Free to go.
The words made everything inside Orla bristle. She didn’t trust them.
“What do I have to do?”
The aesran’s presence had been a kind of blinding light, and Orla had been avoiding looking at her. It felt dangerous, like staring directly at the sun. But now she looked up, meeting the woman’s eyes.
Aesran Erynda was every bit as beautiful in person as she was in her portraits. Her eyes were two vivid emeralds, and her face, devoid of any tells of emotion, was younger than Orla had expected, her cheekbones carved from marble with a heavy hand.
“A little test,” Ciaran said. “Quick and painless.”
Orla frowned. “A test?” She glanced over her shoulder to find a royal guard by the door. A boy around her age, as fair-skinned as the aesran. She turned back, wringing her hands nervously in her lap. “What kinda test?”
The aesran placed a ring gently on the table, her expression still unreadable.
Orla drew back in her seat, her body reacting on its own to the object, distancing itself. Goosebumps lifted on her arms. The ring was black—unnaturally so—and it felt strange. Wrong.
“You will wear that one,” Ciaran explained, “and the aesran will wear hers.”
Aesran Erynda tugged at the fingers of her gloves, sliding one off and then the other before setting them on the table beside her. Strange black smudges ringed her arm. Finger marks, angry bruises. Too small for an adult’s grip. No, not bruises. Not burns either. Something else. The marks shone with a dull, waxy sheen. She’d never seen anything like it.
She watched as the woman slipped a different ring on her own thin finger, this one a dull, aged silver.
Ciaran plucked the black ring from the table, lifting it to study the side a moment before standing and crossing to Orla. He held out his empty hand expectantly.
She hesitated.
Orla knew she didn’t actually have a choice. She was also clever enough to know that there was no way the aesran was going to pardon the crimes of a wielder. Orla would do as they said, and they would send her right back to her cell to wait out her sentence.
“Can I get it in writing?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady. “My freedom, I mean. Can you assure me you’ll let me go?”
The aesran’s blank expression turned bitter in the blink of an eye, but she said nothing—she didn’t need to.
Orla swallowed hard and placed her hand in Ciaran’s. He pushed the ring onto her finger.
It was cold. How was it so cold? The icy chill burned against her skin, dropping her entire body’s temperature a few degrees in an instant. She shivered.
Then, a strange sensation crept in, like the faint scraping of nails against her mind.
“What is this?” she asked.
The aesran turned her attention to Ciaran and raised her perfectly groomed eyebrows. Again, she didn’t have to say a word to get her point across.
“Right, then,” Ciaran said. He cleared his throat with a low cough, and when he spoke, it was to the aesran. “So, the connection was already there, incredibly strong. Two rings from opposite sides bound to each other. Now, getting them to do what you wanted and preventing the ring’s removal—that’s where my glyphs come in. I won’t bore you with the specifics.” He waved a hand as if he were shooing away a fly. “All you need to know is that when you call on the rings, they’ll respond. It may take some practice, but the wielder’s innate knowledge of their powers should do all the heavy lifting for you.”
Orla ran a finger over the ring, feeling at the shapes engraved on the side. She gave it a quick tug, just to test. It was a comfortable fit, not too tight, but it refused to budge.
“Close your eyes,Mo Aesran,” Ciaran went on, hovering behind Orla. “Focus on the rings, on the girl’s mind, malleable beneath the glyphs’ powers. She’s yours to puppet.” He placed his hands firmly on Orla’s shoulders.
The aesran went still as her eyes closed.
Orla tugged at the ring again.Trapped.When she spoke, her voice trembled. “What do you need me to—”
A quiet force slammed down on top of her with the weight of an anvil, crushing her consciousness into something thin and flimsy. She tried to scream, tried to stand, tried to run, but her body wasn’t hers anymore.
Let me go!she couldn’t say.Get this off!she tried to force out.
Orla’s hand drifted toward Ciaran, palm up. But it wasn’t her own mind controlling her movements.
