Chapter 3
CHAPTER
Sabine
He grabbed her arm just above the elbow. Sabine’s heart collided with her ribs. She yanked away on instinct, but his grip held, steering her firmly toward one of the black lacquered doors. The brass number on it read one.
Inside, the room was similar to the one she’d just left, only three times smaller, if that was even possible. Dust motes floated in the angled light.
The Emperor’s Hand—Lord Vaelros—shut the door behind himself.
In the small confines of the room, she noticed how truly tall he was, towering over a head above her, and built with the predatory grace of a sharp blade.
He put his back to the door, arms crossed.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. There was only the faint landfall of footsteps beyond the walls and the throb—threads, that insistent throb—of Sabine’s mark.
The neckline of her gown strained to contain the glow, but light leaked through with every pulse, gilding her skin in shifting gold.
Lord Vaelros’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the mark as one might look at a drawn weapon.
Sabine steadied herself. “If you mean to rob me, I should warn you: my only asset is a questionable reputation.”
The Hand scoffed. “Is that what the Gilt imagines I do? Rob people?”
Sabine found herself surprised by his voice. Deep, rich baritone—and while he no doubt spoke perfect Imperial Core, something in the sharpness of his r ’s, in the faintly lyrical rise and fall of his words, brought her somewhere far in the Eastern provinces of the Empire.
She shouldn’t have been surprised: the rich, golden-brown tone of his skin, the sharp lines of his face, the thickness of his hair, all reminded her of the illustrations she’d studied in her atlases of the Eastern Frontier, with its sand-stained cliffs.
And yet, Sabine didn’t have much first-hand experience with the East. She’d grown up in her valenhold in the Central Heartland, west of the Velnar river cutting the Empire in half.
When they’d moved to Ilvarenne for Liora’s finishing school, the families she’d served as governess had mostly been Imperial Core.
“I don’t pay much mind to Gilt gossips.” Sabine shrugged. “People in my position have more pressing matters to attend to, my lord.”
The force of his attention advanced on her even if he remained perfectly still. “And what position might that be?”
She straightened her spine, careful that her back didn’t come away from the wall. “An unenviable one.” She held his gaze, though something in its coldness required considerable effort. “Same as yours, by the looks of it.”
Something flickered across his face. Not quite offense. Closer to the expression of a man who had expected considerably less from this conversation and wasn’t sure yet whether that was a problem. “I want no part of this circus. I don’t seek a blood vow. I’m not on offer.”
He uncrossed his arms, knuckles whitening as he smoothed stray hair back into the confines of its knot.
Sabine’s fingernail dug into her palm. She tried counting her breaths, but while it helped with her panic, she now found it less useful with her rage.
“What a privilege, my lord, to be able just to decide you do not wish to partake in our joint misfortune. The High Binder didn’t offer me the same kindness, unfortunately. ”
“Then petition them .” Clipped. Final. “I cannot help what the Registry has decided.”
“No,” Sabine said. “You simply enforce it.”
He looked at her with the kind of attention that felt less like interest and more like threat assessment. Against her initial instinct, she held it, because she’d spent twelve cycles under the scrutiny of people who had decided she was beneath them and was very, very tired of looking away first.
He bared his teeth, more the grimace of a cornered animal than a smile. “You have no idea of what you speak.”
Lifting his hands, he gathered threads of ash between his fingers, weaving them in a pattern of simple, concentrical knots. Rot started to spread across the walls, crumbling the stone to cinders. A small hole appeared, peeking into the adjacent room.
Sabine shivered. She knew, anecdotally more than anything, that the Hand’s magic was a terrible thing. But it’d always felt distant, nebulous. A bedtime story.
Except now she watched him in action, realized the ease with which he simply… unmade the world. Sabine stared at the hole in the wall more closely. The stone there was completely gone, even the dust swept away, as if it’d never existed at all.
“I have spilled my blood once already, Miss,” he said, and Sabine returned her attention to him, secretly grateful to be released from the evidence of his destructive magic.
“My magic is awakened. I have nothing to gain from another blood vow, and frankly, it is the last experience I wish to relive.”
He reached up, fingers flicking the collar of his shirt, and for a split second Sabine saw it: a mark the exact opposite of her own, the ashen streaks cast in obsidian, the halo of vines drained of color, like a scar.
It was beautiful, in the way a sharpened blade was beautiful.
For an instant, her own mark pulsed in reply—two frequencies locked in dangerous sympathy.
He covered it at once, tugging the fabric up to hide the evidence.
Sabine squeezed her eyes shut, inhaling against the dizzying flood of possibility.
She did not want this, either. The prospect of binding herself, not for love or kinship or even ambition, but for the Registry’s convenience, was a cruelty too sharp to name.
She especially did not want to bind herself to this man—cold, dangerous, cruel.
She wasn’t sure she’d get the privilege of drafting a list of the qualities she’d desire in a match, considering the position she’d found herself in, but she knew one thing.
The first point on that list, even if it had to be the only point, would be this: someone other than Lord Vaelros.
“Of course,” she said, waving noncommittally, “because the whole world revolves around what men like you have to gain from it.”
Something tightened in his jaw. She didn’t give him a chance to rebut. “But you do understand that once the Registry sees our marks, neither your nor my wishes will matter, yes?”
He began to pace the cramped chamber, each step measured and precise, as though he might carve a safe path through the air between them. “Which is why the Registry must never witness the same thing that happened here today.”
Sabine laughed. She could not help it. “And how do you suggest we do that? We don’t exactly control these. They are beacons to our doom.” She pointed to her own mark. “Or have you a method for commanding my body as efficiently as you command everything else?”
“They only respond in proximity.”
That, Sabine had to admit, seemed to be true.
He stopped pacing, squaring himself to her, and for the first time, Sabine noticed the fine tremor at his jaw. “If we stay apart, the marks stay dormant. The Registry cannot confirm a match they have not witnessed.”
“Ah.” She let that sit. “So your solution is that we never occupy the same room again.”
“It is not—” He stopped. “If your mark has found no match by Season’s end, you may be permitted to choose your own partner.”
“ May ,” she repeated. “How reassuring.” She tilted her head, watching him. “And what exactly do you require from me, my lord, for this arrangement to hold?”
He looked at her as though the question itself was an affront. As though the answer were obvious, and she was being deliberately obtuse. She was, slightly. She wanted to hear him say it.
“Your cooperation,” he said at last. Clipped. Like the word cost him something he hadn’t budgeted for.
“My cooperation.” Sabine let the word turn over slowly, examined it from all sides. “You mean my compliance.”
“I mean that you will not seek me out, will not acknowledge me if our paths cross, and will not—”
She lifted her hands in the air. “If it means I won’t have to bind myself to you, or even stand in the same room as you ever again, I’m willing to try anything.”
Lord Vaelros inclined his head, more a shadow of assent than a real gesture. “Then we are in agreement. We do not know each other. We never met. If asked, we say nothing.”
She hesitated, then nodded, pushing away from the wall so she could match his level gaze. “And I never have to deal with your horrid attitude again? Seems I am afforded the better end of this deal, at least.”
His lips twisted in what could never, even in the most charitable of ways, be called a smile. “I aim to please.”
Sabine held his gaze. “You aim at a great many things, my lord. I’d be careful you don’t miss.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Sabine’s thoughts tumbled over themselves: Liora, the Season, the promise she’d just made not to allow herself to be made a pawn. The Empire did not care for such promises. But perhaps, if she were careful, she might still keep her own fate in her hands.