"Iowyn."
"What?"
He doesn't answer. His eyes are locked on my palm and his whole body has gone still.
"What?" I pull my hand closer to my face.
Thin pale lines curl across my skin. From my wrist toward my fingers, tracing patterns I don't recognize.
Not blood.
Not wounds.
They catch the light, silver-grey, faintly luminous in the steam.
"What the fuck?"
I rub at the lines with my other thumb. They don't smudge. Don't fade. They're in my skin, not on it.
I flip my right hand over. Same lines. Thinner, less defined, but the same spiraling patterns around my wrist, the same fine paths across my palm.
"Koshin." My voice comes out flat. "What is this?"
He's still crouched in front of me, still holding my wrist. His expression has gone blank—locked down tight—and that scares me more than the marks do.
Then he laughs.
Not the right kind of laugh. The unhinged kind. The one that means something in his head has snapped loose.
"Koshin."
"Soulmarks." He's still laughing, but it's tapering off into something breathless. "They're called soulmarks."
I don't recognize the word. It doesn't mean anything to me.
"The physical manifestation of a bond." He lifts my hand, turns it in the light, watching the silver lines catch and shimmer. "Between two souls. They appear when the bond becomes visible."
I stare at him.
At my hands.
At him again.
"A bond."
"Yes."
"Between us."
"Yes."
"Written on my skin."
"Yes." His thumb traces one of the lines, slow and deliberate. His voice drops. "Mine."
Heat drops through me, lands somewhere inconvenient.
"Yours," I repeat flatly, fighting to keep my voice steady. "I have magic tattoos I didn't ask for and your response ismine?"
