CHAPTER 45
DAVINA
Two days ago
I WAS SIX YEARS OLD WHEN MY MUM SAT ME DOWN, took a razor to my scalp, and told me it was for my own good. She didn’t care that I sobbed through the entire process. Or perhaps she did, and that’s why she gave me something to sleep.
When I woke hours later, the familiar weight of my ginger ringlets was gone.
In their place was a raw, unnatural coolness that clung to my very soul.
I stumbled to the mirror on my vanity, my too-large blue eyes staring at the stranger in the reflection.
The tears returned. Hot and fast, enough of them to flood one of The Hook’s vast lakes.
‘My sweet baby,’ my mother cooed as she entered the room, kneeling beside me. She gathered me in her arms, rocking me gently. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I continued to sob, my whole little body trembling uncontrollably.
‘It will grow back, sweetheart. You’ll see. In no time,’ she said, her voice trembling, thick with guilt instead of the gentle comfort I’d always known. ‘I’m so sorry, baby girl.’
Through blurred vision, I stared at the reflection again. At the odd, swirling white patterns now carved into the skin above my temple, coiling along the sides of my scalp like frostbite.
‘One day, you’ll understand,’ she promised.
She never mentioned it again. And as the months passed and my hair grew, I forgot. One day, it was too late to ask. One day, she’d been taken from me forever.
Perhaps she had explained, just not with words. Maybe the explanation was mine to uncover, for when the attackers came, they never found me.
Memories of that day were always blurry, and too painful to bring forth. Over the years, a theory formed in the back of my mind about what really happened, but I’d never know for certain.
Ludwig and his team found me not long after the Sapless left, leaving my mother’s carcass and a burning house in their wake.
He wasn’t head of the Widesightian Special Forces yet, just the centurion in charge of that particular mission.
He somehow discovered my secret, and for reasons I wouldn’t understand until much later, he chose to help me hide it.
I didn’t realize at the time how grateful I should’ve been.
How close I’d come to a lifetime behind bars, or worse.
Not until he told me plainly. Not until I understood that no one, not even a child, was spared if found guilty of what I was.
And then his protection became my prison. As he trained me, shaped me into the weapon he wanted, that secret became an unspoken threat. The fear that kept me in line. A leash I wore in silence.
A threat I’d never before been worried about, for I’d never had the urge to turn my back on him.
Until now.
As Zephyr and I walked into that empty cavern and I warped the fabric of reality around us, weaving the illusion of an empty space, I felt it.
Fear.
It coiled around my throat like a noose, and only years of training kept me upright, and my steps measured.
I’d done precisely what Ludwig would have expected me to—concealing the stash from the Kobrant captain. Securing the prize for Widesight. But I’d glimpsed it—just for a moment, before I buried it beneath the illusion. And that moment was enough.
I couldn’t do it.
No king or chancellor or nation should ever get their hands on Sircelen’s best-kept secret.
I couldn’t be certain, and I struggled to comprehend the sheer magnitude of what I was hiding from Zephyr and from myself. But after what Leonidas had told me, and what I’d uncovered in the doctor’s journals, I knew enough.
Silvester Sircelen’s most precious possession wasn’t a hidden stash of Evergreen Mahogany sap.
It was something far more valuable. Something far more dangerous, for it truly had the power to change the tide for the entire damn world.
It was the formula, the instructions, and the equipment needed to synthetically create it.