Burrows grins, a flash of stubby teeth stained brown from chewing tybeae leaf. “Iron is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
“In the future, keep in mind, Burrows…executions are my jurisdiction, not yours. You bring me a halfling in this condition again, I’ll make certain you can’t sit properly in your saddle for a fortnight.”
A hush falls over the men. It is no idle threat, made all the more menacing by the tone in which it’s delivered: so carefully bland, he might be discussing seasonal weather patterns. His expression—what little I can see of it beneath the helm—is as empty as his tone and equally chilling.
The soldiers are scarcely able to look in the commander’s direction without cowering. Only my binds keep me from doing likewise. With the rope held so tight around my neck, I can’t move—not even when he brings his face a hairsbreadth from mine, regarding me as a wolf would its supper.
If I had the strength, I might head-butt him. Spit at him. Even summon a glare. As it is, just remaining conscious is becoming difficult. My lungs scream for breath. The starbursts have returned to my eyes, fragmenting the world around me into air-starved delirium.
If Scythe notices my discomfort, he doesn’t much care. “You said there was something…” he murmurs, “odd…about this one.”
“Yes, sir.” Burrows swallows nervously, sidling closer. “There’s some unnatural symbol inked into her skin. A mark of evil, you ask me. Never seen anything like it in all my time hunting points.”
At this, Scythe, already immobile, seems to still down to his soul. “What mark?”
“We thought it was a slave brand at first. It’s raised like scar tissue, but blacker than the devil’s cock.” Some of the men chuckle, but there’s a nervous edge to their amusement. “Could be a tattoo, I suppose,” Burrows continues. “But even the best ink-mavens in Carvage don’t have that sort of skill. See for yourself. There, beneath her dress, right between her—” Burrows chokes into silence when the commander’s head swivels in his direction.
“Beneathher dress?” He pauses and the very air holds its breath, as in the moment before a guillotine blade plummets. “I had no idea your prisoner inspection process was so thorough, Captain.”
“It wasn’t— We weren’t—” Burrows’s shoulders stiffen at the implication. He’s gone pale under the force of Scythe’s stare. “Saw it while we were putting the noose around her neck, that’s all. But when one of my men made the mistake of touching it…”
Burrows shakes his head, as if he still cannot quite fathom what happened when his second-in-command ripped open thefront of my dress at the edge of that cliff and shoved down the thin shift beneath it, leaving me perilously exposed for the viewing pleasure of an entire company of soldiers.
Whatever that man intended to do to me—and I could plainly guess, from the leering gleam in his eyes—was rendered impossible as soon as his fingers grazed my strange birthmark.
“What’s this?” he muttered, his foul breath fanning over my face as he leaned in and ran two fingertips down my breastbone, which rose and fell rapidly beneath gulps of panicked breath. Before I could so much as flinch away, something within me—I don’t knowwhat, only that it is there, and has been there for a very long time, waiting like a snake poised to strike for just such an opportunity—uncoiled itself from the center of my chest and lashed outward. The soldier reeled back as if scalded, clutching his hand with a moan that echoed through the Red Chasm, rebounding back in a sickening chorus of agony.
I was so stunned, watching him writhe in the dirt before me, it took a moment to tug my shift back into place, covering the whorled design once more. I touched it gingerly as I refastened the front laces of my dress with shaking fingers, half-afraid I’d find it white-hot. And yet, it was cool as ever to the touch—a shade colder than the rest of my flesh, just like always, no matter how feverish I become or how I exert myself.
The party of soldiers had stared from me to their injured comrade and back again, their eyes brimming with apprehension. As though I’d attacked the man on purpose. As if I might turn on them next.
If only.
Such power would come in especially handy at a time like the present. Yet, in truth, I’d done nothing to sear the skin from the man’s fingertips. Not intentionally, anyway. Nor could I seem toreplicate such an effect after his comrades clapped me in irons—albeit with considerably more wariness about their hand placement—and led me back to this camp.
“Here,” Burrows says abruptly, reaching a hand toward my bodice. “I’ll show you.”
Scythe’s formidable frame shifts directly into the captain’s path, blocking him before so much as a finger grazes me. “You will not touch her.”
“I’m just trying to help! If you’d seen what it did to my second-in-command—”
“You will not touch her.”
Surprise blooms on Burrows’s face, then quickly sours into seething resentment. He does not enjoy being scolded. He even less enjoys being outranked in his own camp. But he’d be a fool to question Scythe’s authority. Clenching his stubby teeth, he swallows his objections and steps back a pace.
Still held painfully tight by my bindings, I cannot shy away as Scythe tugs one-handed at the neckline of my dress, undoing the laces with methodical movements. The weight of many eyes from the gathered crowd presses in, though his mammoth form shields me mostly from view. My heart hammers so loud against my rib cage, he must be able to hear it.
Cold air brushes the top swell of my breasts as the commander pulls my shift down—no more than strictly necessary, merely an inch or so—to expose the top half of the triangular birthmark. Mortification and terror mingle within me. I’d gasp if I were able to summon enough breath, but the noose is still held tight by the hand that remains above my head, preventing all but the most narrow slivers of air from entering my lungs.
I watch his face as he examines the strange design, trying to read his expression. There is no expression to read. He is blank,his intentions as inscrutable as the interlocking whorls and spirals he stares at with such intent focus.
I will the mark to strike out at him, as it did the man on the cliff side; wish for that snake of unpredictable power to come uncoiled once more and maim this new enemy standing before me. It does not comply. It sits cold and still within my breast, its fangs sheathed and silent, its existence as much a mystery as its origin.
According to Eli, I’ve had it since the day he first found me—a newborn babe with a crop of white hair, strange eyes, and a mysterious brand on her breast of such dark tint, it seemed infused with night itself.
Best keep it covered, Rhya, he told me again and again, so many times I grew weary of hearing it before my fifth naming day.There are those who might think it a cursed mark, child.
After the events on the cliff side, I fear they may be right.