To Break a Vow (The Soulmark Cycle #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

Sabine

The mark beneath Sabine Almarien’s collarbone had not been there yesterday.

She’d checked three times this morning: once in the dim pre-dawn light of her chamber, once in the mirror while bathing, and once more in the gondola on the way to the Registry.

Each time, the same impossible sprawl of golden vines dissolving into ashen streaks, like someone had branded her in her sleep and she’d somehow failed to notice.

She couldn’t find it in her to be surprised that even her body had forsaken her at the worst possible moment.

Now, as she stood in the Weighing chamber with her pupil trembling beside her in canary-yellow silk, the mark burned. The high collar she’d fastened this morning in an attempt to hide it suddenly felt like a noose.

Sabine counted five breaths—a trick that had gotten her through a thousand humiliations—and mentally catalogued her options.

She could claim a sudden illness and leave, but that would mean abandoning her charge and any hopes of a recommendation letter from the girl’s mother. She would have to endure it, and—

The girl clenched Sabine’s sleeve.

“Miss Almarien?” she whispered. “I think I might be ill.”

Sabine looked at her pupil. Fifteen cycles old, soft around the edges in the way Gilt girls were when they’d never missed a meal or worried about a roof over their heads. She looked like she might throw up on her expensive slippers.

Something in Sabine’s chest twisted. She knew that particular terror that sparked under the Gilt’s sharp scrutiny, in the act of being catalogued, assessed, and found wanting.

Her charge had very little to fear in that regard: she came from a good, respectable family, one with a strong Light bloodline and three generations of Registry officials and inquisitors amongst their ranks.

The chances of her manifesting anything but Light or, in the absolute worst case scenario, Flame, were exceedingly slim.

But if Sabine knew one thing, it was that logic couldn’t always override panic.

“Deep breaths, in through your nose,” Sabine said, covering the girl’s hand with her own.

The mark pulsed hot beneath her collar, but she tried to ignore it.

“You’re going to walk up those steps, kneel prettily, and let them see what we both know is already there.

” She squeezed the girl’s fingers. “And then you’ll come back, and we’ll endure the rest of this circus together, and if we make it through, we’ll get ice cream before I escort you home. From Pearl and Plum.”

The girl nodded, some of the wildness leaving her eyes.

Sabine knew it’d work. She’d offered the same bargain to Liora when she’d been terrified of her own Weighing.

If it’d done the trick with her sister, who had to worry about the disgraced Almarien name and a fickle bloodline, it certainly wasn’t going to fail now, with a girl who was in a much better position.

She didn’t allow herself to feel bitterness at the thought. This, too, was for Liora.

The Weighing chamber buzzed with soft conversation.

Members of Gilt society packed the benches, jewels catching the light filtering through stained glass windows.

Gossip mongers lingered on the edges like lampreys in the canals, scenting for blood.

No doubt, waiting to ridicule this or that house for producing less than optimal affinities in their youths.

Not that any affinity was useless, of course. Ice weavers made splendid field medics, and Nature weavers were indispensable in agriculture. But those were professions, and the Gilt scoffed at the notion of labor.

Sabine fought a sneer. She knew a thing or two about that.

The chime of a bell cut through the din, and the great doors swung open. The High Binder entered in a whisper of white silk. Their gloves, ivory and immaculate, bore the twelve-pointed star of the Registry.

Sabine heard a rumor once that the High Binder’s oath slowly erased their face over time, until no personhood remained but a blank canvas.

She’d always thought it nonsense, but watching them glide down the central aisle, she found herself unable to look away from that blank veil over their face, from the unsettling way their head tilted as if listening to something the rest of them couldn’t hear.

Five lesser Binders trailed behind, each cradling a ledger to their chests like infants—one for each group the Registry divided the affinities into: Forgers, Revealers, Ravagers, Wardens, and Warpers.

The assembled Gilt eyed the last ledger, wrapped in inky leather, with weariness.

Ice, Wind, and most notably Shadow weavers made up the Warpers: the Gilt’s favorite scapegoats.

No mama wanted to see their children’s names recorded in that particular ledger.

