Chapter 30
Seris hasn't stopped shaking since we crossed into Discord territory.
She's pressed against Caius's side because she won't come near me. Won't look at me. Keeps her face turned toward his shoulder and her hands fisted in his coat while I stand three feet away with our father's blood drying under my fingernails.
So. That's where we are now.
The corridors blur past—stone walls, low light, the hum of Discord's underground passages.
Trigger pull.
Head snapping back.
Seris screaming.
Running.
Twenty-four years of flinching.
One trigger pull.
Should feel bigger than this.
"Medical wing." Renan appears at Koshin's shoulder. "They're ready for her."
Her. My sister. Who watched me put a bullet through our father's face and hasn't spoken a word since.
Caius shifts his grip on Seris, murmuring against her hair. She nods into his chest. Barely a movement at all.
"I'll stay with her." Caius isn't asking permission. His eyes meet Koshin's over Seris's head. "Until she's settled."
Koshin nods once.
Caius steers Seris toward a side corridor and she goes. Doesn't look back. Doesn't look at me. Just lets herself be led away until the dim passage swallows her whole.
I should go with her. I should be the one holding her together.
But she flinched when I reached for her. Actually flinched.
From me.
"Iowyn."
Koshin's hand closes around my elbow. I didn't hear him move.
"Come with me."
I don't ask where. Don't have the energy. My feet follow him because that's what they do now. Follow him. Gravitate toward him.
Renan peels off somewhere behind us. I hear his footsteps fade, then nothing but our own and the distant drip of water through stone.
The corridors narrow. The air warms. Steam curls around the corners ahead, and I know where we're going before we get there.
The bathhouse.
He pushes through the door and the heat hits my face, thick with moisture. The space opens up around us—carved stone, low ceiling, water steaming in a pool that takes up most of the floor.
"Sit."
He guides me to the edge of the pool. I sit. The stone is warm under my thighs.
Koshin crouches in front of me and takes my right hand. Turns it over. Studies the blood crusted in the creases of my palm, the dark half-moons under my fingernails. His jaw goes tight, that tension he gets when he's holding back.
"I'm going to clean you up."
"I can—"
"No."
He doesn't wait for me to argue. Just reaches for a cloth, dips it in the water, and starts working at the blood on my fingers. Gentle. Thorough. His eyes fixed on his task.
I watch him work. Watch his hands—steady, careful, nothing like the hands that beat my father bloody hours ago.
Same hands.
Different purpose. The steam has loosened his collar, baring the line of his throat, and I'm too tired to pretend I'm not looking.
He's on his knees for me. The mad god of Discord, kneeling on wet stone, washing blood off my hands.
The water runs rust-colored off my skin.
"She'll come around." His voice is quiet. "Your sister. She's in shock. She doesn't hate you."
"You don't know that."
"I know she was watching you. The whole time. Couldn't take her eyes off you."
"Because I murdered someone in front of her."
"Because you saved her." He switches to my left hand. "She knows that. She just can't hold both things at once yet."
The cloth moves across my palm.
"She'll hate me," I say. "Eventually. When she processes it. When she realizes I didn't hesitate. I didn't try to—"
"You did what needed to be done."
"I did what I wanted to do."
He pauses. Looks up at me. And there it is—that smile. The wrong one. The one that shows too many teeth.
"I know," he says. "I watched you do it."
My stomach drops. Or rises. I can't tell which. Heat prickles up my neck.
"You looked beautiful." He goes back to cleaning my hand, casual, like he's commenting on the weather. "Standing over him with blood on your face. I almost didn't let you pull the trigger yourself. Wanted to do it for you. But you needed it."
"That's—"
"Fucked up?" He laughs, low and rough. The sound curls through me, settles somewhere it shouldn't. "Yes. And you liked hearing it."
I don't answer. Can't. Because he's right and we both know it.
He goes back to cleaning my hand. The cloth moves over my wrist, between my fingers, across my palm—
He stops.
His thumb presses against my inner wrist. Holds there.
"Iowyn."
"What?"
He doesn't answer. His eyes are locked on my palm and his whole body has gone still.
"What?" I pull my hand closer to my face.
Thin pale lines curl across my skin. From my wrist toward my fingers, tracing patterns I don't recognize.
Not blood.
