Slowly, the mask turned toward the selder. Only the mask. Not the body.
“I will stay with him,” the shamans said, “as Bubs advised. You may send the krynn, if he desires to remain by his companion’s side. With that, you may return to your own duties.”
The words sank too slowly. They seeped into the cracks of his broken mask and sealed them.
She was letting him go.
By the time he understood, she had already turned away and lowered herself back onto the chair beside the selder. Then —
What? Wait — No!
Still seated, the shaman lifted her forearms before her chest. Her hands met and her fingertips pressed together. The space between them was empty. Empty, and not.
The petals along her arms darkened. The discoloration from before was still there. Now, it spread, swelling up her shoulders, bleeding across her collarbone, crawling into the hollow at the base of her throat, and then spilling downward. The black ran across her chest like Teharun devoured the world.
From the depths of her cloak, the shaman drew another needle case.
He could see into it, from where he stood.
“Have you not … done this already?” Yu’s eyes clung to her fingers, as she removed the singular needle in there. He believed it was the same as the two she had used on the borman and the krynn. “The witchmark test?”
“I did indeed.” Her body smiled.
“This is … something different?”
“Slightly different, yes.”
With a motion as graceful as it was unhurried, she set the point to the selder’s back. It slid right in. This time she did not just hold it. She guided it, tracing the line of one of the symbols. As it moved, the needle shifted in hue; first an ashen pallor, then a deep, drowned blue, like stones that you could barely make out in deep water. Yu braced for the voice, for the HUNGER that had risen before, but nothing came.
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