“Can I ask you something?” She asked.
I nodded. “You just did.”
She rolled her eyes, then shifted beside me, moving the tray aside so she could face me better. Her hand moved behind me, fingers ghosting across my back.
“You’ve got a tattoo that feels… different,” she said. “Back here, right side. Some of it’s smooth. But some of it—” She trailed her fingers lower, over the ridge near my spine. “Feels almost… carved in. Scarred.”
“That’s because it is.”
She blinked.
“Not all Crow tattoos are just ink. The back piece is done during the dynasty oath at sixteen. Some parts are cut in. The edges of the crest, the root line of the vow. The nanotech’s injected after the cutting, it syncs with the island and the blood vaults.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s… barbaric.”
“Ceremonial,” I corrected. “Tradition. Every Crow handler, heir, and enforcer has one. It’s how the codex validates bloodline claim.”
“Still barbaric,” she muttered, tracing the lines again. “Feels like armor.”
“It is.”
She was still touching it when I traced a pale mark on her thigh. “What about this?”
She glanced down, lips pressing together. “Oh. That.”
I lifted the shirt slightly, tracing the scar with my fingertip. It was smooth, but it wasn’t small.
“Looks old,”
She let out a dry laugh. “Yeah. I was thrown down a flight of marble stairs. When Dad got home, he wasfuriousabout it.”
“Thrown?”
She looked up, smile tugging at her mouth, too light to be real. “I’m kidding. I tripped.”
“You sure?”
She laughed softly, but it sounded like deflection. “Two flights of marble stairs. Not very graceful, I know.”
I nodded, but something in me didn’t settle. Not because she said it, because of how she said it. The smile, the phrasing, the fact that the first version of the story had been so much darker.
I didn’t push her. She tucked her leg under herself, pulling the shirt down to cover it.
She curled back beside me, and sighed. “You ever think,” she bit her bottom lip, “that it wouldn’t bethatbad… not being synthetic?”
I glanced down at her, unsure where she was going with it.
“Dynasties stay dynasties because they don’t change,” she said waved hand. “Clean blood. No enhancements.”
I let her talk.
“The registry tracks everything,” she went on. “Every implant, chemical rewrite. So they know who’s got what running through their veins. But hardly anyone has unaltered blood anymore. You need generations—centuries—of it for your DNA to be consideredpure. You need to be a dynasty.”
“Is there a reason you’re reciting the sovereign my love,” I played with her hair. Wondering where her mind was taking me with this history lesson.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice. Just once, to think about yourself. Take a pill, rewrite a flaw, stop worrying aboutlineage. Change something small and not care. Sometimes I think it would be nice to hide a scar, have flawless skin. Not…worry about if my kids inherits biomarkers.”
My fingers paused in her hair for a moment. “That’s how it starts.”
