I can’t hear his words clearly anymore as blood pounds in my ears with a deafening roar, drowning everything, submerging it, the whole world suddenly unstable and staggeringly cruel. A hot rush of shame streaks down my neck. The world has been rent asunder, the safe, loving and secure life I thought I had suddenly ripped clear away.
Whore. Heathen whore.
The terrible words spear through my fog of shame as I start to cry, my fastmarked hands limp in my lap and slick with tears and snot. The sight of my fastlines triggers a swelling nausea.
And then Tobias’s parents are gone, and I’m left sobbing, alone in a room with Mother Eliss. Dirty and despised and all wrong.
Mother Eliss gets up to stand before me, fists hard on her hips.
“This is how you act?” she demands, her voice trembling with outrage. “Like a Keltic slut? I took you in.” Her voice cracks with emotion. “I raised you. Like one of my own.”
I can barely hear her as I continue to cry. Why did I touch him in such a shameful way? How could I have done that?
Whore. Heathen whore.
The words beat down on me until I’m drowning in them.
“You are going to apologize to your fastmate,” Mother Eliss snarls through gritted teeth. “Tomorrow morn. Do you understand?”
I nod dumbly as I whimper.
Mother Eliss lets loose with a staccato stream of demands. “You will not only apologize to your fastmate, you will apologize to his father and to his mother and after that...”
The words fade to a hurtful buzz, lining the edge of the black fog that’s rushing in to fill my mind.
Mother Eliss grabs my arm so hard it hurts, pressing on the bruises from Tobias’s horrible grip. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” I force the word out through my tears, head hung low, not even knowing what I’m agreeing to.
Whore. Slut.
Why did I do those things?
“...and from here on out, you will behave appropriately with your fastmate.”
I nod, crying.
Mother Eliss is quiet for a moment, and I raise my eyes pleadingly to hers, but she’s glaring at me as if she can no longer stand the sight of me. “You are a disgrace,” she spits out, her eyes glassing over with tears. “Get out. Get away from me. Go to your room and stay there.”
Everything around me is blurred through my tears as I get up, hunched over, wanting to disappear. I push open the heavy wooden door and leave the library.
I do not go to my room.
I walk down the long hallway, tears still streaming down my cooled cheeks. I don’t bother to wipe them away.
In a numbed fog, I stumble out of the lodging house. The night air is warm and dewy as I walk down the Ironwood tree-lined path to the gate, the gentle beauty of the glowing Ironflowers only heightening the pain inside me.
I will destroy my life if I walk away.
But I can’t go back to him.
This final thought is the only sure, solid thing left in my world. So I open the iron gate and walk through, latching it behind me with a terrible, decisive click of iron on iron.
Feeling oddly disconnected from my body, I put one foot in front of the other as I make my way through the streets of Verpax City. The streets are empty at this late hour, the street lanterns casting long shadows over my new world. The world that no longer holds a place for me, because I know my parents too well.
I have only two options—go back to my fastmate, or leave.
If I stay, they will absolutely make me go back to him. And I can’t do that. Not ever.
I drag my feet listlessly, attracting a few scattered, curious stares. There are heathens all around me, now that I’ve walked aimlessly away from the center of the city.
I slowly walk past shops and Keltic taverns with boisterous music inside. Past the occasional parked or slowly plodding carriage. Past Verpacian merchants shuttering stores. I’m like a ghost, with no destination but one.
Away.
A woman’s low moan sounds from a darkened alley. I turn and spot a young Alfsigr Elf pressing a blonde Verpacian maiden against the Spine-stone wall. Feverishly kissing her.
Rivyr’el Talonir.
I know it’s him by the colorful patterns edging his Elfin tunic and the gems sparkling in his ivory hair. He’s kissing the young woman ravenously, his hand buried under her skirt, and around the back of her rear, her thigh and garter scandalously flashing. She laughs throatily against his mouth and pulls him harder against her body, her eyes closed, her head thrown back in rapture as he trails his lips down her neck.