Not wounds.
They catch the light, silver-grey, faintly luminous in the steam.
"What the fuck?"
I rub at the lines with my other thumb. They don't smudge. Don't fade. They're in my skin, not on it.
I flip my right hand over. Same lines. Thinner, less defined, but the same spiraling patterns around my wrist, the same fine paths across my palm.
"Koshin." My voice comes out flat. "What is this?"
He's still crouched in front of me, still holding my wrist. His expression has gone blank—locked down tight—and that scares me more than the marks do.
Then he laughs.
Not the right kind of laugh. The unhinged kind. The one that means something in his head has snapped loose.
"Koshin."
"Soulmarks." He's still laughing, but it's tapering off into something breathless. "They're called soulmarks."
I don't recognize the word. It doesn't mean anything to me.
"The physical manifestation of a bond." He lifts my hand, turns it in the light, watching the silver lines catch and shimmer. "Between two souls. They appear when the bond becomes visible."
I stare at him.
At my hands.
At him again.
"A bond."
"Yes."
"Between us."
"Yes."
"Written on my skin."
"Yes." His thumb traces one of the lines, slow and deliberate. His voice drops. "Mine."
Heat drops through me, lands somewhere inconvenient.
"Yours," I repeat flatly, fighting to keep my voice steady. "I have magic tattoos I didn't ask for and your response is mine?"
"Yes."
"You're insane."
"Yes." He grins up at me. "But you knew that already."
Soulmarks.
Bonds.
My hands branded with proof of a connection I didn't choose.
Very on-theme for my life, actually.
Everyone else deciding what happens to my body. Why should cosmic forces be any different?
"How long have you known?"
The grin fades. Not all the way—it never does with him—but enough.
"The obsession. The way you've been since I got here—watching me, touching me, all of it." My voice is climbing. I force it back down. "How long have you known this could happen?"
He meets my eyes.
"I didn't know."
"Bullshit."
"I didn't." His voice scrapes. "Soulmarks haven't appeared in centuries. There's no warning, no sign. Just—" He stops. "I was obsessed with you. From the moment you walked into that room. But I'm always—"
Another stop.
Runs his tongue over his teeth
"I couldn't tell the difference. Between the bond forming and just wanting you."
The bathhouse is too quiet. Just water and steam and the blood rushing through my skull.
"So you had no idea."
"I suspected. After a while." He exhales through his nose, sharp. "Elyr was the one who actually said it out loud. She noticed before I did. Told me what she thought was happening."
I stare at him.
"Elyr," I repeat. "Your dead sister. The one whose spine you made into a blade"
"Yes."
"Your dead sister—who I've never met, who exists only as the bone of your weapon—knew about this before I did."
"Yes."
"And you didn't think that was worth mentioning? 'Hey Iowyn, my ghost sister thinks we might be cosmically bound, thought you should know'?"
His mouth twitches. "It didn't come up."
"It didn't—" I laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to me. "Of course. Why would it? Just a normal day in the life of The Mad God. Dead relatives weighing in on our love life from inside a blade. Very casual."
"She liked you."
"She doesn't know me."
"She knows enough." His eyes hold mine. "She said you were good for me."
"And you listened to her?"
"No." His tongue runs over his teeth. "I told myself she was wrong. That I was reading too much into it. That it was just attraction."
"I killed my father tonight." I'm shaking harder now. Finally. Hours after the fact and my body is finally catching up. "I pulled the trigger and watched him die and then I looked at my hands and saw this. And you suspected something was happening. And you didn't—"
"Yes." His thumbs keep moving over the lines. Back and forth. Each pass makes my skin feel too tight. "And I should feel worse about that than I do."
"What?"
He looks up at me, and his eyes have gone silver at the edges. That thing that happens when he's not holding himself together properly. It shouldn't make my pulse kick. It does anyway.
"I should feel worse," he repeats. "About the marks. About you not choosing. About all of it." His grip tightens to the edge of pain. "But you're mine now. Marked. Permanent. And part of me—" He laughs again, that broken sound. "Part of me is fucking delighted."
I should be horrified. Should pull away, demand space, tell him he's a monster.
But I'm looking at his face—at the silver bleeding through his eyes, at the tension in his jaw, at the way he's holding my wrists like he's afraid I'll disappear—and I don't feel horrified.
