They’ll also mark her as my prisoner, under my authority, protected by my rank until the Council passes judgment.
“By instinct—” My voice catches. I clear my throat, force the words out. “By instinct, I’m required to protect you until my last breath.”
Her eyes widen. The light beneath her ribs pulses faster, brighter, answering the rhythm of my own mark.
“I’m going to do both.” I step toward her. Close enough that the heat of our marks creates a charge between us.
Her lips twitch. Not quite a smile, but close.
“That sounds like a terrible plan.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
“The Council will see through it.” She doesn’t pull away, doesn’t step back, doesn’t do any of the sensible things a woman should do when a man who burns her kind is holding restraints meant for her wrists. “High Arbiter Sevik has been looking for an excuse to burn witches since before I was born. If he suspects for even a moment that you’ve been compromised?—”
“Then he suspects.” I reach for her wrists, close my fingers around the delicate bones. Her pulse jumps at the contact—I can feel it racing against my palm. “The Council can make their demands. They can threaten my position, my freedom, my life.” I meet her eyes. Hold them. “But they cannot make me burn you.”
She stares up at me. Her breath comes faster now, shallow and unsteady. I can see the question forming on her lips before she speaks it.
“Why?” The word is barely audible. “You’ve burned dozens of witches. Hundreds, maybe. You’ve spent your career enforcing the law that says I should die. Why am I different?”
Because the mark says so.
Because your presence calms the screaming that’s been building in my head since the crypts.
Because you’re the first person in two decades who has made me want to listen to the dead instead of silencing them.
Because when I look at you, I don’t see a future corpse. I see a future I never let myself imagine.
I don’t say any of it. Can’t find the words. Instead, I let my thumb trace across the inside of her wrist—feeling the rabbit-quick beat of her heart, the heat of her skin, the fine tremor that runs through her at my touch.
“Do you trust me?”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“No.”
But she raises her wrists anyway, offering them for the iron.
The restraints close around her skin with a click that echoes off the burned walls. The runes flare blue-white as they activate, casting sharp shadows across her face. She gasps—a small sound, quickly swallowed—and her eyes go wide.
“The dead.” Her voice strains. “I can’t hear them at all now. Not even a whisper. It’s?—”
“Completely silent.” I finish for her, watching her face. Watching the disorientation land as she adjusts to a world without the voices she’s heard since childhood. “The suppression chains cut off everything. No death magic. No spirits. Nothing but the living.”
She blinks rapidly. Takes a breath. Steadies herself with a visible effort of will that twists in my gut.
“I’ve never—” She stops. Tries again. “Since I was eight years old. They’ve always been there. Pressing at the edges. Begging to be heard.” Her voice drops. “And now there’s nothing.”
For a woman who speaks for the dead, the silence must be devastating. The equivalent of going blind, or deaf, or losing a sense she didn’t know she could lose.
I reach for her bound hands. Wrap my fingers around hers, feeling the cold of the chains, the heat of her skinbeneath. The contact seems to steady her—her breathing evens out, her shoulders unclench, the panic in her eyes fades to determination.
“It’s temporary.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Once we’re through the Council chambers, once I have a real plan?—”
“Once you have a plan.” A ghost of her earlier spirit surfaces through the exhaustion. “You admitted you don’t have one.”
“I’ll figure it out.”