My voice came rough, less a question than a thought I hadn’t meant to give voice to. “You could’ve left me wherever you found me.”
He shook his head slowly, gaze steady, though something behind it shifted – like a door left ajar, caught between closing and letting the wind through.
“No, I couldn’t have.” He let the words drop from his tongue like he counted each and every one of them. “Because I know who you are.”
The breath caught in my throat before I could stop it. He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, like it wasn’t the sort of knowledge that got people killed. I straightened as much as the bonds allowed, the movement slow and deliberate. “Then you’re either a fool or a coward.”
He didn’t react. Just picked up the flask, twisted the cap closed, and rose in a single, unhurried motion.
“I’ll bring more water,” he said, and turned to go. “We’ll talk once your head’s steadier.”
He reached the doorway – the source of the light I hadn’t noticed until now, its frame choked with ivy and its heavy bolt drawn back – and paused just as he stepped beyond it.
“You’re alive because of who you are,” he said over his shoulder. “And because I’d rather answer for that than for what would have come if you weren’t.”
Then he was gone.
For a long while, I listened to his steps fading, each one growing softer until even the echo was gone. I shifted against the wall, testing the edge of my pain, and found it dulled now by fatigue or familiarity. Outside, the gulls cried again – sharper this time, wheeling above thesea I could not see, and beneath their calls, lower and more fragile, came voices.
“…remember how we used to send the Seer bastards to the Queen…”
“…should’ve done the same, before this one rooted…”
“…or at least before he brought her here. She’s a weapon. A knife in our gut. You think because it’s quiet now, it won’t cut…”
The words threaded through the ivy-veiled stone, thin and cautious, spoken in the careful tones of people who feared they might be overheard. I didn’t move – just sat there, wrists bound, head aching, and let the meaning settle.
Seers.That’s what they had said, and slowly it began to take hold – what, or rather, who, they were talking about. The young man. The one who had brought me here. What was his name again?
Mathias.He had the sight—or something like it—and once, that would have been enough to see him taken before he ever had a chance to grow into it.
I knew very little about the Seers, or the Sight, or what my Mother had wanted with them. But I remembered the faces – half-grown boys and girls, pulled from their homes in the dead of night, eyes wide and mouths shut, ushered past me in the great corridor outside her chambers. I had watched them go with a kind of dull curiosity, never seeing them return, never asking why. Even then, some part of me must have known they weren’t sent for service or training, that they hadn’t been chosen for greatness or reward. They simply vanished. My Mother did not suffer reminders of the Old Gods – or the gifts or curses they left behind – especially not the kinds she herself did not wield.
The voices faded, swallowed by stone and distance, until only the scrape of wind through the ruin remained. The bindings dug in where my shoulder had slumped, the floor pressing hard against bone. Grit worked its way through the seams of my coat, catching on dried blood,and beneath it all, thirst swelled thick in my mouth, wanton and persistent.
Time dragged, marked only by the ache in my muscles and the bite of the bindings against my skin. Then, between one breath and the next, footsteps began to gather – faint at first, absorbed by the stone, then clearer: two sets, steady and unhurried, weaving their way back through the narrow entrance of the ruin. They emerged from the shadowed arch together – Mathias first, his coat dusted pale at the knees, hair dampened into unruly curls that clung to his brow. He moved with the same careful rhythm I remembered from before, like someone still learning the dimensions of his own intent. His steps slowed as he reached me, eyes scanning the way I’d slumped, the way the ties had twisted deeper in his absence – and behind him, a woman followed, stepping into the light without word or pause.
She came forward with a steadiness that belonged more to habit than caution, her frame wrapped in a long coat the colour of churned earth, hems stiff with old wear. She paused just beyond Mathias, close enough that the faint scent of crushed leaves and woodsmoke reached me. Her face was weathered but not worn down, her features drawn into a composure so practised it barely read as expression at all, and yet in the tilt of her head, in the way her gaze moved across me—not over me, but through the angles of pain, sweat, and filth—was something almost gentle.
She crouched beside me with the ease of someone returning to a familiar task. Her coat brushed the stone, heavy at the hem, the faint scent of dried herbs clinging to its folds. Her hands reached for the bindings first, fingers brushing the sore skin at my wrists, assessing the damage with a healer’s precision. Then she leaned in, her eyes narrowing slightly as they tracked the curve of my spine – searching, almost reading, like something written there had begun to surface.
The heat hit as her gaze landed on the birthmark just over myshoulder blade.
It wasn’t the familiar throb that came when the weather turned or the old bruises ran too deep. This was sharper – precise, driving deep, as if the mark had come alive beneath my skin. It didn’t flare. It pierced – sudden and absolute, as if it had split open and something buried within was clawing its way up through muscle and memory and bone. My breath went shallow, fractured. My shoulders locked before I could stop them.
The woman leaned in, her brow furrowing slightly as her gaze followed the line of the mark with steady, measured intent. Her hand lifted, hovering close enough that I could feel the warmth of her skin bleeding into the space between us, though she never quite touched me. I felt her watching the way my breath shortened, the tension drawn sharp through my shoulders, the skin around the mark still twitching beneath the ghost of pain. Her face didn’t shift much, but her focus deepened – more precise, more certain – as if what she saw confirmed something she already knew. She lingered a moment longer, then rose in one smooth motion, the hem of her dress catching against the floor as she turned away without a word and stepped back into the light beyond the arch.
As the woman pushed past him, Mathias stepped forward, a flask cradled in one hand, a folded blanket in the other. He knelt beside me, placed the water within reach, and shook the blanket loose before settling it over my legs. The fabric was thick and sea-worn, carrying the scent of smoke and salt. He adjusted it with quick, practised movements, then stood and looked at me – not long, just enough to see that I was still watching.
“The cold settles deeper than it seems here.” He said, and then, “I’ll come back in the morning.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer, only turned and followed the woman back through the arch. I listened until the sound of him was gone. Theblanket was indeed thick enough to keep the cold at bay – though it did little for the ache still burning beneath my skin. I drew it closer around me all the same, curled beneath the rough wool, and stared into the dark, letting it press close on all sides while my birthmark pulsed slow and steady at the base of my neck – not flaring now, but refusing to fade.
Chapter Nineteen: Frejara
The days bled into each other, indistinct and sour.
Light came and went in long smears through the cracks in the weathered ceiling, shifting from ash-grey to a deeper, copper-tinged murk as the day wore on. The air inside the ruin never warmed. Salt clung to the walls, to my skin, to every breath, as if the sea had claimed this place long ago and never released it. I had stopped measuring time in hours – now it passed in narrower ways: the crust of dried blood softening at my temple, the slow fraying of the rope at my wrists, the rhythm of the wind crawling through the arch across from me.
