Starsinger

Investigation

The next few days passed in a panicked daze. Delia fought with the assassin's spell, trying to uproot the darkness with wave after wave of counterspells. Jace and Sapphire took turns guarding Raelyn and questioning the villagers, but no one had seen the black-eyed man before the Night of Volos. The headswoman urged her people to tell the soldiers everything they could remember, but the villagers were nervous. Only a month ago, a young woman had gone missing from Mercali. A week before that, a middle-aged father had disappeared without a trace. Some folks murmured about having seen strange things in the Wood back then, but Mercali's search parties had turned up nothing. At night they kept vigil over Aaron's bed – until Delia finally broke through.

When Aaron could finally stand without assistance, they went to the mortuary.

The mortuary was small, built under the earth to keep cold even during the hottest summer blazes. On a high table lay the body of the Raven, wrapped tightly in burlap with only his head exposed. When Jace gave the word, the headswoman would have the body dragged outside the village, doused in oil, and set aflame.

Aaron stared into the corpse's face. The black eyes were dull, and though Aaron's skin prickled in anticipation of the wave of paralysis he'd felt, it never came. Powerless.

"What did the coroner say?" he asked. "About the eyes."

"Never seen it before." Sapphire leaned against the doorway, as far from the Raven as she could physically place herself.

"He even checked with the doctor," Jace added. "No signs of poison, no injury apart from the knife and talon wounds. Nothing that could cause such a deformity."

Raelyn pursed her lips. "Perhaps not a medical condition so much as a magical one."

"Interesting." Delia stepped tentatively closer. "If he spelled his own vision, the effect should have faded upon his death." She took a deep breath and laid her hands on the Raven's temples, closing her eyes tightly. Green light gleamed along her fingertips and then disappeared. Her brows furrowed in concentration.

Suddenly Delia gasped and her head flew back with a snap. The Raven's eyes cleared, like the sky after a storm.

Blue eyes, Aaron saw. He has blue eyes.

Then Delia cried out and the black came rolling back in, staining the whites of the dead man's eyes and swallowing up the pale blue. Delia was shaking and sobbing, still clutching his face. Her knuckles were white.

Sapphire shoved Delia, hard. The mage fell back on the ground and inhaled so suddenly she made herself cough.

Delia opened her eyes, but the tears were still streaming down her face. "They did this to him."

"Who?" Sapphire demanded, but Delia couldn't speak through her tears.

Jace pulled Delia to her feet, slinging an arm around her waist. "Let's go."

The late afternoon sunlight burned away the stench of cold and death, but not the memory. Once they were back in the inn, Jace folded his bulky frame into the narrow corner chair of Aaron's room. Aaron was propped upright in bed, bolstered by a mountain of pillows despite his protests. Delia sat at the end of the bed, Raelyn perched on the dresser, and Sapphire leaned against the door. In the center of the cramped room, they'd assembled their evidence: a map, an obsidian stone, and a shard of amber.

"Start from the beginning," said Jace. "Delia?"

The skin under her eyes was still puffed and red, but she wasn't crying anymore. She picked up the obsidian. "The spell this held was designed to kill."

Aaron shivered. He imagined sinking into the dark sea of his hallucinations, drowning inside his own head.

"I couldn't understand it at first," Delia continued. "Tracing the spell was painful. Every ounce of power I channeled into it was swallowed up, like sinking into quicksand. Magic doesn't do that. Light can't swallow up more light. But the spell bound in this obsidian was some of the most powerful magic I've ever seen."