Chapter 19 #2
“All of them,” Lord Vaelros replied grimly. “Every subject of the Empire reduced to data points in the Registry’s great accounting.”
“Twelve minutes until the next rotation. I’ll signal when it’s time,” Caelen said.
Sabine and Lord Vaelros set to work, moving through the shelves with a desperate efficiency. Hands ghosted over files, searching for meaning in the bureaucratic order.
“Here,” Lord Vaelros called softly from the third bookshelf. He held up a folder labeled “ Bennet, Garrett no defensive injuries observed. Perioral discoloration suggesting pressure from a soft implement. Even blanching across both victims’ faces and upper torsos.
Livor mortis vivid red mottling, atypical but not inconsistent with rapid cooling of the chamber. Marked pallor of the extremities, with faint cyanotic shading at the fingertips.
Additional Notes: The chamber was reported to be unusually cold upon arrival; may have accelerated postmortem changes.
No evidence of forced entry; no signs of struggle.
Internal examination revealed no trauma to tracheal cartilage, supporting death via external obstruction rather than strangulation.
Sabine stared at the words, reading them over and over.
The Registry clerk who penned the report had likely never met the Bennetts and saw no difference between cataloguing a pair of dead Gilt gentry and the mislaid shipment of river pearls.
Maybe, some secret meaning might bleed through the clinical lines if only she stared hard enough.
Asphyxiation. Soft-tissue obstruction. Pressure from a soft implement.
So they hadn’t Faded at all. They’d been murdered. Suffocated.
Sabine tried to imagine the Bennetts, newly bonded, perhaps curled together in sleep, the peacefulness of midnight broken by a pillow pressed over their faces until the world was reduced to nothing.
Her stomach somersaulted at the thought.
She didn’t know what the worst option was: for the marks to be somehow catalysts to a more severe version of the Fade, or for the Fade to have nothing to do with the marks at all.
But then again, it was all connected, wasn’t it? The Registry had created the marks to stop the Fade. Sure, the Bennetts had been murdered in a mundane way. But they were still a marked pair just a day past their blood vow. Were they really to believe their death had nothing to do with their marks?
She looked to Lord Vaelros. His face was carved from stone, unreadable except for the minute tension in his jaw.
Sabine’s voice was thin, a thread stretched to the breaking point. “You think it was truly… that? That someone simply crept in and smothered them?”
He didn’t answer at once.
Then, another thought struck her. The Registry had been very vocal about the Bennetts’ bond dissolving catastrophically; the High Binder themselves had spoken of it at their funeral, warned the mourners that magic demanded discipline, that affinity without control led to dissolution.
Though surely, the High Binder knew of the true cause of death.
“Why do you think the Registry has not made this public? They made an example of the Bennetts.”
“It would’ve caused too many rumors if the Gilt knew a murderer runs amok,” Lord Vaelros said. “A failed vow is a controllable story, one that fits their narrative.”
The Registry will tell you many things about that mark. Believe only this: you should trust none of them.
Had the pamphlet man been right? Or was he simply trying to sway her off his own scent by sending her on a wild hunt for answers that didn’t exist?
Sabine pressed her palm to her chest, counting the breaths.
One, two, three. It didn’t help this time.
Before the panic could choke the words from her, she forced herself to whisper, “Why would the Children even bother with something so… so mundane? Why risk a gruesome murder when they can simply let us die of the Fade?”
Could the marks truly be keeping the Fade at bay?
Could the Children have seen no other way to dispose of marked pairs but to murder them the way the unbound would?
It seemed too soon to know for certain, considering the Bennetts were the first marked couple to bond, and they’d been killed considerably faster than they could possibly begin displaying any symptoms.
What information, then, did the Children have to want marked pairs dead?
Lord Vaelros’s eyes found hers. There was something raw there, something that flickered and vanished before she could name it. “Sometimes,” he said, voice so low she barely heard it, “the simplest means are the most effective. Especially if the true weapon is fear.”
She wondered if they were still speaking of the Children. Her mind conjured images of the tannery wedding—because she couldn’t think of another way to describe it—of the women’s joy and devotion, and she only managed to find herself confused by all of it.
She’d agreed to trust Lord Vaelros. Threads, she’d just made herself an accomplice to a crime alongside him. Then why couldn’t she tell him about what she’d witnessed that night?
“My lord, I—”
Caelen’s warning whistle cut through stone, urgent and sharp.
Confessions would have to wait.
“Time to go.” Lord Vaelros had already begun refiling the evidence; Sabine folded the death certificate against her bodice, the paper crackling like tinder.