Destructive.
Like something is rooting beneath the surface of his skin, keening for release. His eyes are polished obsidian, stare stuck to the woman’s door like he’s trying to see through the grain.
I regret leaving the room without my dagger strapped to my calf.
I lift my hands. “I don’t know what’s happening, Rhor, but the people here aregood.”
“Get back in the room,” he barks, and I do, corralled by him as he slams the door shut behind us. Then he’s searching the free-standing wardrobe, punching through my sparse belongings before he stalks toward the back wall and yanks the window wide, filling the space with an icy blow that ruffles the frayed curtains.
I toss the empty bottle on the bed and reach for my top, fumbling with the buttons, stare stuck to the back of his head. “How did achildsurvive a Vruk attack?”
He doesn’t answer, head poked out the window as he scans the street below that’s lit by tree-tall lanterns, bathing this village in an illuminated safety net.
“Rhor.”
He slams the window closed, but continues searching through the frosted panes. “She’s Aeshlian. Aravyn’s child. She’s … got a black mark on her shoulder that doesn’t look natural.”
Light will bloom from sky and soil,
Skin tarnished by the brand of death …
My knees buckle, hand whipping out to grip the bed post that feels too brittle as all the blood drains from my face.
Rhordyn spins, spearing me with a stare that roots through my insides. He must see the turmoil I’m grappling with silently—the need for acknowledgement. Because it can’t be true.
It can’t.
His grim silence, his terse nod—they flay me down the middle.
I shuffle back a step and fall onto the bed, half sitting. “How did you stumble upon the frayed thread that unraveled my entire species?”
“Fate.”
The single word coupled with the look in his eyes is bone crushing, like deep rendered agony that’s trying to break past the silver bars of his composure.
My heart sinks.
“You mean—”
“Yes.”
A beat passes before he clears his throat, moving toward the upholstered chair in the corner of the room that’s smudged with an abstract collection of stains. He unbuckles the sheath around his chest, resting his sword against the wall before he sits heavily—like a man who’s got the weight of the world lumped upon his shoulders.
“None of this is her fault.” He’s looking at the floor when he says it, though that somehow makes the hit land harder.
“I know.” The acknowledgment is shoved past the pit in my throat that won’t fuck off. A swell of hurt sown from a thousand lost lives.
Some I knew. Loved. Didn’t get near enough time with.
An entire species already struggling to claw itself back from the brink of extinction decimated by the blow of Maars’s chisel when he carved those words to stone. When he singled us out as the bearer of a single shadow seed that would call upon the end of the world.
He’s to blame.
TheGodsare to blame.
I stand and cast my gaze out the window toward the flaming street lights, threading my fingers together behind my head. I draw a breath, hold it in my cheeks, and blow it out. “Who else knows?”
“About the mark?”
