6: Souls

“What is happening to me?”

Sevens stood in his quarters, hands hovering at his throat. He had woken up all wrong. Somehow, his fingers did not seem to obey his mind’s commands. The black silk of his cravat brushed his skin, but he barely felt it. His booted feet felt rooted to the cold stone floor, and his mind was slate-dull.

I’m ill. Why?

He suspected the answer, though he did not understand why it would be true.

The wards put in place to repress Emrhys’ magic were affecting him, too. Wards designed to hurt only certain types of leymages.

But I’m not a leymage. I have only the basic magic they gave all soldiers of my standing.

Sevens drew in a long, steadying breath and stomped one foot, then the other against the stone floor. He opened and closed his hands and shook his head, trying to regain his senses.

“I am in control, alive. I can do this.”

He reached again to his throat and forced his fingers to dance through the familiar motions of tying his cravat. Some of the fog cleared from his mind, and Sevens continued his daily ritual, pulling his thick, dark hair into a low tail and binding it with a black ribbon, fitting his hat into place. Placing his black-sheathed saber at his right and donned his coat.

“Better,” he muttered, and made his way to his duty shift at Emrhys Coldriver’s cell.

Sevens arrived to find her shaking, wrapped tightly in her knitted blanket. The gray wool, serviceable and perfect for prison use, was thick and coarse, but apparently not enough to keep the chill away.

Emrhys stood unsteadily and weaved to the front of her cell.

“Sevens,” she said, her voice wavering. Then, “Corvus.”

He froze. It was the first time she’d ever said his given name. Something about his name in her voice sent a thrill shivering along his scalp and spine and arms, and an answering heat bloomed in his belly.

“Emrhys,” he replied in a hoarse voice. He moved close to her cell, and he leaned his forehead against the bars of her enclosure, avoiding the warding runes inscribed into the steel that caged her. She ducked in and clutched the bars near his face. Her hands were trembling. Sevens tugged away his gloves, then reached out and grazed her fingers with his own hands, stunned by his boldness. Emrhys sighed, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment before she angled her face to better see him.

“I need to talk to you. You do not have to answer me, but I want somebody to hear this. I want you to hear this. I mean, I’ll talk to you anyway, but I’m asking first. To be polite.” She laughed, a nervous, twittering sound Corvus had never heard from her.

“Speak, Emrhys. You are safe with me.”

She smiled at him, a sudden and fervent curve of her lips that was gone almost as soon as it had appeared.

“Thank you. I don’t feel like I was responsible for those deaths. In fact, I know I could never do such a thing unless there was some terrible accident or misunderstanding,” she murmured earnestly. “I’ve made no mistakes with my aether leymagic or misused spell components, never incorrectly mixed chemicals or employed improper reagents. It wasn’t me. At least, that is what my heart tells me.”

“I know,” he said simply.

“How? How do you know?”

“I just do,” he said, not sure how to tell her.

How to tell her he suspected he had been the one to commit the crime that damned her. It made perfect sense. He was apparently one of Dominar’s best assassins, and he rarely had any memory of his assignments beyond terrible feelings or bits and pieces of sensory information without context. Something that came with being among the highest-ranked operatives in all the Dominion. He’d taken an unbreakable vow of honor and duty, and never thought about it much beyond that. At least until now.

Why he suspected Emrhys was the scapegoat for something he had done in the first place was another mystery entirely.

“I wish I could believe you,” Emrhys said, looking away for a moment. When she met his eyes again, her expression was intense.

“I have to tell you something else. Something important, a secret. I’m not like others.”

“That I also know,” Corvus replied.

Emrhys looked back up at him, a flicker of defiance lighting her eyes. “No, you do not know. You don’t know what this difference means, and why it’s so important.”

He paused, taken aback by the sudden ferocity in her tone.

“Then help me understand,” he said after a long pause. She gazed at him, reaching out to brush her fingers against his, just as he had done to her. He could not hide the shiver that her touch kindled, hot and cold at once. He had felt nothing like it.

