you cannot master this pain, it will destroy you.”
    Lovely, Thorn thought. Thanks for mentioning that, Zane. Her living tattoo was designed using the memories of a man who carried a true aberrant dragonmark, and according to Zane and Steel, the pain Thorn felt when she used it was the same as the true heir. Then again, Thorn had been living with pain ever since Far Passage.
    “You won’t take the blade from me,” she said. “It’s all I have left of him. I won’t let it go.”
    Fileon chuckled and set the pouch on the floor. “Have no fear, sister. It is my task to learn what you possess, nothing more. And