A warm sting of shock flushes through me that quickly curdles into despair as I rush past them.
I aimlessly turn down a broad street and soon pass by a raucous gathering. Partygoers are packed into a large inn, the crowd spilling out onto a second-story balcony and also flowing from the first floor out onto the road, everything lit by crimson lanterns. Young Verpacians and Kelts are laughing aggressively loud, most of them young males.
Two blond Verpacian men are hanging over the balcony railing, drinking from amber bottles and watching the passersby. One of the men’s eyes meet mine and light with sudden focus, sparking red in the lantern-light, and I’ve a vague remembrance of the envoy in Valgard whose eyes seemed to flash red.
The young Verpacian straightens and smacks the man next to him with the back of his hand to get his attention, never taking his glinting red eyes off me. Fearful to be drawing his attention, I hurry my pace as a group of three young men passes close by and blocks my view of the balcony. When the balcony appears again, the red-eyed Verpacian and his companion are gone.
“Hey, Crow girl!”
The words lash into me and I flinch, startled. I lower my gaze to find a Kelt with a red face and beady eyes leaning against the outside tavern wall, leering at me. “You’re a pretty little Roach, ain’t’cha?”
I stiffen in fright and speed up, veering away from the tavern.
“Leave her alone, Mordin,” another Kelt chastises. “Are you mad? You want trouble with the Mages?”
I worriedly glance over my shoulder to find Mordin’s eyes set on me with both anger and heat, his words slurred. “Hey, I’m talking to you, Crow!” He stalks toward me.
His unchecked pursuit sends a bolt of panic through me. All I can think about is Tobias, pushing me against the wall, forcing himself on me.
I break into a sprint down an alley, fast as a hare as fear scythes through me. I turn sharply onto a side street, zigzagging first left, then right, frantically checking over my shoulder, my breathing painfully hard and fast.
Eventually, I slow to a stop, heart thudding and anguish rising as I stand in a deserted alley, my hand pressed against the cold stone wall.
What am I going to do?
My world has split into two impossible halves—Gardnerian and non-Gardnerian—and I’m the despised outsider in both.
My sisters’ faces flash into the back of my mind, and grief rips at my throat. I picture Retta and Clover tucked into their beds, whispering to each other, and a fierce longing to be with them whips up inside me as I start to cry once more.
No, I realize, the grief suffocating me. I don’t have a family anymore. They’ve been torn away from me, along with everything else, because I will not go back to my fastmate.
I’m all alone now.
I walk on, quietly sobbing as the side streets grow increasingly deserted. Choosing any road that seems to lead closer to nothing. Eventually, I’m enveloped by dark woods, the staccato sound of crickets filling the dark forest.
I hear water up ahead and sense some vast space. As the trees thin out, the sound of water grows stronger. Then the woods open up, and I’m walking toward a long, stone bridge that arcs over a gorge. I pause at the bridge’s edge, one sweeping glance registering the devastating height.
Moonlight glints off the turbulent current and the jutting black rocks far, far below.
The bridge is lit by a single blue glass lantern, and its cobblestones are gray and worn. The stone railings are deeply weathered, many of them crumbling apart.
Dangerous.
That word would have mattered this morning. Before my world was stripped from me.
I walk onto the bridge, half-aware of a slight sense of vertigo. I’m so high, and the gorge is so incredibly deep. I keep walking, straight up to the highest point in the center of the bridge.
I stop, dull and deadened, then turn, lean over the railing and peer down at the water rushing by beneath me.
The gorge is impossibly deep. The black current races along, choppy and foaming. Dark earth rises to form vertical cliffs on both sides of the gorge, roots twisting out of the soil. Some trees are bent down as if contemplating whether to hurl themselves into the obliterating chasm.
The rail is cool beneath my hands as I bend forward, listening to the swoosh and slosh of water, driving relentlessly in one direction.
Away.
It’s cold and clean, the water. The only clean, pure thing left in the whole world. I lean in and inhale the water’s scent, the smell fresh and cold and sweet. The mist is cool against the muggy warmth of the night.
