"Oh, I almost forgot. You were born in some remote mountain backwater, and after you left, you spent all your time searching for a way to break the Blood Curse. Of course you wouldn't know what dodder is!"
"Dodder is an herbaceous plant in the Convolvulaceae family, genus Cuscuta. Its stems are soft, and it grows incredibly fast. Once it finds a sturdy tree, it climbs right up."
"And its stems have special suckers that drain nutrients from its host. The process doesn't hurt a bit, but anything dodder parasitizes meets the same end: it withers, then gets strangled to death."
"Salasha, you're so arrogant you see your sister as dead weight. Only because you share a fate are you forced to take her everywhere."
"And yet that frail woman who's spent her life in your shadow, with so little talent for magic, is the one who brought you to this."
"Soon she'll have a new life. Being twins with a shared fate, the Half-Orc Blood Curse—none of it will affect her anymore. And you... you'll become a heap of rotting flesh for flies and maggots to feast on."
"Imagine it. A dozen flies follow the stench to you, gorge themselves, and leave hundreds of eggs behind. Once they hatch, the maggots devour your flesh, become flies, and lay more eggs in you."
"Again and again, until nothing's left of you but bones!"
Salasha swayed, a beastlike snarl rising from her throat. She hated Robin Sear... but she hated her backstabbing sister even more.
Why? She had trained so hard to save her people from the fate of becoming beasts. Why should she end up eaten to death by maggots while her weak, false, scheming, despicable sister got the new life she wanted?
No. They were twins. They had come