The Mark at her collarbone showed above the edge of her dress: fine gold lines, cleanly settled.
At least, that was what the Mark itself wanted me to see.
Juno had taught me to read the air around a Mark, not only the lines. The air around Cosima’s sat too tight against her skin, as if the Mark had been pressed into shape and kept there.
Cosima saw me see it.
“Good,” she said. “Then we can begin there.”
“Your Mark was forced.”
“It was.”
“Everyone thinks it settled.”
“They were encouraged to think that.”
“By you?”
“By the Council first. By me second.”
She touched the edge of the Council page with one finger, then took her hand away.
“I was fourteen,” she said. “Obedient enough to be useful. Frightened enough to accept the praise I got for it as worth it.”
My breath stopped before I could make it behave.
Cosima looked down at her hands.
They were ringless, folded so tightly the knuckles had gone pale.
“They bonded me to a man named Korey Dorian. He was forty-one. I was told the bond would make me safe.”
“Fourteen,” I echoed.
Cosima’s eyes lifted and she nodded.
“You were fourteen.”
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
“And he was forty-one.”
“That was considered one of his virtues.”
I stared at her.
Her expression stayed polished, but her hand had gone white where it gripped the table.
“He was established. Controlled. Old enough to be trusted with a difficult Mark.”
“Did it make you safe?”
The answer was in her eyes before she gave it.
“No.”