“Welcome, vessels of imperial legacy,” the High Binder intoned once they stepped on the dais and faced the assembly. Their voice was ageless, sexless, void of anything human. “Today you stand at the threshold of service to family, to Empire, to the greater magic that sustains us all.”

Sabine let the words drift past. This was her third Weighing as an accompanying governess, and if the speeches varied at all, it was only in the subtle sharpening of their emphasis. The heat at her collarbone built. She inhaled a deep breath and held it for five seconds, counting each one.

Her pupil’s Weighing had to go perfectly.

Sabine needed that recommendation like air.

Her sister’s debut was months away, and the Season would devour what little remained of the Almarien coffers.

Her land was mortgaged three times over, her title more albatross than inheritance. Without another post, without income—

The mark pulsed. It felt like a hook had caught beneath her skin and yanked.

Not now. Not today.

She needed this. Whatever curse the mark represented would have to wait until tomorrow.

Around her, the ceremony proceeded. One by one, each fifteen-cycle-old gentry mounted the steps and knelt beneath the High Binder’s outstretched palm, until their affinity revealed itself in a ripple of color. The assembled Gilt watched with rapt attention.

When her charge’s name was called, Sabine rose on legs that didn’t feel entirely solid.

She climbed the dais steps, her hand at the girl’s elbow more for her own stability than the child’s.

The High Binder’s veil turned toward them, and Sabine felt the weight of that hidden gaze like a physical thing.

The High Binder’s palm descended, wrapping a thread of their own, affinity-revealing Light magic around her pupil’s head like a thin corona.

A pale glow bloomed beneath that thread, spreading outward.

It built and built, layer upon layer of silvery-white radiance, until Sabine was forced to look away from the searing brightness.

Light affinity. The magic of Registry officials, of inquisitors, of ceremony.

And the Gilt’s favorite.

The chamber filled with gasps and approving murmurs. Sabine should’ve felt relief. This was it, this was success. The recommendation was as good as written. But the mark beneath her collar began to sing.

She had no other way to describe the high, keening vibration she felt in her bones, her teeth, the hollow of her skull. Her vision doubled, tripled. She dared a glance down and saw, for a fraction of a second, the faint outline of the glyph through the fabric.

Panic prickled up her throat.

Could she leave now? Her pupil’s affinity was still being recorded in the ledger. Her employer would not be happy if she abandoned the girl before the ceremony was over. She tried to focus on her breathing, counting backwards from ten, but the heat kept building.

She pressed a hand to her chest. Too late.

Golden light spilled from under her gown in sprawling patterns that looked nothing like any affinity Sabine had ever seen. It pulsed in time with her heart, growing brighter with each beat, until she was the sun and the room was burning.

The crowd’s murmurs cut off as if severed by a blade.

Her pupil stumbled back, mouth open in shock. The lesser Binders froze, ledgers forgotten. And the High Binder went utterly, terribly still.

Golden light continued to pour from Sabine’s skin, crawling up her neck, illuminating her face from below like she’d swallowed fire. She wanted to run. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to claw the mark from her flesh.

“You.” The High Binder pointed one gloved finger directly at Sabine. “Step forward.”

Sabine froze. Every eye fixed on her as the golden light continued to pulse at her collarbone.

“Step. Forward.” The High Binder’s tone was steel, stripped of ceremony.

On legs that felt suddenly untethered from her body, Sabine moved toward them. The veiled head tilted, studying her.

Their fingers reached for her collarbone. Sabine called on all her self-control not to flinch.

“Wonderful,” the High Binder whispered. The word echoed in the silence, reaching every corner of the chamber, every ear bent toward the spectacle she’d become. “We’ve found another.”

One moment, Sabine was in the polite fracas of the hall, the next she was being shepherded down a silent passage by a marble-faced clerk, the kind who never made eye contact and never lost step.

No time to regain composure. No opportunity for resistance.

The clerk pressed her forward with the finality of a jailer.

The room was tiny, windowless, save a single slit that leaked in a blade of daylight.

A desk, two lacquered chairs, and a writing stand set with quills in pristine order accounted for the only furniture.

Sabine’s stomach bottomed out at the sight.

This was not the customary receiving room for off-schedule Weighings.

It was a cell, in all but name.