“You’re risking everything, just like I said you would,” he finally says.
I don’t know why, but the way he dismisses my decision as the thoughts of a woman infuriate me. “You risked everything when you refused the gods.”
“There was no choice. It was either stand up and fight or give up the last bit of humanity. You’ve been in Averna. Would you see Sylvantia become that? That’s not surviving. It wasn’t a risk refusing Lysara when she made her offer because the alternative was something far worse than death. But this thing you’re doing is a choice. You’re risking the entire Order for what? A lifetime of being the thing you’ve spent your life learning to fight?”
I purse my lips. I know the logic in his words. My father is nothing if not logical, but it feels wrong to hide from this as much as it feels wrong not to track down the god-touched items I hear. “I will die before I give up any secrets, Father. You know that as well as I do.”
“You won’t be able to protect them from Nyxthos, Fiona. He is the God of Secrets, and he can ferret them out just as easily as Lysara can draw someone back from death. Maybe he won’t suspect anything, or maybe he’ll learn everything. Maybe Ainslee was right, and none of the gods give a rat’s ass about any of the humans anymore. Maybe you can even survive these trials. But all of these are maybes. All of them are unknown, and you are only twenty-five years old. These choices are not yours to make.”
I shrug. “Maybe you’re right, Father. It’s too late now, though. My blood is on that parchment, and in two weeks, I’ll be in the trials.”
“If you were anyone else, I would kill you. You understand that, don’t you? It’s what I should do. You know too much, and you’re walking into our enemies’ hands. They won’t kill you. Do you know what Erelith did to make her Burning Ones?”
That seems like a strange change of topic, but I know there’s a connection somehow. “I do not.”
“She took human women just like you to her world. She flayed their skin and then healed them. Every day, they’d be flayed from head to toe, and when their skin grew back, it grew back harder and thicker until it became as hard as stone. Then she set them on fire. The fire couldn’t consume their skin because it’d become too hard, so it consumed what was left of them. At the end of each day, she’d heal them. This happened until some of those flames lingered inside them, until the flames were as much a part of them as the water you drink is part of you. That’s what she did to herchosen ones. What do you think she’d do to get information out of you? How long could you endure that kind of torment?”
A shiver runs through me. “I don’t know.”
There’s a silence in the room until my father picks up his fork and knife. “Eat your food. You have two weeks before this begins, and that is not nearly enough time. I will not kill you, Fiona, but I will give you the ability to kill yourself if it comes down to it.”
What?
I look down at the partridge and see the crispy skin. It’s hard not to think of what my skin would look like if someone set me alight every day forever. I swallow hard and cut into the bird.
My father’s right. Until today, I’d thought I’d lived through some of the hardest things anyone could have ever experienced. The Priest’s training he’s given me, the way Bram Mercer had pushed me while he trained me with a blade, and even how Cedric Penrose had tutored me in every subject he knew. I’d thought that just because my life had been spent training that I would be prepared for this.
The reality is I’m not nearly as ready as I thought, but I’ve learned how to train. I can fight, but I probably can’t fight everything I’ll face in the trials. I know how to struggle without giving up. I’m not afraid of pain or hardship.
I just hope I have enough time to understand this new world I’ve found myself in.
I’m standing in only the skintight linen wrap I wear under my armor. My father takes the armor I’ve worn ever since I began going on missions with him at ten years old and lays it out. The thin plates of leather that are harder than steel lie across his alchemy table. They’ve been altered, added to, and remolded as I’ve grown, but they’ve always been mine, and I’ve worn them every day.
I’m silent as I watch over his shoulder, seeing what he’s doing for the first time. With the same strange pen that he uses to tattoo us with the Marks, he slowly inserts tiny grains of something redalong the ridge of the breastplate in a flowing mark reminiscent of my Mark of the Phoenix. And I realize exactly what he’s doing.
“That’s flame scorched sand,” I whisper.
He nods to me. “Dragonfire scorched sand. You probably haven’t ever seen this, but a dragon’s flame cannot burn something twice. I noticed it the first time Inni attacked our walls. Her flames would leave the walls charred and even partially melted, but if they were burned a second time, the walls wouldn’t melt more. Dragon’s flames leave a touch of magic behind, and we collect it.”
I run my finger over my chest, above my heart. “That’s what’s in my tattoo.”
My father pauses for a moment as he thinks. “Mostly, yes. Initially, the Mark of the Phoenix was just flame-scorched sand, but it took too long to recharge. Now, I add a touch of the heart from Burning Ones. The power of Erelith is far more prevalent in this world now than that of the dragons, so the combination helps the Mark to hold more power and to recharge faster. That’s why you can use it and the Mark of Chains so often compared to the others. I haven’t found the right combination for the other Marks.”
I blink. “You’ve never told me how the Marks work before. Why now? Before I risk revealing the things I know?”
“You know enough that a god could decipher the rest. They’ll learn all the things you’ve done for me if they learn anything, and it will take them seconds to understand how all of it works.”
That silences me as I watch him work. I recognize the Mark of Chains in the center of each plate, hardening it and making it impenetrable. But now he’s adding more Marks to it?
“Why are you changing my armor now instead of before, when we were going on missions?”
This time, he looks up at me and gives me a sad smile. “Because now you’ll be in danger, and I won’t be there to protect you. And if you… ifwewere to die before, no one would have learned anything from our armor. Our Marks fade from our bodies when we die, but they won’t fade from this armor. The Mark of Chains comes from shavings from the Keep of Earth. It’s imbued with Kasan the Lifegiver’s power, the dragon who gave his power to the House of Earth. It doesn’t have a magical scent connected to any of the gods.”
“But the Mark of the Phoenix has the scent of Erelith,” I say. “If I die, if they examine my armor, they’ll learn something about the Order.”
He nods to me. “But you need it, Fiona. You need as many advantages as you can get because otherwise, you’re going to die. I will not allow that.”
I watch in silence as he continues to leave colored Marks over the plates of leather. Gold for lightning. Black for shadows. He places a tiny, strangely dark silver in a corner of each one.