And I wonder—what it would feel like to join with the black water? To dissolve?
I tilt closer, mesmerized by the water’s cold beauty. It would be a sharp, painful embrace, but it would strip me clean, dissolve me. Erase me. Carry me into it and with it.
Forever away.
I brush a pebble off the rail by accident and watch it fly down, down, down. I don’t even hear it as it’s caught up in the black current.
I tilt out further, my stomach on the railing as I push myself slightly over, wanting to get closer to better hear the water. To imagine it closing up around me.
A faint thought glimmers in the back of my mind.
My sisters. Sisters that will be fasted.
To his brothers.
I teeter toward the water and almost fall as a sharp jab of fear slices through me.
My sisters. They need me.
And then another thought, drowning out all the others.
I have to save them.
My feet slide on the slick stone, and I slip treacherously forward. I gasp, heart pounding, as my hands scramble to find purchase on the slippery railing. I cry out as panic rips through me and I start to topple over.
Boot heels sound on stone.
“Stop!” a deep voice commands as firm hands take hold of my arms, tugging me sharply back. I lose my balance and fall onto the hard cobblestones of the bridge, my elbow slamming down on the cold ground.
A spike of pain bursts through my elbow from the impact, and every terrible thing washes over me in one great, overpowering wave. Grief crashes through me, and I break down into savage tears, crying as if everything inside me is broken and rushing out at once.
When I finally get ahold of myself, I open my eyes to find brilliant emerald eyes set on me.
A young, strapping Kelt is crouched down beside me, wearing an expression of deep concern. He radiates an unnerving intensity, almost as unnerving as the vivid green of his eyes.
The red-haired Kelt from the smithery.
Chapter 5: Search Spell
There’s a tight line of tension between the Kelt’s brows, and for a moment I hold his fervent stare. He’s crouched down on the bridge with me and grasping my upper arm, his unnaturally brilliant green eyes boring into mine. “Don’t do it,” he says, his voice pitched low with implacable vehemence. “Whatever’s led you here...still, don’t do it. I was right where you are once. Ready to hurl myself off that very same bridge. Don’t do it.”
My lips are trembling with overpowering anguish, and his powerful presence is wavy through my tears. In some small recess of my mind, I realize I should draw away from this Kelt. That I should be alarmed by his large, strong hand keeping firm hold of my arm, and the remembrance of his mysterious sorcery. But my anger and hurt and grief have laid waste to all caution.
“Are you glad you didn’t?” I challenge him, almost angrily, my voice coarse with a despair that’s so strong, it’s hard to breathe.
The intensity of his gaze doesn’t waver. “Yes,” he says emphatically.
I hold his unyielding stare in silent, fierce challenge to his affirmation. He silently, relentlessly holds onto my stare as well, his hand remaining doggedly firm around my arm.
There’s a sudden pull on my affinity lines as a flash of emerald sparks in his eyes, and I’m abruptly swept up in the dizzying sensation of us both falling toward each other, even though we’re completely still. He seems to feel it, too, his lips parting and his gaze tensing with evident astonishment.
Running steps thud to my right, along with what sounds like cursing in another language.
“Holy hells, Ciaran! Get your hands off of her!”
The Kelt—Ciaran—loosens his grip on my arm, the spell-like force pulling us toward each other abruptly broken. Shaken, I turn to find a young, blonde-haired woman sprinting toward us.
The Issani. From the smithery. In her outrageous rune-marked clothing, swords criss-crossed on her back and rune-blades strapped to her arms and thigh. Two large, golden hoops hang from each of her ears and clink against each other as she moves.
I abruptly realize that the colorful auras that used to radiate from each of them are gone.
Ciaran rises to his feet, his lean, strong frame now towering above us both, his jaw tightening as he faces her down.
“Ciaran,” she spits out as she comes to a halt before him, her eyes blazing, her heavily-accented words lashing out. “What in the name of the gods are you doing?”
