He was hovering over my soul mark. The two, silver parallel lines that cut through my bottom lip. My eyes widened, my head beginning to shake, but it was too late. The pad of his thumb brushed against it, tugging my lip down. My eyes fluttered closed as a strange fire rushed through me, originating somewhere in my jaw and sinking lower, and lower still. It burned through my chest and curled somewhere in my belly. I gasped, and the lines all fell from my mouth.
“And there is the final option,” Vale said, watching the lines dangle. “For you to have no options at all. For you to simply die. For new strings of fate to spring from your corpse, a new set of pathways built from your bones—one that only we will be able to walk. What would you prefer, Tempest? To walk with us, or to have us walk over you?”
I wasn’t really listening to him anymore. I stared down at my wrist, at the pretend possibilities cast off to the ground, fake fates released to the wind. I should have felt something—terror or understanding—but the yearning in my soul had found a new anchor. There was a warmth in the strength of the body so close to mine, a potency to his power, a mystery in his strange, mist-cloaked scent. My soul mark burned away his words, burned away my thoughts. I climbed into his lap to ease the fire ripping through my veins, my eyes closed the whole time.
“This will get you nowhere,” he muttered as my lips found his neck.
I was pulling in his scent, pushing closer, my tongue pressing to his skin. His words meant nothing to me. He was a well and I was a cracked vessel, desperate for water. I needed to dive into something, someone, or else the inferno inside me would consume everything. I found myself falling backwards, unsure if I had been pulled or pushed, and my eyes snapped open. Vale stood, flanked either side by the other masters. They stared at me. Cold. All-knowing.
“Choose,” Vale cajoled in his rough voice. “Which one of us will you have, Tempest?”
The burn beneath my skin simmered away, my eyes stinging in shock. I scrambled to my feet, my eyes darting between them. I couldn’t refuse him, but I didn’t have to choose right at that moment. Vidrol’s wish had specifically given me until the end of the festival. Which, of course, should mean nothing to me. I could be dead by then.
“It’s my birthday.” My voice was a rasp, so I turned away from them, clearing my throat as colour burned from my cheeks to my chest, a flush spreading all over my body. I thought it was fuelled by rage, but it might also have been shame. “The Darkness killed each of the previous Fjorn on the day they turned eighteen.” I directed my next question at Andel. “Why has it disappeared? Why isn’t it here, trying to kill me?”
“Do you not understand a thing we just taught you?” he asked angrily. “The Darkness is an ancient force, powerful beyond measure and vastly intelligent. When a force is powerful enough and it has nothing to fear from the lesser beings of the world, what does it concern itself with?”
“Possibilities and impossibilities.” I frowned, pulling my wrist up to examine the dangling lines.
Vale had cut them in such a way that the single lines had also frayed. If I picked at them, they would unravel, tripling the fibres that hung from me.
The future cannot be written in stone.
Even as a possibility became reality, it could become frayed, or warped. It could change again at any moment.
“The Darkness is waiting,” I realised aloud. “It hasn’t disappeared. It’s hiding. Waiting for the right moment, for me to die at the right time. Just like each of you.” I narrowed my eyes on them, but they seemed unaffected by the accusation.
“Now you have your answer—and we demanded nothing in return—so waste no more of our time and leave us in peace until tonight.” Vidrol waved at the door, turning his back on me.
“Wait.” I stepped forward, and I could see the sigh of frustration travel through him before he faced me again. “If what you’re saying is true, then I need to hide from the Darkness.”
I waited. They stared.
“Are you asking us for help?” Helki grunted, a note of disbelief in his tone.
“There is a way,” Fjor injected, his silky voice drawing my gaze before I could reply to Helki. “But what are you willing to trade for it?”
Without meaning to, my eyes flicked to his hands, and I had to force my eyes to keep falling so that he wouldn’t catch the association I had just made. It seemed that making deals and trades was a preoccupation of theirs, if the number of carvings on each of them was anything to go by.
“Nothing,” I admitted. “There might still be time. I can find the solution on my own. I’m done making deals.”
Fjor smiled, his eyes darkening. “Choose one of us to dance with tonight,” he challenged. “And we will hide you from the Darkness.”
I paused. “You can hide from the Darkness? You can hide other people from the Darkness?”
“Calm down,” Andel expelled. “It’s definitely not something we can do for the entire population and it won’t stop what has already begun … but for a period of time, we can hide you.”
“Fine.” I averted my eyes from them, hoping that they wouldn’t make me pick my dance partner right then and there. “You have a deal.”
“Excellent.” Vidrol gave me a narrow smile that was more of a baring of teeth. “Andel, she’s all yours.”
The Scholar strode toward me, his long fingers wrapping around my wrist. That was all the warning I got before he yanked me through darkness, a pressure in my head tightening painfully for a moment before I was tossed away from him. I caught myself against a table as my vision returned. We were in the Obelisk’s apothecary, the high shelves surrounding us, the muted light filtering in from the nearest window, illuminating a sparkling ray of dust motes. Andel ignored me as he sorted through boxes and jars, returning to the bench to crush the petals of a flower into a pestle. A heady, syrupy aroma released immediately into the air, and I breathed in heavily, my eyes fluttering closed.
Lakris. The fuzzy black flower let off an intoxicating scent. It was used in perfumes, and—
“Wait.” My eyes flew open. “Tell me you’re not going to drug me.”
“That would be a lie.” He continued to crush the petals, not even bothering to look up.
“That’s your idea of hiding me from the Darkness? Drugging me?”
“The nectar of the lakris does many things. It dampens your senses, loosens your inhibitions, fills your head with hallucinations, and—most importantly, in your case—completely blankets your magic.”
I pushed off the table, my mouth dropping open. “You really think you’re going to drug me and make me helpless at the same time.”
“I don’t think anything.” He calmly scraped the flower paste into a hessian cloth, using it as a sieve to squeeze the nectar into a small bottle. “I know that you will willingly drug yourself, willingly make yourself helpless, because you have no other choice. The Darkness is searching for your power. If it cannot connect to your power, it cannot connect to you.”
He swirled the small amount of nectar around the bottom of the bottle before hunting through the shelves behind me and returning with a decanter of red liquid, which he emptied into the bottle. He swirled it, holding it up to the light.