Chapter 18 #2
Sayerel hums under her breath—no prayer I recognize, only a melody without teeth.
She paints a circle on my skin around the stone with a liquid that smells like mint and metal.
The Fuegorra warms again, then pushes back.
The two sensations knock against one another, and for a moment, my heart forgets which beat belongs to which god.
“Please,” I sob. I repeat the word over and over, aloud, in my mind, anywhere I can let it free.
“Breathe,” Sayerel whispers. Then she sets a small bowl beside my shoulder. “You will feel pressure,” she says. “The strings between you and the Enduar magic will loosen. There may be a moment of lightness.”
“Don’t do this, please. Please, I could die,” I try again.
She touches me with two fingers, and the world becomes narrow.
There isn’t pain, not precisely—more the terrible idea of pain brushing its mouth just against the skin of my reality.
The heat I have carried since the cavern days recedes to an arm’s length.
The familiar pulse of the Enduar magic goes fuzzy.
I can still see the stone when I look down.
Tears stream down my face.
But Sayerel’s hands know the seam where my god meets my body, and she does not tear at first. She unthreads.
The first stitch loosens, and a memory slips: Estela and I first arriving with the giant caravan, shaken up and afraid of what lurked in the mountains.
The second loosens, and I remember being escorted deep into the underground city, past glittering curtain-like formations of gypsum and massive veins of metal.
Then we were taken to the Fuegorra cavern, where the only light was the blood-red and orange crystals.
I remember the Wise Woman, Liana, guiding me and a handful of other humans to listen until a Fuegorra picked us.
The first time I heard the soft song, I wept.
The tension of joy of major notes and a syncopated beat sounded like…
me. Like I knew myself a little better in that moment.
I’d been afraid when I’d hit the gem with my small hammer—if it shattered, would I have been cast away?
All my musings fade as a third memory is cut, and the sound of a lover’s breath against my ear, whispering poetry and sweetness, lifts like steam on a chilled stream. The third is of eyes, blue as the sky. My sky.
Mi cielo.
I am back in the Hollow—the cave on the islands with the witches, where I realized that I’d been lied to moments after seeing his heart. After hearing our mating song. It was the perfect duet to the music that had only been made for my ears for so long.
I let out another wail.
Vann.
I let myself think his name for the first time in weeks.
I scream, and my chest convulses, fire shooting through my ribs as my bones are being drawn out from my flesh.
I am torn from the inside, where flesh and spirit touch.
I gasp and arch. Hot liquid spreads over my chest, over my gown, and I’m too afraid to see if it is blood.
“We’re only half done, Arlet,” Sayerel announces, calm. “Hold.”
The stone flares as if insulted. The flare rushes through me in a warm, impossible wave, so sharp it tastes like metal. My body claws toward the last few bonds that connect the magic to my heart, desperate, even as her hands pull it farther.
I close my eyes, because keeping them open would hurt worse
“Hold,” Sayerel says again, firmer. The brazier breathes and the smoke thickens, sweet as lilies left too long in a hot room. The last threads draw tight—so tight they slice. For a breath there is nothing but fire, a ripping across my ribs that feels like my soul has split down its seam.
And then—I slip into darkness.
It is not a gentle release. It is a silence edged with pain, a wound where wholeness used to be.
I open my eyes to find my ribs and chest still intact, and yet everything is gone.
Sayerel’s hand hovers. “In a moment, you may feel—”
“I am fine,” I say, and my voice is someone else’s, hollowed out.
The air touches the place above my heart and finds no answering warmth.
It is like stepping into a house you have lived in for years and discovering all the furniture has been removed while you slept.
The room is familiar, but it’s…sad. Empty.
Red-orange glints in the corner of my eye, and I watch as Sayerel wraps up the Fuegorra and lays it in a lidded cup and closes it. The faintest gleam escapes before the lid kisses shut. “Done.”
Kiala exhales. Merlina looks anywhere but at my face. Eslina’s fists tighten just once and then release, because she cannot be seen to hold me.
Thorne asks, only then, “Any complications?”
“None.” Sayerel’s tone is approving, as if I had been an obedient instrument. “There will be soreness. But the mark will be small. Powder will cover it, and when the collar sits on her throat, no one will care anyway.”
“Good.” Thorne’s gaze touches my throat like a measuring string. “The king requires her in the antechamber before dinner. The jeweler waits for his final measures.”
