Page 134 of Zenith Tower

The channel convulsed. Delphine cried out. Her nails cut into my wrist.

“Stop?” I gasped.

“No.”

I moved to the next scar.

There were more than I had understood from the edge. Some were old, polished by years of use around them. Others were raw. I opened each one slowly, feeding no more power through than the fragile walls could bear. Sweat ran down my spine beneath my dress. My knees struck the bed frame, and I realized I was no longer standing.

The administrator braced me with an arm around my waist.

A memory surfaced inside the Mark.

Delphine at a table beneath a lamp, older than she had been at the Hall. A man’s voice asking her to repeat Astra Verita’s name. A needle entering the black line of her Mark. Delphine spitting in his face.

The image broke apart before I could see the man’s face.

Her hand jerked in mine.

“I saw—” she began.

“Later.” I could barely force the word out. “Hold on.”

The central line had begun to split.

I reached it just as the tear opened beneath my hands. Paindrove through my chest. The bonds flared in answer, three separate lives pulling tight around mine. For one wild instant, Delphine’s Mark lay open in its entirety.

I felt enough of what it had been before the Hall touched it.

I could not know everything the untouched Mark might have become. Its channels had once been fine and intricate rather than weak, shaped to hold impressions in image and sensation instead of carrying power in broad currents. Nothing in what remained suggested natural failure. The scarring had come from what they did to it.

Anger drove too much force into the lines. They shifted beneath my touch, ready to become whatever I demanded.

I thought of Linden’s hand closing around my arm before I knew I had a Mark. Of the Hall deciding Delphine no longer existed. Of Sadie’s receiving signature cut from the page. I could have remade every line in Delphine’s hand. I could have stripped away every alteration and left something entirely new in its place.

Delphine had asked me to repair what they damaged. I held to that and drew the torn edges together.

The Mark fought me. There was no bond to carry my intention cleanly into her, only touch and consent and the thin discipline of knowing where I ended. I held the central line shut while power battered it from beneath. All three lines burned together at my wrist, their light flooding my palm. My vision filled with silver.

Somewhere beyond it, Delphine said my name. Her voice gave me something to follow.

The tear sealed.

The force inside the Mark redistributed so suddenly that I was thrown backward. The administrator caught my shoulder but could not keep me upright. I struck the floor on one hip, still gripping Delphine’s fingers.

My right hand locked around hers. All three linesremained bright beneath my skin, and answering pain came through the bonds: Caspian’s fear, Kieran’s nausea, Hale fighting to remain still. The strain had traveled through every connection between us.

For several breaths, no one moved.

The black branches beneath Delphine’s skin began to recede.

They withdrew from her wrist first, darkness drawing back along the paths it had cut. The cracks closed behind it. Blood remained, bright across the newly whole skin, but no more rose to join it. At the center of her hand, the Mark settled into a pale silver pattern I had never seen before.

Delphine stared at it.

She flexed her fingers, tentatively at first and then with growing certainty.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.