“You’ve made your point,” I said to no-one in particular, my tone carefully neutral. “Now tell me what you want from me.”
“Very well…” Vidrol’s voice dropped, barely more than a breath. “We’ve brought you here to make a deal.”
“No more deals.” My tone was edged by the betrayal of everything they had done to me. There was a note of finality in it.
“You have no choice.” Vidrol inched forward, now crowding my personal space. He held up his hand, pointing to the base of his third finger, on the back of his hand.
The position of promise. The finger that bore the ring tying two people together forever in marriage … except there wasn’t a ring on Vidrol’s finger. There was a mark.
A tiny, delicate crescent moon.
Skayld.
I had given them each the mark in exchange for the return of Calder’s sight, and while I couldn’t bring myself to regret the decision, I was now faced with the uncomfortable reality that my reckoning had arrived.
“It’s a favour.” I scrambled for a way out, though I didn’t understand the mark any more than I had when I had given it to them. “So … I suppose you can have a favour, but I’m still not making any deals.”
“You’ve already made it, darling,” Vidrol returned, the endearment forcing an inexplicable rage to flash behind my eyes. “We’re just here to collect.”
“Just tell me what you want,” I demanded, losing patience.
Vidrol straightened, drawing to his full height, and it was almost enough to make me cower again. “You will marry one of us—”
“N—” The refusal died on my tongue, and I tried it again, but only a garbled sound came out.
Shocked, I took in the slowly spreading smiles on Vidrol’s, Helki’s, and Fjor’s faces. Andel didn’t bother smiling—he had likely already played out this scenario—along with innumerable others—in his head the day I marked him. Vale remained utterly impassive, looking disgusted with the situation, as he did with every situation.
My refusal slithered back down my tongue until I was choking on it, tears filling my eyes as I stared at the mark, a terrible pain clawing out from my throat.
“Y-Yes.” The acquiescence was darkened by emotion, raspy and unwilling.
I grabbed Vidrol’s hand, staring at the crescent mark, an old story flitting through my head as the pain in my throat eased away.
Skayld is the silver shackle in the sky,
The name of bindings, whispers, and wishes.
Skayld is the sacrifice to night each day,
The cry for help and the dying whimpers.
Skayld is the calm of an unbroken sky,
The granting of wishes bestowed on stars.
Skayld is fallen fire on blankets of grey,
The breaking of new light behind bars.
Skayld is the name of an innocent sky,
The nightly call for ghosts to commune,
Skayld is the unasked question of why,
There has never been a name for the moon.
With a groan, I rubbed at my temples, droplets of water spraying across my forehead from a wave breaking against the tunnel. It wasn’t a tale—it was a prophecy. I could tell the difference now. The tales of my childhood were broken and muddled, branching off into dozens of retellings, told in dozens of voices. The prophecies were clear, the words written across the backs of my eyelids.
This prophecy was the meaning of my mark. The meaning of Skayld—the word I had used to gift the mark.
I was a wish-granter.
Helki caused unbearable pain with his mark. Vale could control a person’s will. Vidrol could twist desires. Andel could crack minds open. It was unclear what Fjor’s mark did, but I would bet my life that it didn’t grant wishes.
“It’s decided then.” Cruel humour laced Vale’s voice. “The wish has been made.”
“You all made the same wish,” I accused. “You can’t all demand the same thing—that leaves me unable to fulfil the other four wishes as soon as I choose one of you.”
“Sounds like your problem.” Helki lifted his massive shoulders in an uncaring shrug. “You have until the end of the festival to decide.”
“What festival?” I found myself asking the question to their backs as they all drew away from me, retreating the way we had come.
“We can’t let the birthday of our newest, brightest Legionnaire go by uncelebrated now, can we?” Vidrol tossed over his shoulder.
On their next step, they flickered out of existence. It was like they had stepped through a shadow without coming out the other side. The shadows in the tunnel simply furled and unfurled around them in a lazy yawn, stealing them away. I stumbled forward as though I might chase them, shock forcing my steps to halt.
It was my birthday.
I was officially out of time.
Three women had come before me, facing the Darkness on the day they turned eighteen.
One by one, they failed, the Darkness spreading further, digging its claws in deeper, crawling further and further into our world. Three deaths had led to this moment, to a girl thrust into womanhood on the back of a myth, fuelled by the sacrificed power of those who had come before her. But it had also led to the shadow falling over the world, to the sickness bleeding into the air like poison, feeding on decades of failure and death.
The relentless clock of fate was groaning over to the next hour, to a battle as old as time, sounding the final alarm, the final chance to fall to our blades or lift them high. It was repeating infernal hours that grew hungrier with each turn, more vicious than the day, the year, the century before.
It’s my birthday.
I closed my eyes, sinking to my knees, my soft hands finding the rough rock.
It’s my turn.
Two
Remade
It wasn’t until I had collapsed to the ground that I saw the ring glinting on my finger. One of them had slipped it back on without me noticing. I jolted up, twisting it around and stumbling over the name that shot from my mouth.
“Calder.”
I dropped into the middle of a fight, judging by the way two bodies had just slammed painfully into me, the smell of sweat and anger ripe in the air. A familiar grunt sounded above my head. I slipped down to a cobblestoned road, crawling out from between the two bodies, turning just as a long, curved shortsword appeared by my head. Calder had upgraded his knifes, but he still held the shortswords in the same way, his fingers twirling them by the handle, flicking them up and around to hold them against the backs of his forearms. His opponent had drawn a larger, warrior’s sword. They both stared at me, lowered into fighting stances. The Sentinel—dressed in Vidrol’s deep blue colours, with the King’s emblem carved into his belt—was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and already sported blossoming bruises.
Calder hadn’t broken a sweat.
“Ven?” he started, his shortswords doing a disappearing act into the leather sheaths across his back.
He turned away from his opponent without a second thought. He no longer wore the Sentinel’s uniform but pants of a dark knit protected by segments of hard leather. His lower stomach was still protected by armour—as was customary for the Vold men—but it was no longer the golden, feathered armour of the Sentinels. It was black and dark brown, the stitching impeccable, the leather of the finest quality. There was a dark blue cape that attached to straps crossing over his chest. It almost covered the top half of his chest, but the Legionnaire’s brand was still visible beneath, the golden eagle’s wings extending out to each of his massive shoulders.