Then my gut twists in horrific pain, and I gag.
Words tumble from my mouth, “I bind my soul to serve your kingdom forevermore.”
The same words pull from everyone here, and I’m left gasping. I hadn’t been ready, the Oath drawn from me with such little warning.
A tingling, like tiny needles, begins prickling all over my body. I curl over, bracing myself against the grass. I can’t focus on anything or anyone else as the pain grows, burning through me.
Stop, please stop,I think desperately as my body cramps and squirms under the pressure of that magical binding. I drop, mouth opening in a silent scream, and taste dirt as I kick and scrape against the ground. My eyes and ears burn as if heated raw beneath the sun, my skull aches as if my teeth are being pulled, fingernails stinging like splinters have shot up between the nails and tender flesh.
Others scream, crying out around me, but I don’t join them. I’m too stubborn, though the pain at the back of my skull dazes me.
I’ll do anything, just stop. I can’t help the thoughts blaring through, but then I hear a voice within me, too close for comfort, as if someone whispers directly into my ear.
Yield,it demands.
I hate myself the moment I hear the words because I know I will. After a few more excruciating seconds, I do. I allow whatever that voice is to grasp hold of my mind and squeeze out bits of me, like pulp from the rind. When it’s satisfied, I clench my fists into the earth below, and my hands tear up dirt.
But it’s over. I survived. The pain is gone as quickly as it came.
The king’s hand draws back, and his silver eyes flicker among us all, writhing and panting on the ground. I force myself up to my knees, wiping soil from my face. My jaw hurts, and my tongue runs over sharpened canines. What’s happened to me? As I look at my fingernails, they morph from pointed immortal talons to normal nails again. I wonder if even my eyes hold a glowlike the druids’. Tears spring forth before I blink them back. I place shaking palms over my ears and find they’re pointed.
Trembling with rage, I glare at the king. I want to call him a bastard, to curse him for doing this to me, but however hard I try, I can’t. He ismyking now. I had sworn I would serve no one again but myself when I burned the Lord of Westfall’s manor, but now … I belong to them.
Prince Draven watches me from his father’s side. He’s inscrutable, merely observing me as if he’s waiting for something.
My body is hollow-boned and unfamiliar. The air doesn’t sit right in my lungs. Sound warps around me, and my vision tunnels. The skin across my face prickles as though spiders crawl under the surface.
Someone gets up and runs, a woman older than most of the others here, and she doesn’t hesitate as she reaches the plank affixed to the wall. The guards don’t stop her. The ginger-haired girl who cried at the Selection whispers, “No.” One moment, the woman’s there. The next, she’s gone. We continue to kneel in silence, and it takes a long time to hear the thud that follows her flight, my shoulders jolting from the sound. I shouldn’t be able to hear that, but my sense of sound is enhanced along with everything else. Even the silence afterward is loud, my senses in overload with this newly transformed body.
The king continues as if there were no interruption.
“You are now all members ofmydomain,” King Silas announces. “You will never be welcomed back to the mortal world. Even your loved ones would hunt you and hate you. So, bury those lives, those dreams, those names if you must. Your transformations are not complete, but this will help you survive beyond this Wall. You are still very much mortal. You are changelings until you prove yourselves worthy and complete the Descent at the end of the coming spring. Then you will becomeimmortals. Let this be the first day of the rest of your lives. You are meant for so much more than dust and will serve me and my people well.”
He flourishes his hand to his hip, drawing a deck of cards from his belt, and they shuffle themselves as if peeled apart by invisible hands before lying motionless in his palm. He gestures to us to rise, and we do, my legs stumbling, unused to my new form. I brush the dirt off my skin, eyes watering in outrage over the nonconsensual transformation of my body.
“These are tarot cards, each steeped in their own magical history, containing the ability to act as a conduit to whatever magical gift, or Arcana, calls to you,” King Silas explains. He puts his spidery hand over the stack of cards and, without touching them, draws his hand upright, palm toward the audience. A card from the top of the deck follows, floating in the space between us and himself. Its black and gold foil design glows in effervescent light, beams shining out of it like the crowning of the sun.
Despite my rage, I find myself leaning forward, noting the card displays a genderless crowned figure sitting atop a throne, a sword in one hand, scales dangling from the other.
“Tarot are used to help channel the twenty-two types of magical gifts discovered by druids, each called a Major Arcana, gifted to us by our holiest god, Azazel, Lord of Death.” With a flick, the other cards in the deck fly upright, orbiting around him. “Every druid, whether they be born as Azazel’s Children or come to our borders as changelings, have a calling to one of these gifts and can use tarot like siphons to control their magic, to tame that power to their fingertips.”
I’ve heard of tarot before. Charlatans would parade decks of cards through Westfall each year, claiming they were ancient relics that could channel magic in the mortal realms. They were all fakes, of course. Even if they’d somehow gotten their handson a real deck, mortals couldn’t channel magic—everyone knew it was a death sentence.
Magic needed a place to feed from—energy or life, it always came with a price. Mortal lifespans would burn up like lit tinder against the power of it.
The king brings his hands together, catching the cards in a golden web strung between his fingers. He settles the deck between his hands and holds it out toward us collectively. He’s offering my heart’s desire, drawing my attention like a moth to a flame, even knowing I’ll likely get burned. No one offers power without cost. “Power in Sedah is granted to those with the most talent, not by blood, history, or coin but by what is offered. You want power? Prove it. You want magic? Take it. Now, changelings still come at a disadvantage. This will be corrected with training and time at our Forge, where you will learn and be rebuilt into something new. Step forward in turn and put your hand over the cards. Show me your potential.”
Every eye in that space darts to the king’s open hand, holding that deck. None of the others dare move forward, to grasp greedily at such a promise in case it’s some trick.
But Kasper takes a hesitant step, then another, until he’s before the king. His hand quakes as he holds it over the pile of cards.
A single card floats from the king’s palm into Kasper’s hand. Kasper clumsily plucks it from the air. I’ve never seen a human perform magic. It’s impossible. Except Kasper isn’t merely a human anymore.
Neither am I.
We’re now something in between. The whispers of excitement surround me, as if this is all some gift and not a horrible bargain. Why change us at all? Why give us power?
Kasper allows the vizier to take it, jotting notes on a roll of parchment. Kasper’s eyes widen and search them as he waits. Ican nearly feel his impatience brimming in his taut shoulders. He’s barely breathing.
