For a moment, I thought Juno might refuse the question or reshape it into something safer.
“The Council calls it Untethered.”
“And what do you call it?”
Juno’s hand rested on the basin. “Star-Marked. Like the old cosmology.”
“And it means I don’t have a bond?”
She shook her head. “No. It means you are marked for multiple bonds. A Mark is supposed to pull one way,” Juno said. “One line. One answer. One approved bond the Council can witness, record, and manage.”
I looked at my wrist.
Four lines.
Three directions the basin had made visible.
“And mine pulls toward three.”
My mouth went dry.
I’d known it, somewhere inside me. Now I had to face it.
“Caspian,” I said.
Juno nodded.
“Kieran.”
“Yes.”
The third name sat in my throat like a lump I couldn’t swallow or spit out.
“Hale,” I finally said.
My Mark shifted under my skin, inward this time, as if it disliked being discussed and was sulking about it.
“Yes,” Juno said. “Not absence. Excess. A Mark the Council cannot reduce to one man without breaking something first.”
“That sounds like their problem.”
“They will try to make it yours.”
“They’ve made a strong start.”
Juno finally sat across from me.
“Your mother was also Untethered,” she said.
The air left the room.
Slowly. Like the walls had learned to breathe in and forgotten the rest of the work.
“Selene.”
“Yes.”
I had known. Some part of me had known from the moment my wrist took the Mark and the school began looking at me like a memory it regretted keeping.
