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When the hot scrap of pain faded, I made another attempt.
“Make your offering.” I gestured to the stone bowl placed in front of the pedestal that held the glass star.
“Oh.” She inspected it, fiddling with something inside her strange satchel—unroughened, almost glossy, as though it had been painted in lacquer. It didn’t look like a typical hide. “Okay, then what?”
“Have you never been told of the star? It is what we are taught in first lessons.”
“Um, I’m new here.”
Clearly. Her voice was stilted in a strange accent. Her posture was stalwart, but her eyes were fearful, lost.
By the skies, I had no time for this.
With one hand I tossed back my hood and stepped to her side. “Place your offering in the bowl. Then, you must tell the star your desire. Do so with care. You’ve been chosen to enter, and not many are. I don’t know how you won over Aelfled, but do not waste your opportunity.”
“Wait.” She held out a hand, but recoiled before taking my arm once I turned to leave. “How would I waste it? Is it like a fortune teller?”
“I don’t know what that is.” Head tilted, I narrowed my gaze. “What part of Myrkfell are you from, woman? Even the highlands know of the star, or so I thought.”
“Uh.” A few clicks and snaps hinted that beneath the fox fur she was cracking her fingers. “I was pretty sheltered.”
A lie. I could practically taste the deception and quick workings of her tongue as it rattled off a false tale. Interesting. One side of my mouth curved in a grin. She was hiding something.
“The star is clever,” I said, taking a step toward the side of the tent where I would make my leave. “Some think it is a gimmick. Others, like Aelfled, believe it to be a sort of seer of fate. Choose your question wisely, that is all. It only answers once.”
The woman faced the glass again, rolling her shoulders back. With a soft breath, she nodded, speaking low as though only to herself. “I know exactly what I want.”
Her hands slipped from beneath the fox fur mantle and my breath abandoned my lungs. Not possible. Inked along her slender fingers, over the tops of her hands, to the bones of her wrists, were filigreed tattoos mingled in runes and personalized spells.
A Soturi mage. Either of high rank, high partnership, or high bloodline.
I was not a man who felt inclined to have any sort of affection for the kingdom as a whole, merely a few souls living within it, but unease tightened along the base of my skull, clenching my muscles down my spine. A Soturi, here, behaving as though she knew nothing? It was more than secrets she kept, doubtless she was here to attack.
One hand went to the dagger sheathed across the small of my back, but paused when she palmed a silver offering.
Curse the goddess and her tricks. There, in the center of the woman’s hand, was my damn arm ring.
Unbidden, a chuckle slid from my throat. What a sly woman Gaina was, leading me here only to find my stolen band in the hands of a desperate little thief. A pretty thing, who, unfortunately, would not like what I did next.
Before the woman could drop the ring into the bowl, I closed my fist tightly, muttering a wordless summons of my own magic.
She screamed in a frightened sort of pain and clutched her hand against her chest. Fingers were bent, bones shifted in odd angles. But the arm ring had fallen to the ground, along with the thief.
Tears dripped onto her cheeks, her body trembled when she looked at her misaligned fingers. A pang of guilt grew in my gut like a feral briar, sharp and vicious. Strange. I carried little remorse for my moves, deeming them necessary in most circumstances, but there was something wholly discomposing at the sight of her tears.
I ignored the disquiet and snatched up the fallen ring, pinching one wolf head between my thumb and fingers. “This is not yours, Wildling.”
She kept her face aimed at her manipulated fingers, and each breath came harsh and sharp. “What . . . it . . . it was given to me.”
“I doubt that very much.” I encircled the arm ring around my wrist. Where it belonged. “You see, it is mine. Taken from me not even three days ago. Like a thief in the night had snatched it up.”
“I d-didn’t take it. What happened to . . . to my hand?”
“Your bones are rearranged.”
“What!” She studied her hand with a bit of nauseous horror.
The center finger was replaced by the smallest, the first taken by the thumb. A mess of odd bones, bruised and irritated from the shift.
