“It’s the curse.”
“It was bound to happen eventually.”
“Children are to be protected. How could she have known? What could she have done? She had no choice but to keep the child.”
“And look how she was repaid.”
I stumbled, and the split-pupiled man righted me, his hand on my shoulder guiding me forward. As soon as he was sure that I wouldn’t fall again, he snatched his hand away as though I had scorched him. Ingrid was in front of me, leading me by the loose length of chain attached to my manacles. We passed through the gated entrance to Breakwater Canyon and made our quiet way into the woods. The stone tiles were abrasive against my feet, my skin hypersensitive. My mouth was also dry, and now that the fluttering of my heart had eased, I could feel the dull ache that shot from my chest to the base of my skull. I realised why the Sentinels weren’t treating me as a threat, other than to put me in chains. They weren’t acting overtly wary of me, eyeing me as one does a dangerous person on the verge of exploding into murderous shadows. They had been studying magic their entire lives—and not just any magic. With the very rare exception, all Sentinels were of the Vold sector. They knew my power better than I knew it myself. I was exhausted. Tapped and drained. I was no longer a threat to anyone other than myself.
Our formation changed as we cleared the woods, the split-pupiled man and Ingrid once again boxing me in. It was nearing midday, the sun high in the sky. I flinched away from the harsh light, wishing for the cool dark of the forest. My eyes stung, even with the protection of the hood, my head harbouring a slow and consistent throb of pain. The cobbled road wound up the ridge to Hearthenge, where we passed through another set of gates—though these were manned by two sets of Sentinels. The main road widened, the worn cobblestones making way for a smooth, even brick. The road was decorated in places with coloured tile patterns. The harsh mountains of Fyrio softened past the gates, rolling into hills and streams and small pockets of wood. The sectorians who lived within Hearthenge had more than the single-room mountain homes claimed by the stewards. They had sprawling brick chateaus and large stone fortresses, all of them spread out between useless fields of flowers and more practical farmland, each new estate hidden from the next by towering pockets of fir trees or small, bobbing hills.
The sun glowered down upon me and I lost my footing once again. The dryness in my mouth had grown worse and I now winced with every breath that rattled through me. Ingrid caught me, but this time my legs refused to stand again, buckling at each of her attempts to straighten me.
“Captain!” the split-pupiled man called out. “She can’t go on any longer.”
The Captain turned, his golden eye fixing me in a dispassionate stare. “Fetch a horse from the guardhouse. I’ll ride ahead with her. Not you, Avrid.” He held a hand out when the split-pupiled man turned to leave, and motioned for the Sentinel standing beside him to go instead. “I need the rest of you to ride to Sectorian Hill and send for the Inquisitor. He’ll want to examine the bodies when they’re brought to the Citadel. I can handle the girl on my own.”
Ingrid and Avrid didn’t leave immediately, but helped me to the side of the road and left me sitting on a low stone wall. Ingrid passed the Captain the bell from her pocket, speaking lowly to him before following the rest of the Sentinels. The Captain walked towards me, his golden eye glowing hotter than the sun. He pulled my hood off, his eyes passing over my face.
“The woman who alerted the Sentinels this morning told me about you,” he said, turning away once he had taken stock of me, his gaze fixed to the road. “She said you were cursed.” His fingers clawed inward, pulling the hood into his closed fist. He turned to look at me again, but this time there was a sentence in his eyes. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing. If you kill, it’s because you have death inside you. It’s because killing is in your nature.”
I couldn’t respond, but he knew that. He pulled the bell from his pocket, turning it over in his fingers as though he could barely stand to touch it. I was surprised when he tossed it into my lap. I barely managed to catch it before it tumbled off.
“Magical objects are living things,” he said as I struggled to stuff it into the pocket of my dress. “It lives on, even after its owner has passed … but make no mistake. The Dealer was its owner. It answers to him. You’ll not be able to command the bell, and nor will anyone else. You’ll have to wait for its power to wane and there’s no telling how long that could take. You may never speak again.”
I sat there, my reply tucked into my pocket, my eyes cast toward the brick road. I had lost my mother, my home, my freedom, and even my voice … all in the space of a day. The Captain knelt before me, the hood half-raised in his hand. He was about to drop it back over my head, but something stopped him. He didn’t just pause to consider me. He froze, his eyes hard on mine. I could feel the agony that poured out of me, and I watched as it registered in him.
“It was a mistake.” Not a question. There was a grim kind of revelation in his voice.
I looked at him—really looked—for the first time, and felt him looking back into me. His hair was a dark, tarnished gold, braided along the sides of his head to a spot just behind his ear. The top section of hair was secured by bronze rings, with strands curling loosely above his neck. He had hair like unwashed satin. Textured, stained in darkness, but somehow also polished. His golden eye wasn’t consumed by the colour at all—I could see the faint outline of his pupil and his iris, both of them a different shade of gold, stark against the white of his eye. The golden line dripping from his lower lashes reminded me of that terrible rash I could feel within my heart, the threat of it spreading and taking over a vital part of me still present in the back of my mind.
I switched my attention to the other eye, sucking in a quick breath. It was like being doused in sunshine and ice, the crystal blue as full of secrets as his golden eye had been empty of them. Other than the thick scar running down his right cheek, I could also categorise a litany of smaller scars spread across his face. A brief line through his eyebrow. A small nick at the edge of his mouth. A hook across his earlobe. I was so busy looking that I didn’t notice him moving closer. I didn’t realise when the hood dropped to my lap, his fist still clenched in the material. I could feel the heat of his gloved hand through my dress, but I was too focussed on the deep lines beginning to furrow into his forehead to register it properly.
“I …” He paused, his breath short and sharp, edged in confusion. “Have we met before?”
I began to shake my head, but his features suddenly began to feel familiar to me. I wasn’t just staring at him anymore, I was staring at many versions of him, older and younger, darker-haired, with two blue eyes, with two green eyes. I began to feel dizzy, the images merging back into his face before separating again. I could feel that they were all different men … and yet they were the same. I could hear their voices, but couldn’t make out their words. I frowned, my hand lifting to his face, to trace the thickness of his lower lip, which I suddenly felt that I had seen pull into a grin a thousand times before. He jerked back before I could touch him, his expression incredulous. He quickly slipped the hood back into place over my head and took a step away from me, turning his back on me. His tense shoulders had grown as stiff as stone.