I scream with the agony of it, arching and fighting, kicking and clawing, but held tight between two magic wielders who are raising blisters and the white crust of frostbite on my arms right through the fabric of my long-sleeved tunic, I can’t get purchase. My feet barely touch the ground as they wrestle me down the stairs. Kauko speaks in a trilling, round tone that he must think is soothing, but every syllable cranks my rage higher. Sig is silent and grim on my other side, the ridge of his jaw sharp enough to cut stone. He will not meet my furious gaze.
I am bruised and blistered and torn by the time they force me into a tiny, windowless stone chamber that I recognize as the room where Sig has been sleeping. There’s no bed here, though. No torches or candles, either—the only source of light comes from the torches in the hallway. The room contains only a few things—a filthy-looking blanket, a stone bowl, a knife . . . and a set of copper manacles bolted to the rock walls. The cuffs are crusted with blood. I glance down at Sig’s wrists, where his swirled scars lie, and then at Kauko.
“You chain and bleed him every night, and then you heal him every morning, don’t you?” I put as much venom into my words as I can, but the elder only smiles.
“I must,” he says. “To keep the balance.”
He and Sig each wrestle one of my wrists into the manacles, still using their magic to subdue mine. Between the two of them, there’s too much for me to fight, and the pain from my injuries is so intense that I can barely think past it. They chain my ankles, too, tight to the wall, making it impossible to kick. “No fighting,” says Kauko, stroking my arm as I fight in vain to pull away. “I will help you.”
Sig looks away, and it’s the last betrayal I can take. “I thought you were helping me,” I say in a choked voice. “I thought you were on my side.”
Kauko chuckles. “Sig is a naughty boy. He needs very much discipline.”
Sig lets out a shaky breath that warps the air with its heat.
“Sig,” Kauko says as he rolls my sleeves to my upper arms, revealing what I already knew was there—skin so damaged and broken that it’s a wonder it’s still holding together. Then he says the Kupari word that I know means “blade.”
Sig kneels over the stone bowl and the knife, his back to us. He’s moving slowly enough that Kauko gets impatient. He gives Sig a little kick in the rear and snaps at him in Kupari. In response, Sig turns toward us with the knife and the stone bowl, the latter of which he hands to the elder. Kauko takes it and then pokes at the crook of my elbow, still chattering at his apprentice, whose blond hair is so pale it almost glows in the dark as he moves closer. He clutches the knife tightly.
Kauko is telling him to cut me. I try to twist my arm away, but Sig’s clammy palm presses the limb to the cold stone. “Shhh,” he murmurs. His thumb strokes gently over the tender skin on the inside of my forearm.
“You told me not to let him bleed me,” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes to hiss in his ear. “You said not to let him.”
Kauko chuckles. “So naughty, Sig. Make it deep.”
Sig nods. His brown eyes meet mine, just briefly. But in them I see flames. I grit my teeth as the blade cuts into my flesh and fight the urge to be sick as I listen to the pat-pat-pat of my blood flowing into the bowl, which Kauko holds just beneath my elbow to catch every drop. Sig stays close, holding me to the wall as I bleed. I glare up at him, and he stares down at me, letting me see the fire. The flames are entrancing, the way they undulate within the bottomless black-brown pools of his eyes. Why, I want to sob. Why are you doing this?
Why am I surprised, though? Thyra pushed me away. Halina turned on me. Sander has joined Nisse. And Sig is serving his master, perhaps to avoid more whipping or whatever torture the elder has forced him to endure.
And why am I angry? The realization descends on me like a massive wave on the Torden. I’ve given none of them any good reason to stand by me. I’ve been a crumbling wall, a stalk of wheat, a puddle of cloudy water. I’ve stood for nothing. I never jumped, not really.
I was so hungry for acceptance that I played every side. I served Thyra. Nisse. Kauko. Jaspar. Halina. Sig. Anyone who would give me kindness, I swayed in their direction. While each of them stood firm, held to their positions by principle or greed or hunger for power, I swirled like a flame in the breeze. I deserve every betrayal—after all, I betrayed all of them first.
I close my eyes and bump my head against the stone. These thoughts are shredding my mind, pulling me even farther from the one thing that could save me—a focus on what I’m willing to give, and on what I truly want. If I don’t figure that out, I deserve to die.
Kauko presses a cloth to my wound just as my lips begin to tingle. I glance down to see the bowl full to the brim with my blood, black in the dimly lit, dank chamber. He takes a step back, eyes only for the contents of the bowl. It’s as if I’ve ceased to exist—or he only cared about my blood in the first place.