“It’s the curse you feel,” she told me, forcing the ring onto my finger. “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse, and it will bring death to us both. From now on, you are nothing. You are a steward. You live to serve the great sectorians. You were born without magic. You are unworthy.” She roughly wiped away my tears, her lips pressed firmly together as she shook me. “What are you, Lavenia?”
“Nothing,” I repeated, the whisper of war draining out of me, the steel against my finger weighing against my soul. “I am nothing.”
I waited on my knees for the rest of the day, my eyes trained on the door, those horrible memories of the past my only companion, my only distraction. As darkness began to fall, I finally stood, my legs stiff and sore. I prepared a broth with carrots and onions and baked a loaf of soft brown bread. I laid it all out on the table and waited. When she didn’t return that night or the next morning, it dawned on me that while she wasn’t permitted to turn me out of the house for another month, she could still leave. She could leave her whole life behind and start again somewhere else with nothing … just to get away from me. She could go to Edelsten and join the King’s paramour, where beautiful women remade themselves. Everyone knew that once you entered into service at Edelsten, you never returned. Scullery maid, knight, page, or squire. The giant castle by the sea was a hungry beast, and it swallowed them all whole.
She was beautiful and fertile and a kynmaiden. Surely, they wouldn’t turn her away or ask questions. Surely, she would disappear between the folds of a velvet curtain, never to be seen or heard from again. Perhaps years from now I would hear a song carried down from the Edelsten court of a shapely beauty with hair like fire and eyes like embers and I would move to a looking glass and remember her in the red of my hair and the slow simmering of my eyes. But then it would slip away … because I was not a shapely beauty and she didn’t want to be my mother. I was only a cursed waif, a lone candle in a wind-whipped window, spluttering for air while my mother burned bright in the distance, always too far away for me to feel her warmth.
The key in the lock jarred me into shock, the brush and pan clattering from my fingers as I knelt before the small hearth. I scrambled to my feet, my head lowered, my hands wiping on my skirts. I watched the silks of my mother’s dress sweep into the room, and then behind her, two long legs. Brown leather boots. Expensive linen, a finely woven vest, a leather carry-bag. An even finer cloak. He shrugged it off into my mother’s hands. She hung it by the door, her eyes avoiding me as she unwound her shawl.
“This is her?” The man’s frown was intent on me. He had a short beard, shrewd eyes, a pointed nose. Very polished and proper, though his hands were big and rough-looking, the fingernails jagged from biting. If his clothing hadn’t given him away as a sectorian, the two short, curved horns cutting into his forehead certainly did.
“Yes, kongelig,” she demurred, cutting a warning look to me.
I quickly tucked one leg behind the other, grabbed my skirts and ducked my head. A stiff and inelegant curtsey. “Welcome to our home, kongelig.” The term of respect lodged heavy and thick in my mouth.
“So, you are the one who destroyed my ring?”
He strode toward me, his bag thumping to the table. He caught my chin and lifted my face. I stared at him. At the man who collected death. At the owner of those three souls, those three stillbirthed girls whose blood I could never fully wash from my hands.
“I see no obvious magic mutation,” he muttered, though he didn’t seem to be speaking to me. “They start out very small, usually. A little rash, a bump, a scale, a thread of colour where there shouldn’t be.”
“She has a birthmark,” my mother rushed out. She seemed desperate. Perhaps he had refused her and she had begged him to come.
I began to step back from the man, but his fingers pinched harder at my chin. My mother sprang up, her hands busy in my skirts, her cold touch drawing a hiss out of my mouth.
“Here,” she demanded. “Look.”
The man knelt down, one of his hands on my leg, above my knee. My mother was pushing my skirts almost to my hips, turning my right leg to the side. Tears were now threatening to fall from the lower line of my lashes, but I stared up at the roof and held them back. They both stared intently at the small, misshapen white mark high on the inside of my thigh. No man had ever seen so much of me.
“You are sure there is no other mark? No other sign of mutation?”
“None,” my mother promised. “I am sure of it.”
He nodded and then stood, pulling something from his pocket. It was a collar of sorts: long, thin, and metal. It was inscribed in Forsan, the words too small for me to read. I began to shake my head, pleas tumbling from my lips, but my mother stood behind me, holding me still as the collar was placed around my neck.
“Ylode,” the man said to the collar, touching it once.
It was an Aethen word, more ancient than the ancient Forsan language. It was the rhythm behind a word, devoid of letters, its meaning harder to grasp than a wisp of smoke from a spluttering candle. I had no idea what the collar or the word did, but magical objects were far more dangerous than one sectorian alone. Magic could be layered onto an object, incantation after incantation, day after day, sometimes year and year, until it was a hundred times more powerful than any one incantation from any one person.
There was no immediate effect, but then the man spoke, and I slipped into a nightmare.
“Spread your legs and then stand still.”
My body snapped to obey, the collar humming against my skin.
My will was gone, hollowing me into a puppet.
Together, they stripped me naked, him muttering low instructions to my mother as he opened his bag and began to lay out objects. The first was a small bell. He held it before my mouth and muttered another incomprehensible word.
“Stilhaer.”
The breath was pulled from my lips as though the bell had inhaled it—a briefly uncomfortable moment before he placed it on the table. The next was a small wreath of dried flowers wound about a twisted piece of driftwood. I could see the words burned into the wood from where I stood, and my blood began to run cold as he hung the wreath by the door.
The words were readable, but I couldn’t hear their lilting rhythm. They seemed to be only a structure of a word, their true purpose hidden. I was lost before I had even finished the inscription, and was forced to start reading again. This happened three times before I tore my eyes away. Even so, the words filled me with dread.
Mother, I tried to plead, but the word was swept from my mouth, disappearing into the bell on the table. I couldn’t tell if she was mournful of handing me to this man. She stood by the door, her arms folded, her hands clutching her sleeves. Her eyes were cool and still. They were both breaking the law. I was still a liten, a month shy of eighteen, still underage, still to be protected … but I had pushed her too far.
I had forced her hand.
The next item from his bag was a knife, polished and perfect, with a small curve at the ominously forked tip. Still, my mother’s expression didn’t change.
“There is immense power in a liten’s magic mutation,” he told me. “As yet unpractised, raw, without shape or influence. Unabused by years of magic use. It’s a pure source of energy. If their mutation is stolen, their entire source of magic can be stolen with it. Generally, such a pure mark can only be gleaned from a child, but your magic has been dampened for years, growing stronger, still untouched.”