Not even Eslina.
“You wish,human,” he snarls. Then snaps his fingers.
Time’s up.
What is happening? Why is he acting like this?
“Scream, and I’ll make you watch them skin one of your kind alive,” he says over his shoulder. The three attendants hurry to get me dressed and moving. They fasten the cloak as we go—Thorne’s stride a rhythm no one dares to break. The corridors funnel us down into stone that smells of damp earth. Past a set of carved doors, past a pair of guards who watch me as if I might try to sprout wings and flee.
The chamber is quiet. A long stone table is in the middle of the room with a linen laid over it. There is a single brazier that breathes sweet smoke, and shelves lined with phials where liquid sighs when disturbed. A woman waits there, dressed in gray. She is not old, not young, the kind of face that would vanish into a crowd.
I begin to tremble, despite knowing how much they hate it. I just can’t bring myself to do better.
She bows to Thorne first, then to me as one bows to a tool that will be used. “I am Sayerel,” she says. “I will perform the harmonizing.”
“Harmonizing,” I echo. It’s acid on my tongue. “You mean removal.”
“Your presence must be brought into accord with our rites,” she says serenely. “It will spare you suffering in the long term.”
I would laugh if I remembered how. “Spare me?”
Thorne’s impatience frays, and he points to the table. “Begin.”
Sayerel gestures to the table. “Lie back. We will numb the margin. Your attendants may remain if they are quiet.”
The women stand near the entrance, not touching me, just…staring. Despite my best efforts, they have made it very clear that we are not friends, and they are not loyal to me. But it stings to watch them look on, knowing that what comes next will hurt and they simply do not care.
I cross the room alone.
Dear gods, I pray silently.Ashra or Endu or Grutabela or whoever listens, if you are there, help me. Help me, for I cannot help myself.
My chest heats, and my eyes burn with unshed tears provoked by fear, but I notice the linen is very clean. The torchlight gives it a kiss of gold along each thread. When I lower myself onto it, a chill runs up my spine like a thought come too late.
Sayerel hums under her breath—no prayer I recognize, only a melody without teeth. She paints a circle on my skin around the stone with a liquid that smells like mint and metal. The Fuegorra warms again, then pushes back. The two sensations knock against one another, and for a moment, my heart forgets which beat belongs to which god.
“Please,” I sob. I repeat the word over and over, aloud, in my mind, anywhere I can let it free.
“Breathe,” Sayerel whispers. Then she sets a small bowl beside my shoulder. “You will feel pressure,” she says. “The strings between you and the Enduar magic will loosen. There may be a moment of lightness.”
“Don’t do this, please. Please, I could die,” I try again.
She touches me with two fingers, and the world becomes narrow. There isn’t pain, not precisely—more the terrible idea of pain brushing its mouth just against the skin of my reality. The heat I have carried since the cavern days recedes to an arm’s length. The familiar pulse of the Enduar magic goes fuzzy. I can still see the stone when I look down.
Tears stream down my face.
But Sayerel’s hands know the seam where my god meets my body, and she does not tear at first. She unthreads.
The first stitch loosens, and a memory slips: Estela and I first arriving with the giant caravan, shaken up and afraid of what lurked in the mountains. The second loosens, and I remember being escorted deep into the underground city, past glittering curtain-like formations of gypsum and massive veins of metal. Then we were taken to the Fuegorra cavern, where the only light was the blood-red and orange crystals.
I remember the Wise Woman, Liana, guiding me and a handful of other humans to listen until a Fuegorra picked us. The first time I heard the soft song, I wept. The tension of joy of major notes and a syncopated beat sounded like…me. Like I knew myself a little better in that moment. I’d been afraid when I’d hit the gem with my small hammer—if it shattered, would I have been cast away?
All my musings fade as a third memory is cut, and the sound of a lover’s breath against my ear, whispering poetry and sweetness, lifts like steam on a chilled stream. The third is of eyes, blue as the sky.Mysky.
Mi cielo.
I am back in the Hollow—the cave on the islands with the witches, where I realized that I’d been lied to moments after seeinghisheart. After hearing our mating song. It was the perfect duet to the music that had only been made for my ears for so long.
I let out another wail.