Sawyer tapped the cell bars. “So, you and Sol??—”
“Don't.”
“You know that's not going to end well, right?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Does it look like I have a choice, Sawyer?”
She pressed her forehead against the bars.
Irene’s own Coronation Vows had been similar. The Rimemere history books say Draven joined the Vows willingly, out of his love for her and despair she wouldn't have him in that way.
Sawyer, though, knew better than to trust those books. She knew from firsthand accounts that Draven joined to spare her from Arnold, who was the prospect from Melisandre. The entire South knew of her father’s reputation as a fighter, as a killer, and Draven joined knowing he might pose a challenge for him the other prospects did not.
Cas sat up, and that's when Sawyer noticed it.
He was a fool. Even after them being almost inseparable for eighteen years, he still refused to alert her when the blood was low.
Sawyer thought maybe the man had a death wish.
She shook her head and signaled him forward. “You need to tell me when it starts to get low, Cas.”
He eyed her for a moment, hesitating. The tattoo seemed to lighten with each passing second, and Sawyer had to tap the bars again for him to admit defeat. “I was able to go almost four weeks without it this time.” He stood, shaky but strong.
“And how long was the maximum before?”
“Three and a half weeks.”
She grabbed his arm through the bars as he lowered himself beside her. His skin was cold and covered in bruises. The anger festered in her chest, burning hotter than her flames as she eyed the wounds. “I’ll kill him,” she whispered.
“Leave it, Sawyer.”
She let his arm hang through the cell bars as she sliced a thin, precise cut along her palm. “Never. It's my life mission to make him pay.”
Sawyer inhaled a heavy breath and brought her bloody palm down on his forearm.
Her blood sizzled against the markings, spreading into the scarred edges, filling the tattoo. Cas relaxed against the bars.
Irene’s magic had truly been one of a kind. Not only was she able to fully master her Wards, but she had studied the ancient, god-written scriptures of the Western Stones before the island and contents were incinerated in battle. From those coveted texts, she learned binds and spells—Dark Magic—that only the most powerful Wielders possessed knowledge of, the sort of magic the Immortal Relics were rumored to channel. Those Relics were legends, artifacts crafted by the gods themselves that scattered with time.
“I hate this.”
Sawyer looked up at Cas, a distant expression on his face as he trailed the stone’s engravings with his gaze.
“I know,” she whispered. “It’s not fair.”
Queen Irene was brutal with Draven’s punishment. She not only executed him, but she forced Cas to resign his title as Prince of Eswin and his freedom. The punishment for his father conspiring against the crown was for Cas to be bound to Yarrow blood for half a century. Stray too far from the Yarrow bloodline, and the tattoo ink would kill him, crafted from Irene’s blood itself. No one besides them both knew of this. Everyone simply thought he was bound to Rimemere, as he was exiled from Eswin.
Brutally ironic.
They had discovered her blood resealed the volatile Dark Magic within the tattoo by accident during a sparring drill a month aftershe had arrived in Rimemere, after her father’s coronation. She had been eight years old. He had been thirteen.
It hadn’t always been that way. The tattoo was fine and full since it was branded when he was eight, but once Irene died and the Jinn attacks became more frequent, the magic that held his tattoo began morphing too.
Sawyer helped him every two weeks ever since. “You know, Sol might be able to —”
“No,” he cut her off.
“But her blood might be more useful??—”
