TWENTY-FOUR #2
A faint flutter starts in my chest. If the king is still alive, maybe I can go home. Maybe this can all finally be over.
“I forget how little people today know of their own history.” Hadrian shakes his head. “And no, the king was not a scion.”
Was. The fluttering stills. He’s really gone.
“Then why aren’t you fighting for the throne now?” I ask.
“Because the cycle hasn’t begun. Yet,” he adds, holding my gaze.
I bite my lip and lean against the shovel. “That’s ominous.”
“In the beginning, the Stars created the Eternal Throne, choosing some of us to become scions and rule from it. But every cycle, the fury rises within us, and we’re compelled to fight. To prove which of us is worthy to claim the throne.”
“But why?” A bigger question rises in me before he can answer. “How?”
“Scions are gifted with unique birthrights.” He taps one of the patterns on his arm. “Most stronger than any magic the patron bloodlines control now. There are different reasons given in the old histories.”
The histories that are now forbidden. “And those reasons are?”
He looks up, staring at the oscen circling above our heads. “That our souls are tied to the birth of new stars. Or we’re stars that fell to earth. Whatever the reason, we have magic running in our veins when we resurrect.”
“Then it’s not nochtimetry …” My voice sounds too high.
“No.” He glances back at me. “Nochtimetry came after. Ravenell crafted it by studying us.”
“By us, you means scions?”
“Yes.” He nods, and my mouth goes dry.
“Those marks,” I say breathlessly, hungry to understand what he’s telling me, to finally set another piece of this puzzle into the right place.
Hadrian raises his arm and pushes up the damp fabric of his sleeve to show me the lines shimmering faintly like intricate translucent veins etched into his skin.
But where Bishop’s arms are covered in the silvery patterns, Hadrian has a collection of lines on only one side of his forearm. “Our powers.”
“What do they do?” I ask, stepping closer to get a better look.
But he holds up a finger as he stands and moves to the blighted tree. He places his hands on the dead bark, and the markings on his forearm begin to glow, faintly at first, then brighter, growing into a soft pulse that spreads through the pattern on his skin.
The ground shudders. I lock my knees, bracing, my mind flashing to the last time the world shook beneath me. But it’s over in a few seconds, and then …
Buds sprout from the tree’s branches, tiny leaves unfurling from them like trembling wings. The black mold fades from its trunk. It’s the dead of winter, and it blossoms like it’s spring before bejeweled autumn leaves settle onto its branches.
“How?” I whisper.
He looks at his hands. “It’s a healing power.”
Something in his tone makes the words sound like a joke at his own expense. Like he can’t understand it and never will.
“What else can you do?” I ask. This magic isn’t like the birthright the Kindling ignites into nobles born into patron lines.
Plus, we still have to study whatever power the Stars saddle us with, have to learn whatever patterns Ravenell harnessed.
Patterns that are far easier to fuck up than perfect.
But this … What Hadrian has access to …
He lowers his arm, and the glowing patterns fade. “I don’t know all of what I can do, what every power I’ve claimed from another is,” he says. “The wrong kind of power can become poison.”
“Wait,” I say slowly. “You claim power?”
“When we come back to life the first time, we have only one power. Our birthright.” He pauses like he’s sure I need time to understand there’s a difference between the magic the Stars grant patrons and the one they give scions.
“When we kill another scion”—he traces a lovely arrangement of arches and lines intersecting on his forearm—“we take theirs as vestiges. Some powers connect with our birthright. Some don’t.
The vestiges that don’t take more time to assimilate before we can wield their magic. Sometimes years.”
My mind latches on to the word years and refuses to let go. No wonder they live forever.
I think of Bishop’s hands. The faint scars I’ve seen when he removes his gloves. The way he never lets his sleeves ride up. Why he’s always wearing that uniform with its high neck. This is what he’s hiding.
Power.
I can’t even fathom how much.
“That’s why Bishop hides the marks,” I say. “They would reveal what he is.”
“Scions usually cover them,” he explains grimly. “They’re a map of our abilities.”
I understand hiding them now, but …
“Wouldn’t that have intimidated the other scions back then?” I ask. “Why hide them?”
But he only laughs, the sound thin and more than a little humorless. “Never show your hand to other players.”
