Chapter 12 #3
She couldn’t help the hoarse sound that tore from her throat as the liquid swallowed her hands, and then her wrists. It wasn’t like water or oil. It felt like being shoved, bone-first, into molten stone.
She didn’t even have the breath to scream.
Hymn shrieked inside her chest and then did something she had never felt before. He wrapped himself around her tendons and bones, pressing tight against her skin from the inside, as though he were trying to thicken it, reinforce it, make a barrier of himself.
It hurts, it hurts, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
It’s working, she told him through gritted teeth, her jaw locked so hard it ached. If you stop whatever you’re doing, I lose my arms.
The glow flared up around her forearms, bright enough that several recruits squinted and turned their faces. Steam roared upward in a column, drowning her in heat and light. Her knees buckled. She forced them straight again, sweat pricking along her spine.
“How l-long do I—” she stuttered out, but her voice broke on the last word.
“Until it releases you,” Cairn replied flatly.
What? It had seemed so straightforward for everyone else.
The liquid tried to climb higher up her arms, hungry, dragging at her, the sensation like burning hands trying to pull her down.
Hymn strained against it, pushing outwards, bracing.
Eiko felt every tremor of his effort. Every faltering slip.
Her own vision blurred at the edges, unconsciousness threatening.
Please, she thought, unsure if she was speaking to Hymn, praying to the sun, or pleading with the mineral itself.
The boiling glow shuddered, and then, suddenly, it released its grip on her. The roaring heat snapped back to a deep, humming warmth. The pain ebbed to a fierce ache. Eiko gasped in a deep, shuddering breath.
Now, Hymn panted. Quickly!
She pulled her hands out of the cauldron. Light clung to her skin, refusing to release her. It crawled along her fingers like liquid gold, seeping into the lines of her palms and racing along the backs of her hands in fast, branching strokes. She stared, unable to breathe.
It wasn’t settling into red.
It wasn’t settling into white.
It … wasn’t even settling into black.
It remained gold.
Thin, fragile lines of gold bloomed against her skin, tracing every bone and tendon.
They climbed over her knuckles, slipped between her fingers, and split and rejoined in an intricate, untidy web.
For a heartbeat, she hoped they would stop at her fingertips.
Just a fragile, polite little flourish like everyone else had.
They didn’t. Of course they didn’t.
The lines kept going—still thin and wispy, but they climbed up past the base of her thumb. Over her wrists. Along the narrow bones of her forearms. They stopped near the crook of her elbow, as if reluctantly surrendering their claim on the rest of her.
By the time the glow finally dimmed, both arms were marked almost to where Chasin’s sleeves ended.
Her lace was the same length as his.
Silence crashed over the arena. Eiko turned slowly, her eyes racing over all the faces. It took her a second to realise the difference in what she was seeing.
Her friends were worried and confused. Vana was frantically mumbling, her head shaking. The Oakensnare man and the Suntide man both appeared confused.
Everyone else was horrified.
Cairn and Chasin had both taken an instinctive step towards her, their hands resting on weapons strapped to their belts. Cairn’s cane toppled to the ground, forgotten, his eyes stuck to her hands.
Alessandra choked out a single, stunned word: “Whispering.”
It rippled across the soldiers in the surrounding stands like a frigid breeze.
Whispering.
Whispering.
Whispering.
“Impossible,” Ilara was spluttering. “She’s survived days—”
Hymn? Eiko called out desperately, eyeing the stillness of Chasin and Cairn, who were surveying her like she wasn’t even a person anymore.
They were watching her as though her tiny baby monster had just been exposed in some way and was about to rip free of her skin and scorch the entire arena.
What’s a Whispering? she demanded. Chasin said nothing about Whisperings.
“No one survives—no one—” Takoda was quietly arguing with Alessandra, who looked to have briefly put her hand over his to stop him … drawing a weapon? “It’s going to tear through that tiny fucking girl.”
I don’t know what’s happening. Hymn’s voice was small. Afraid.
“It’s the killer, the killer, can you feel it? Can you see it, can you hear it?” Vana ranted, stumbling back a few steps.
Eiko stared down at herself. She felt suddenly dizzy. The gold lines were a thin, fragile mess: jittering branches, uneven strokes. Nothing like the solid, carved-black lines on Chasin’s arms. Nothing like the bold red or steady white of the other section leaders.
Her lace looked … wrong.
Hymn was right. They had done this wrong, just as they had done everything else wrong.
The Godsguard shifted like a single organism on the verge of attack. The air tasted electric, every soldier’s monster straining to be free. They were drawing closer. Moving into the arena. Circling. Waiting.
Eiko looked for her brother.
She couldn’t even remember the last time she had looked to her big brother for help. She usually liked to fight her battles on her own. She was usually brave. She was usually so brave and stupid and foolish, and look where it got her.
She met her brother’s eyes and felt her own fill with tears.
Kaito stepped forward without hesitation, and this time, Rion didn’t stop him.
He ignored Alessandra’s sharp warning not to move and walked calmly to her side. And then he turned his back on her, tucking her behind his arm, facing off against the person he saw as the greatest threat to her safety in that moment.
Prince Chasin.
Ren was there before she even realised he was moving, and then Rion and Ky were completing the circle around her.
All of their backs were to her.