“I have only half a soul. My father tore the rest from me in an experiment he performed just before he died. It was the same experiment that killed my mother and changed my sister. I have no memory of it at all.”

“Emrhys.” Sevens didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to reach for her, but she backed suddenly away from the cell bars, frowning.

“Please don’t pity me,” she bit out, harsher than he’d yet heard her speak.

“I do not pity. I do, however, care,” he said, again shocking himself with his own frankness. It made him feel almost drunk—at least, the sort of intoxication he’d heard about, had seen in other soldiers. He was not used to feeling out of control.

Emrhys looked up, some of the bitterness fading from her features. She again moved to the bars, curling her fingers carefully on the cold metal, near his but not touching.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh,” she said. “You’re the only one I’ve told about this. If the Arbiters or anyone had known what I am, I’d have been a dead woman for sure and long before now. This magic is illegal throughout Ahra, by all ruling bodies. Even here in the Dominion. At least, officially. Father would be a prisoner of state if he were alive, and the Dominar were through with him, and Lenore and me—” She broke off, frowning.

“Is Lenore like you, too?” he asked, curious. He had only spoken to her the one time, but she differed from Emrhys. Her very presence had made him feel unpleasantly out of his depth, and that never happened.

“No. She is not like me, but she is different. She is gifted, is bright and full of life, like the sun.” Emrhys sighed, pressing her head to the bars. Corvus fixed her with a steady gaze, his heart thundering in his chest.

“If she is the sun, then you are the night sky’s stars, Emrhys.” He ignored the alarms that screamed through his mind, demanding duty and honor. Corvus drew a slow, steady breath, heart racing with both fear and yearning. This vulnerability was dangerous, but if anyone was worth such a risk, it was Emrhys. Before he could stop himself, Corvus pressed his face to the bars, ignoring the cold, unnatural magic.

He feathered his lips over her forehead. When she did not move, he reached through enough to cup her chin, tilting her face to his. Corvus’s eyes closed of their own accord as he pressed a kiss to her lips.

He was the first to pull away.

“Corvus, who are you?” Emrhys asked, breathless. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks darkening.

“I’m nobody. An assassin. A soldier. Someone I don’t even know. I have only met myself, known my thoughts, since knowing you,” he said.

“I’m honored, but two halves a whole do not make,” Emrhys replied sadly. “If you do not know who you are, there is something not right.”

“There is something not right. I remember nothing from my past, about why I do what I do, or where they make me go⁠⁠⁠—”

“Wait. If you arelike me,” Emrhys interrupted, speaking more to herself than him. “If they broke you, too, how would that have happened?”

Corvus did not have time to answer. A clamor sounded in the hall behind him, and he backed silently away from the bars, resuming his normal guardian stance. Emrhys retreated to her cot, again small and shivering under her gray blanket. Someone covered from head to toe in a lab leymage’s protective gear moved to stand between him and Emrhys.

“Miss Coldriver?” the person asked in a flat voice.

“Yes?” Emrhys replied, standing cautiously.

“Hold,” Corvus cut in, hand on his saber. “Do you have clearance to be here?”

The figure straightened and then pulled off its mask. Madame Felsin, General Acton’s contact at the Dominion Experimental Leymagic Lab, stood before him, unsmiling.

“I have orders from Acton, just as you do,” she said coolly.

Corvus did not move, misgiving creeping over his thoughts.

“Do I have to show you?” the woman asked and then thrust a scroll directly into his line of vision. He unfurled the crisp parchment, examining the orders. It was official, all signed and sealed. He could not refuse her.

“Proceed,” Corvus replied, and assumed a place right next to the bars, off to the side so he could hear and see all.

So I can jump in if I’m needed.

“As I was saying, Miss Coldriver,” Felsin continued, curt.