My pulse stutters like a quiet warning behind my ribs. “How does a scion defeat and collect another scion’s vestiges?”
“By killing them.” He doesn’t flinch when he looks at me.
“But you’re immortal.”
“All things must end,” he says, glancing into the distance like he’s looking for his own. “It’s the natural order.”
But my mind drags me back to the woods, the memory so clear that I can feel the smoke in my lungs. Feel the weight of Bishop’s body collapsing into my arms, his warm blood slick on my hands.
And then he walked into my room and shattered my whole world. There was nothing natural about it.
“Scions don’t end,” I say quietly. I still haven’t decided how to feel about that.
“We can,” he corrects me. “If you claim our heart in battle, you not only end our immortality, but you also collect our powers. All of them, including the vestiges we’ve taken.”
I stare at him, something clicking into place. The marks on his skin … on Bishop’s skin. A chill creeps down my neck. Bishop has killed other immortals. He is a heart collector. They all are. That’s what he didn’t admit to me that night. What I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
I focus on the fine lines on Hadrian’s arms. “You’ve killed other scions.”
His mouth thins to a line. “Yes,” he says. “That was a long time ago. I’ve made peace with it now.”
I don’t know what to do with that. Peace as a decision. Not absolution.
The oscen circles down and lands on the fountain, clicking its beak a few times.
I shake my head. “Why didn’t I know about this?”
“If the crown suspects you’re a scion, they execute you.”
That’s why Bishop is always hiding behind his gloves and uniform. “The crown knows?”
He tips his head, his mouth a flat line. “And the patron of every order. Vespers. The knights charged with hunting down rumored scions …”
Literally everyone but me.
“But if there are still immortals,” I say slowly as if I can find the answer before I finish the question, “why did the cycle finally stop?”
“No one knows. The last cycle was five hundred years ago.” His eyes flick to the trench I’ve dug. “Before the Last War, when enough scions existed, a cycle started. There was a sign—an omen, and then the fury began.”
A harbinger. The word clangs in my chest like a prison door slamming shut. That’s why Bishop brought me here. Because if I am the harbinger …
“What’s the fury?” I blurt out the question.
“The impulse to be the final scion and claim the throne. No matter the cost. Even war.”
I gulp. “The final scion? But that would mean …”
Bishop and Hadrian would be turned against each other.
He nods like he knows I’m finally catching up.
“If the cycle begins,” I ask in a quiet voice, “will you fight him?”
Hadrian closes his eyes and releases a heavy sigh. “I believe we can resist. Most don’t.”
Noble.
And so beautifully naive.
“But you’re still looking for a way to stop the cycle from coming.”
When he opens his eyes, something hollow stares back at me. “I have to believe I can.”
“And if someone attacks you?” I ask. If the cycle begins, if I’m the harbinger …
“I’ll defend myself. Try to reason with them first.”
Reasoning and swords are rarely compatible in my limited experience trying to combine the two. But I think it answers another question. “Is that what happened when you met Bishop?”
Hadrian’s mouth turns up at the corners, as if he’s recalling some memory, but he shakes his head. “That is his story to tell.”
The weight of our conversation presses down on me, the world once again descending on my shoulders.
This is why Hadrian sits in the library, treating books like his friends.
Why Bishop got me out of Wintour before those assassins could touch me.
Why he brought me to the one place that they never can.
Because I might not be the harbinger yet.
He said it in the council chamber. What if my death is the real harbinger?
A cold weight settles in my gut. Is that the reason Bishop is so protective of me?
Hadrian tugs down his sleeve, and my eyes catch on the hint of a vestige peeking out. What kind of power runs in that thin vein of magic? What magic is worth taking another person’s heart to claim it for yourself?
“Do you think I’m the harbinger? Will I really bring war?” I bite my lip, already afraid of his answer.
Hadrian bends down and scoops a bulb from the basket between our feet. “Some things must come to light in their own time.” He kneels in the wet grass and places it into the trench, covering it with soil before firming the earth with his palms. “There’s a season for all things.”
My throat knots. “So, we’re just supposed to wait?”
“No,” Hadrian says, watching as the oscen lands in its newly healed tree. “We’re supposed to prepare.”