“Wyla,” he answers with hard emphasis. “She tried to throw herself into the gorge.”
“Well, you should have let her!” The metallic hilts of her weapons glint in the sapphire lantern-light, and her pale blue eyes are full of fire. Golden Ishkartan runes mark her cheeks, casting her face in a warm glow. She points unforgivingly at me, keeping her fierce eyes on Ciaran. “Leave her be, Ciaran! She’s one of the Styvian Crows. The strictest Crows of them all! You will bring the wrath of the Mages down on your head if you are seen with this girl!”
Crows. I inwardly recoil from the vicious slur. Despair washes over me with renewed force. I’m all alone. I have absolutely nowhere I can go. Nowhere I’ll be accepted.
I grip at the cold stone railing beside me, my face tensed with overwhelming anguish. Ciaran remains rooted to the spot he’s standing in, his eyes fixed on Wyla, blazing with defiance.
“Ciaran, no.” Wyla swipes her arm toward me again. “She needs to go back to her own people!”
My anguish explodes. “I. Have. No. People!” I snarl at them with withering force.
Wyla’s eyes fly to meet mine, as if she’s surprised enough by my outburst to finally look at me. Her gaze grows more focused and then narrows in tightly on me. Like a wall shattering, all the anger drops from her expression as she takes in the sight of my bruised face and my fastmarked hands in one sweeping glance, shocked outrage now flashing in her eyes.
I startle as she rushes over and drops down to one knee in front of me. She grabs up my hand, and I instinctively draw back from her touch as she glances down at my fastlines. “When did they bind you?” she demands, but there’s an unmistakable solidarity in her ferocious tone.
“I was thirteen,” I choke out, a vortex of furious emotion storming through me.
Wyla studies my hand for another moment, then raises her eyes and looks deeply into mine, a pained understanding edging her fiery gaze. She reaches up and lightly touches my bruised cheek, and I flinch back from the unexpected contact. Her face tightens with concern as she immediately pulls her hand away.
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br /> Fury sparks in her eyes. “He did this to you?” Wyla grinds out accusingly, her teeth bared as she gestures toward my face. “The one you are bound to?”
I nod jerkily.
She abruptly stands, one of her hands fisting around the hilt of the rune-blade she has sheathed at her waist. Then she looks at Ciaran as if unflinchingly decided. “We hide this girl.”
Surprise jolts through me, and I see my emotions mirrored on Ciaran’s face as well.
“What is your name?” Wyla asks me harshly, but there’s an undercurrent of fierce kindness to her commanding tone.
“Sage,” I force out, wiping at my tears with the back of my hand, their figures momentarily blurred. “Sagellyn Gaffney.”
Ciaran lets loose with what sounds like a low oath in a foreign tongue. He turns to me with forced calm. “Your father,” he asks me, his tone carefully measured. “Is he Mage Warren Gaffney of the Mage Council?”
When I nod in affirmation, Wyla pulls in a harsh breath, closes her eyes and shakes her head, murmuring to herself under her breath.
“They’ll get their Mage Council involved,” Ciaran says to her, looking as if a thousand thoughts are churning in his mind. “They’ll send out search spells.”
Wyla drops down in front of me again, a heightened urgency in her gaze. “When are they likely to know you are missing?”
Mother Eliss, I think. There’s no way she’ll be able to resist one last lecture.
“They already know,” I tell her, hopelessness thick in my tone.
Wyla grimaces and grinds out what sounds like more cursing. She looks to Ciaran. “We’ll hide her. In your room.”
His room?!
Ciaran lets out a harsh breath and eyes her with disbelief, shaking his head. “It’s clear she was just attacked, Wyla. She doesn’t know me—”
“I’ll stay as well,” she snaps, tearing away this concern, the blaze in her eyes making it clear how vicious the catastrophe that’s coming for me is likely to be. “Your bedroom is heavily warded,” she insists, eyeing him significantly. “It’s her only hope of escape.”
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