I sit up, and blood rushes in my ears. The room listens for a heartbeat.
The absence does not fill back in. It narrows sound, sharpens edges, and makes the world too clean.
Eslina approaches and steadies me with two fingers at my wrist. Kiala’s eyes flicker with something that might be anger if I didn’t know better.
“We will keep her standing, Warden Thorne,” Merlina says.
“Do,” he says, and leaves without goodbye.
I stare at them, tendrils of frizzed hair falling around my face and chest burning. I do not wish to be awake, would rather fall and weep until all that’s left of me is a puddle.
Instead, ironlike elven hands hold me up.
“I’m cold,” I croak out.
They do not respond.
You are stronger than you look, Arlet, a voice says. My friend. My curse.
It shocks me how clear and direct the voice is. Like a real person speaking with me.
I do not respond.
Once, I was stripped of a body. Of a life. I remember the anger and the pain, but I still live. You shall, too.
In the depths of the sadness that seems to both wash over me with a force strong enough to topple trees, and stand at a distance from the very center of me, I find a bit of courage in her words.
He seeks to break you before you become his consort.
I stare at the wall. Empty. So cold. So tired.
What if he has succeeded? I respond.
Then don’t let him see.
The elven women dress me for inspection, not for warmth. A low-necked gown in winter white, showcasing the somehow mostly nonexistent scar. The seamstress I chose arrives without comment and adjusts lines with pins between her lips. She does not look me in the eyes at all.
I wonder if she notices the missing gem.
Then, we go up. Strangely, a stream of musicians passes us, their instruments wrapped up. The antechamber blooms with light torches and spell lights.
Arion stands before a tapestry of a stag trampling a field of wildflowers. His eyes move from the tapestry to me with an expression that returns me to the first night we met. He’s pleased to see me.
He comes near enough that I can smell the clean, spiced scent of whatever shining oil he uses on his hair. He lifts my chin with a finger, then his eyes drop. Down my throat. To my chest.
“Thank you, Thorne. All of you may go,” he says abruptly. “I’ll ensure my bride returns to her chambers unharmed.”
I hear them leave more than see them. I should feel unsafe, should have warning bells going off in my head. I feel nothing.
His fingers follow his eyes. “Much better,” he says. “You must feel so much lighter without the burdens of your past, little one.”
I do not answer. The phrases they taught me sit behind my teeth like coins I do not want to spend.
“I’m told you’ve been making good progress. You are almost ready for the ball next week, and I would be lying if I said I was not starting to grow excited as well,” he says. His fingers close around my throat. “These new manners suit you.”
Finally, my eyes snap up to lock onto his. “What manners? I am a caged dog and you hold the hot stick.” My voice is lifeless.
All the pleasure in his face fades, and his grip tightens slowly around my throat.
“Still using that mouth to get in trouble, are we?”
He begins to push me backward, hard enough that I am pressed into one of the wooden columns. I still feel numb.
Cursed One? I start.
Once again, I feel the increased presence of Cursed One, only for her to retreat swiftly.
Can’t hurt him.
“I hold the power here. Over you, your future, your people, and my own kingdom. How dare you insult me?”
I stare into his eyes, still feeling nothing. This is my life now. This man will be my husband, and I’m already bleeding, which means I could conceive soon.
In the absence of feeling, my thoughts come loose.
“Your people insult you behind your back,” I say. His green eyes narrow to pinpricks.
“You. Know. Nothing,” he seethes, releasing me. More air floods into my throat, but I don’t move.
“Yes, my king. Forgive my brash words,” I say. As if this can fix the damage I’ve already done. “I only worry for you, and for our life together.”
If I didn’t know better, I would say the darkness inside of me likes what it sees.
“You are a pawn, and you will behave as such. In a week, there will be no doubt as to my power, and you will be my bride. We will pass through the ballroom and pause below the balcony. You will say: ‘My king, I am honored.’ You will incline your head precisely so. You will accept my collar, you will smile while it is praised, and then you will give me a fucking heir, and I will keep your people safe.”
“You allowed them to remove what belonged to me,” I say, softly enough that I can pretend I did not speak if he gives me another one of his sharp looks. “They hurt me. Why would you allow that to happen to your future wife?”
Vann would have never let anything touch me.