Emrhys glanced quickly at Corvus before nodding in acknowledgement of the other woman’s words.

“I’ll be blunt. There is still a slight chance of redemption for you considering your family’s contributions to the Dominion. Redemption for both you and your sister Lenore.”

“I don’t understand.” Emrhys shook her head.

“If Highguard Sevens were to escort you to your family’s holdings before we sell them off, and to your former space in the laboratory, could you recover all evidence of your father’s research and turn these things over to the Dominion?”

“I—no. No, that’s impossible,” Emrhys said, her eyes widening in dismay. “None of my father’s research exists anymore. It all caught fire when he nearly killed us all. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told. I can’t. I can’t help you.”

Felsin frowned, a stony expression that sent alarms blaring through Sevens’ awareness.

“Are you absolutely sure of this, Miss Coldriver? You are not hiding something?”

“No!” Emrhys didn’t even hesitate. “I would not lie about this.”

“But you killed those people, and with compounds only you use. Compounds your father used, and which are illegal to leymages without special licenses.” Madame Felsin pushed, moving closer to the cell than before. “Bottled Night should not have been present, and there was evidence of it all over that lab.”

Corvus moved in warningly. Felsin waved him away.

“I know what you are, child. I know what your father was working on. Do you think I should believe a thing like you?”

Emrhys spoke again, her voice shrill.

“I’m not just some thing. I did not know that what I was doing was illegal. That I needed a license for my work. Father taught me carefully so I would be safe. This has never happened before.”

Felsin opened her mouth to object, but Emrhys kept speaking, voice gaining strength.

“I go over and over it all. How I gathered everything in the proper order. How I logged each ingredient in the lab’s ledger, how I cleaned all the phials and tools myself, twice over. There should not have been any Bottled Night in the final beaker. I didn’t even call on my aether leymagic that night. Something is wrong.”

“What sort of project were you working on?” Sevens cut in, keeping his tone careful, ignoring Felsin’s glare.

“A way to make people stronger. To help our nation. Before he died, father told me a man called General Acton had encouraged him in this work.”

“That is enough,” Felsin snarled, the words final. “If you cannot provide me with what I need, with the evidence of your father’s and now your treachery — then I cannot offer you clemency. Enjoy wasting away in Stonechasm. And with that, I take my leave. You,” Madame Felsin paused, glaring at Sevens.

He did not flinch.

“You will report to your general tonight for new orders. Do you understand?”

Corvus nodded, but did not speak. The woman stalked away in a swirl of robes. Through the sickly lights of the wards, Corvus watched Emrhys crumple, sagging against the bars and sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” Corvus whispered.

She pressed her tear-stained face against the bars. Before he could stop himself, Corvus leaned in and raised one hand, brushing away a teardrop with his thumb. The softness of her cheek, the small gasp as his skin met hers⁠⁠⁠—

Does she know what I’m feeling? Does she feel it too, even through her pain?

“I have one more question for you,” she said as she gazed at him, blinking away another shining tear.

“As always, I’m listening.”

“What is a soul, really? If we suddenly did not have one, what would we be?”

He stood quietly, at a loss.

Emrhys persisted. “They say the soul is our power. Our very self. What if it’s simply the weight of an unknown element that is gone when we die? An element like any other, like aethertrue?”

“Then it’s not our power.” Corvus felt himself smile. “You know, I hear that in Tanahr, many people believe nothing can take one’s soul away. The Source, the universe’s power, is part of every person on Ahra, woven into us so nothing can change it. I don’t know if that’s true, but you are good, and nothing could change that. You are whole to me.”

Emrhys reached one hand through the bars, trailing cool fingertips along the line of his jaw.

“You are whole to me, too,” Emrhys said so vehemently her voice broke. She pressed her index finger to his lips a lightning-instant before again drawing away.

For the rest of the evening, she sat on her cot and watched him watch her. For the first time in his life, Corvus Sevens felt something almost like hope.