“I’ll do it,” she said, standing to reach for the bow. “But I’m gone after the fourth night. No exceptions.”
“That’s the deal.” Zera smiled. “We’re glad to have you along.”
So Caramyn remained with the caravan to fulfill her obligation, eager to relish the feeling of a bow in her hand once again. The first night, she crept out into the tundra and returned with two handfuls of snow hares. She’d anticipated difficulty in finding the prey, especially without Nocthar. But it was as if standing under the aurora-kissed night sky, alone in the barren snowy wastelands, without twisted trees and branches she was so accustomed to using for cover and stealth had forced her to awaken some part of her senses she hadn’t known existed—some otherworldly part of herself that made her almost feel…magic.
It made sense. These shrouded peaks were ancient, and would’ve been the first to have been touched by the divine fragments in the Shattering that made the realms and the magic in them. Maybe that explained the constant color dancing above that only appeared on Frostlight everywhere else. And maybe it explained why the Shadowbloods were created far, far from here, deep in the wilderness by an outcast god who saw the darkness already in their hearts and wanted to mark them with it forever. Perhaps the closer she stood to the sky, the closer she’d get to the Light. She didn’t seek the favor of any long dead gods,but perhaps for a fleeting moment, she could almost believe she wasn’t a mistake.
On the second night she stood and listened to the gentle whistle of the frosty breeze, almost feeling the touch of her mother’s wind magic on her skin. And she felt the snow beneath her boots, ignoring the wintry bite of the cold seeping through them, and something—something in her blood—guided her to wherever the prey was, just as it’d guided her to the letter in the library.
A snow lynx.
She would return, feeling something refreshed in her spirit, and Zera would help prepare the meals and talk with her and Narahbi.
On the third night she relied once again on that magic sense of blood and air to show her where to go, and it took two men from the caravan to carry back the great winter ice-stag she’d found.
That night, the caravan celebrated their feast, building a large fire around their camp and playing instruments that made Caramyn’s heart sing. She sat swaying to the hum of the flutes and strings as the men carved into the roasted venison, and Zera blessed it as a favor from the gods, both Gahmean and Silverean.
Narahbi danced around the fire with a boy her age, smiling with stars in her eyes, and Caramyn thought of Asterious as she watched them. By now she’d accepted that he really must have hated her. It was the only way she could move on. Wryan was his right-hand man, and if he did this to her, Asterious had to have known. And he didn’t care.
As he shouldn’t. And neither should she.
He hid behind lies, and so did she, but at least she hadn’t denied it. In the end, they both refused to fully remove the masks, and this was the outcome. And they deserved nothing less than to despise the other for exposing the darkness they already saw within themselves.
She wasn’t meant for Asterious’ world. Shattered gods, she was starting to think she wasn’t meant for any world at all. And if her heart was too dark for Asterious—her broken magic too heavy to bear—he wasn’t worthy of it anyway.
Zera brought a plate of deer meat and ale over to Caramyn as the great fire flickered, casting shadows on the golden sand. “You aren’t going to eat,Kuhrissi? The first cut is reserved for the huntress. You’ll offend the gods to waste it.”
Caramyn took the plate and gnawed on a bit of meat. It was tender, and much more flavorful than any deer she’d ever hunted in the Shadow Woods. “These people celebrate well. I never had the chance to attend the feasts where I grew up. I always watched from afar.”
“They judged you harshly. Because of that marking on your arm, yes?” Zera sat beside her, sucking the meat off a bone like it would be her last.
Caramyn startled at the mention, and Zera clearly noticed enough to explain. “I sense it. Shadow magic and something…something else. Something even I can’t see clearly.”
“They had a reason to.” Caramyn watched the fire. “The King convinced everyone all magic was evil. He made them believe it was the reason for all their problems. So, when your story is already written for you—twisted before you can even tell it, let alone understand it yourself—it’s hard for people to see you as anything other than a threat.”
Zera sighed heavily as she tapped Caramyn’s arm. “The mark of a Shadowblood isn’t a curse unless you choose to let it be one. Shadowbloods were feared, yes, simply because they were powerful. And much harder to read because they are far more complex than most.” She smiled a smile that warmed Caramyn more than the drink in her hand.
The hair on Caramyn’s neck stood straight. Zera couldn’t physically see the veins forming a tree and the deliberate patternof the roots beneath it, but that had yet to limit her. Caramyn rolled up her sleeve, desperate for something—anything—this woman might be able to tell her. “The only other time I’ve seen anything like this mark was on a soldier whose body had been brought back from the dead.”
Zera leaned in close, lifting a hand. “There is no magic that can truly resurrect the dead…and the distorted life it gives is not without great consequence.” She touched her fingers to Caramyn’s arm. “Let me feel the marking. Perhaps I can identify it.”
Caramyn shifted and turned her inner forearm towards the woman, holding still as Zera removed her gloves and slid her fingers along the vein cluster of crackling lines like twisted brambles that that joined in the center like a twisting tree trunk in the hollow of her elbow. She traced the path where the trunk spread into roots, and the lines sharpened into that three-lined forked sigil that trickled like lightning toward her wrist.
“This…this is very much like a forbidden binding rune of the old religion, used to tether a life to something else, mostly used to take control of a living being. To put them under the dominion of their anchor.” Zera’s voice quivered ever so slightly. “I suppose in some rare cases it could be used in effort to resurrect the dead, perhaps by binding a dead soul to a power source strong enough to revive it…perhaps if someone powerful truly knew what they were doing…”
The vision of the Shadow soldier’s lifeless gray skin flashed before her eyes, the haunting picture of the body lying there with symbols of magic carved across the rotting corpse. A vessel reanimated solely to be Sinevia’s puppet.
“I am under no one’s dominion. I am no one’s puppet.” Caramyn sat upright defensively, as a feeling of violation crept in. “I was born like this. It can’t be the same thing.” She refused to believe it could be.
“I wish I could tell you more,” Zera sighed. “But so much of you is shrouded, as if behind a veil. You are so much more than what I can perceive.”
Caramyn couldn’t find the words to respond, and instead shook her head and dropped her shoulders, for once again, she was left with more questions than answers. She closed her eyes, letting the steady drums and flutes of the feast music lift her spirit.
She thought of Asterious and loathed herself for it. It was a wound she couldn’t seem to stop reopening—to imagine what it might’ve felt like to dance to music like this with him, to twirl carefree in that glorious ballroom in Vaerwynd Castle without the darkness breathing down her neck. She pinched her eyes shut, but the memory only sharpened. The way he’d made her feel almost human, almost safe, and the quiet pull he had set in her heart. It was all reduced to ash now. And better for it, because it was never real anyway.
A touch from Zera made her jump. She opened her eyes, realizing how desperately strange she must have looked. But Zera only nodded, as if she knew exactly what she’d been thinking about.
“Back in Gahmea we believe the wind is sacred—the messenger of the old gods.” Zera’s change in tone made Caramyn open her eyes. “Tell it your message and send it to him on the wind."
