Chapter 27
Riptide
It was early morning when it occurred to me to check the new Skinscript I had received. I didn’t know what glyphs Zevrial had chosen for me, or if he’d still give me the one he’d promised I could choose for myself.
I waited until Corra had left to bathe. Holding out my mirror, I angled it so that I could see the glyphs he’d painted yesterday. I almost dropped the mirror.
Two distinct Skinscript glyphs, neatly painted onto either side of my inner thighs. I recognized them both.
Perception and Sun.
He’d given me one of the rarest elemental glyphs.
Thinking back to the night before, Zevrial’s finger had moved back and forth on my thigh as he dipped it into the ink over and over again.
Each glyph flared with heat when he’d finished drawing them.
Their magical activation against my skin had been overshadowed by my lust at the time, but they’d both felt comparably powerful.
Skimming a finger over each symbol, I wondered what using the Perception magic might feel like.
I set the mirror back down, holding my head in my hands while I tried to calm down. The Sun Skinscript was on me, a death sentence if I ever used it. And I didn’t know how to use it. Or avoid using it.
There was only one logical next step.
I had to kill Zevrial, consequences be damned.
Or kiss him senseless again until he explained why he’d given me the Sun glyph.
My mind wasn’t made up yet.
Either way, I needed to find him and figure out how to use Perception, and avoid using the Sun Skinscript. That jerk had argued me down to three Skinscripts, and proceeded to give me a useless one?
He’d seduced me for months, absolutely ravaged my mouth and left my body in complete disarray yesterday, and then fled like a thief into a night market.
I threw clothes on without bothering to look at them.
I was going to hunt him down and wring the truth out of him.
It didn’t take long to find him. He was sitting alone at a secluded bench in the courtyard sharpening a dagger against a whetstone, the pre-dawn light painting him in cool tones.
His clothes were the same ones he’d worn yesterday, the rip in his pants from where he’d sliced himself precisely stitched back together.
It wasn’t right that he looked so unbothered after last night.
I caught a glimpse of Yeshar ducking into the Medic center out of the corner of my eye, and waited until he was gone. He didn’t look injured.
“What the hell,” I hissed at Zevrial, keeping my voice low enough only he would hear. “Seriously? Sun?”
He didn’t even bother to look up from his task. “And Perception. You’re welcome.”
“This is a joke at my expense, right? After spending so much time lecturing me about staying alive, you turn around and give me a glyph that will kill me if I ever use it.”
His lips tilted up. “You aren’t naive enough to believe everything they tell you in lessons is the full truth.” He slid his dagger back into its sheath. “The Sun glyph isn’t an immediate death sentence.”
Oh goodie.
“Terrific. I can be slowly roasted alive each time I accidentally use it.”
“Sun works like a drug. It’s addictive as fuck to use, which is why almost everyone who uses it can’t stop until it’s too late and their guts are fried.”
Better and better.
I managed to squeeze the words out through my clenched teeth. “You gave me a drug-glyph?”
His eyebrows slashed down with anger. “I gave you the fucking most powerful known glyph. But I’m sure you’ll find some way to stay pissed at me about that.”
I gaped at him. “You gave me a potentially lethal glyph, and no clue how to avoid using it. Then you have the audacity to claim I’m using it to start a fight with you?”
“If the shoe fits.”
Punching an instructor had to be against the rules, but I wanted very badly to do it anyway. “How do I use it?”
He scoffed. “They really don’t teach anything these days, do they?” I waited, refusing to rise to his baiting. Each word he said was languid as if I was mentally challenged. “You use it like sending a mirror missive. Just think about what you want to happen.”
Focusing on Perception, I tried it out on him. A faint warmth flared to life on my right inner thigh.
He had discreet bags under his eyes, and his posture was slouched more than usual. He didn’t look like he’d bathed since yesterday either. And he was even more irritable today than he had been then.
He wasn’t yawning and he hadn’t rubbed at his eyes at all since I’d stormed out here, but I’d wager my next meal he hadn’t slept well. It made a dark part of me feel better to know he was suffering too. And I hadn’t noticed any of this without Perception.
I stopped focusing.
All I had to do was not think about using the Sun’s power and it couldn’t kill me. Easy enough.
I sat beside him. “Why?”
One dark eyebrow went up on his handsome face. “Why what?”
Why did you leave last night? Why did you kiss me? Why did you stop?
That way lies madness.
“Why the Sun glyph? Out of hundreds of useful Skinscripts you could have picked?”
“I told you last night. We both know what’s coming in the next five years. I’ve seen it out there beyond the shores firsthand. You need to be stronger. The Sun glyph is the strongest.”
If I don’t kill myself using it.
It made a bizarre kind of sense. The elemental Sun ability didn’t guarantee immediate death, but using it made overusing it to the point of death nearly impossible to resist. If I ever did have to use it, which I hoped I never would, it would be with countermeasures to stop myself before I became intoxicated by it.
Maybe someone could hit me over the head after a second or two to knock me out.
What would it feel like?
Survival or curiosity. It’s a tough call, admittedly.
Trying to use it on my own was out of the question.
With the power of the Sun though, I’d be stronger than anyone else. If I could figure out a way to use it safely. It was a massive if. For now, I wouldn’t be using it at all.
“And Perception?” I asked.
“You have an extraordinary tendency toward cluelessness.”
My ire sparked hot and bright. “Now wait just a minute–”
“Half the time you walk around looking dumbfounded because things that should’ve been apparent to you come as surprises.
You don’t pay enough attention to your own body to spot the signs you’re about to injure yourself.
Your skill at reading body language is almost nonexistent.
You’re reckless and rebellious. You head straight into danger and don’t notice when you’re about to get yourself killed. ”
The truth was a sour stew that cut on its way down when swallowed. “Don’t forget stupid, spineless, shallow, selfish…”
“You’re none of that.” His face was serious.
So much for deflecting with humor. “You're singular, the most stubbornly determined person I've ever met. The kind of woman a man would wage wars over, just for the chance to know you.” Heat leapt up my cheeks. “But you’re also rash and oblivious, and your survival instinct is buried so far under your moral compass that it’s suffocating.”
“If this is about the Jakavra–”
“It isn’t. Perception Skinscript is a necessity for you. Your life expectancy will be weeks, not years, without it when you’re a Voyager.”
When?
I clamped my mouth shut. Even I wasn’t dense enough not to recognize that he was trying to help me.
He let out a dry humorless laugh. “And there’s no way I was going to give you the Sun glyph without Perception first, even though you’re tough enough to handle Sun.
” He had more confidence in me than I did.
Yeshar exited the Medic center with his coinpurse in hand, suspicious gaze marking Zevrial and I.
Zevrial saw him too and shoved to his feet, walked away.
“We aren’t finished!” I called after him.
“For now, we are.”