Illiya Gravewood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Illiya carried the warm flowers back down the corridor. The petals pulsed against her palms, steady as a small heartbeat. She slowed near a window to look at them properly. A voice spoke at her shoulder before she turned. Someone had stopped beside her, close enough to see what she held, and the words came quiet and certain: that ring was not a gift. It was a binding mark, and she had already touched it. The stranger lifted a crescent hairpiece from her sleeve. Tiny gold blossoms ran along its curve, and one petal matched the ones in Illiya's hands exactly. "I pulled mine off in time," the stranger said. "You did not." Illiya looked down. A faint gold line had wound around her thumb while she walked. She tried to drop the ring. Her fingers would not open. The flowers stayed warm against her skin, and the gold line tightened once, like a small hand closing. She was bound now, and whoever had set the mark would know exactly where she stood. The stranger pointed down a side hall toward a slim building with purple spires. "They tie the knots in there," she said. "They can cut them too, if you reach them before it sets." Illiya looked at her hand. The gold line had already crossed her wrist. She did not have time to wait, and she did not trust a cutter she had never met. She pulled cold into her left palm and fire into her right. The petals hissed. Frost crawled up the gold line and met flame at her thumb. The ring cracked apart in her hands and fell in black flakes to the floor. Her fingers opened. The stranger took one step back, eyes wide, and Illiya knew she had just shown a second person what she could do. The stranger lowered the crescent hairpiece slowly. She did not run. She studied Illiya the way someone studies a lock that has just opened on its own. "They will feel that break," she said. "He will come looking now." She nodded toward the spired building down the side hall. Through a low window, Illiya saw a planter outside its door. The same iridescent flowers grew there in a tight ring, roots curled inward, petals bent toward a center stone. Not a garden. A snare laid in plain view. Illiya wiped the black flakes from her palm. The skin beneath was clean, but a thin gold thread still circled her wrist, dim and quiet, not gone. She had broken the ring. She had not broken the mark. Whoever set it knew her name now, and her shape, and the trick of her hands. She turned toward the spired door. If he was coming, she would meet him at the place where the knots were tied.