I feel seen.
I feel wanted.
I feel my heartbeat between my legs and I hate that I can't make it stop.
"You're fucked up," I say.
"Yes."
"That's not a compliment."
"I know." He chuckles. "But you love it. That makes you just as fucked up as I am."
I want to argue. Tell him he's wrong, that I'm not like him, that whatever this is doesn't make me—
But I shot my father in the face tonight and felt nothing but relief. And I'm sitting here wet for a man who just told me he'd drag me back if I ran.
"Yeah, well." I look away first, mumbling, "at least I'm self-aware about it..."
"What does this mean?" I ask. "The marks. What do they do?"
"They don't do anything. Not exactly." He's still tracing the patterns. "They're proof. Proof that the bond is real. That it can't be broken."
"And?"
He hesitates. The first real hesitation I've seen from him tonight.
"And you'll live as long as I do now. Immortal. Only a titan-forged weapon can kill you."
I can't make sense of that. The words go into my ears and refuse to arrange themselves into meaning.
"Forever."
"Yes."
"I'm going to live forever."
"Yes."
"Because of silver lines on my hands."
"Yes." His mouth curves. "Stuck with me for eternity. Poor thing."
I stare at the steam rising off the water.
I can't fit my mind around it. Too vast. Too impossible.
"There's more." His grip tightens on my wrists. "Anyone who sees the marks will know what they mean. Most of them will want you dead because of it."
"Fantastic." The sarcasm comes out automatic, hollow. "Magic tattoos, immortality, and a target on my back."
"I'll kill anyone who touches you."
He says it the way someone else might say I'll pick up food.
Casual.
Certain.
Like it's already decided.
My body shouldn't react to that. It does. Something hot and wrong twists through my gut, and I have to look away from his face before he sees it.
He sees it anyway. His mouth curves.
"Iowyn."
"What."
"I should have told you. When I suspected." He's not smiling anymore. "I should have said something instead of pretending I didn't see it."
I look at him.
At the titan who's been watching me since the moment we met. The one who can't lie. Who has killed for me. Who's kneeling in front of me now with my wrists in his grip and silver bleeding through his eyes.
"Yes," I say. "You should have."
He nods. Accepts it. Doesn't try to defend himself.
"I'm angry at you."
"I know."
"I'm furious."
"Yes."
"And I'm too exhausted to process any of this right now, and my sister can't look at me, and I have magic hand tattoos I didn't ask for and love at the same time, and I'm apparently going to live forever, and nothing makes sense anymore."
His hands tighten on my wrists.
"But I'm not running."
His breath catches. I feel it more than hear it—the slight hitch, the way his chest stops moving for half a second.
"I need you to know that." I pull my hands free—not to leave, just to look at them. To trace the lines with my own fingers. "I'm furious and scared and overwhelmed but I'm not running. I don't know what this is or what it means or what happens next, but I'm not—"
I run out of words. They just stop.
Koshin reaches for my face. His palm cups my jaw, tilts my head up until I'm looking at him. His thumb drags across my cheekbone, pressing harder than necessary. Claiming, not comforting.
"You couldn't run if you wanted to." His voice is low, rough. "I'd find you. Drag you back. Keep you."
"That's not romantic."
"I'm not romantic." His thumb presses into the hinge of my jaw, and the pressure sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with fear. "I'm honest."
I should be afraid. Should be angry. Should feel trapped.
But his hand is warm on my face and he smells like blood and bathwater and I want to lean into him and bite him and I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. And underneath all the fear and fury, underneath the shock of silver lines and impossible lifespans—
I'm not running.
I'm wet and furious and exhausted and not running.
That might be the most fucked up part of all.
"Cosmic tattoos," I say. "Very healthy. Nothing says stable relationship like involuntary soul bonds and threats of kidnapping."
His mouth curves. A real smile this time, crooked and dangerous.
"There she is."
"Shut up." I lean into his hand despite myself. "I'm still mad at you."
"I know."
"This doesn't fix anything."
"No. It doesn't."
"And you're going to tell me everything. All of it. What the marks mean, how the Houses will react, what happens now. No more omissions."
"Yes."
"Promise me."
His eyes hold mine. Silver on black.
"I promise."