DARKHAVEN | "Three Sisters" Book One

Chapter Seventy

Blodwyn

Blodwyn almost felt guilty. Her steps were not pained. Her breathing was even and unlaboured. She'd suffered not a single injury. While others bled and broke, she had emerged unscathed.

She was changed, though.

Fundamentally and physically.

Her right arm, the one that had held the stone, was stained inky black from fingertip to elbow. The darkness wasn't solid but instead threaded with patterns that almost looked like smoke trapped beneath glass—or, perhaps, beneath skin. Its coiled, curled pattern was almost hypnotic, and in the light of the hall it seemed, at times, to almost have an undulating colour the way an oil slick might.

Blodwyn flexed her fingers, watching the tendrils shift ever so slightly as though the mark were not a mark at all but something alive. She rubbed at it with her other hand. The skin was smoother where it was darkened.

And her nails...

The nails on her right hand were black. The nails themselves were black, not black with paint. Black like Skala's had been.

Blodwyn lowered her hand again. She had to get back to the Great Hall to find her sisters and help for Lord Lucien. Though she'd staunched the bleeding and sutured the wound with a quick touch of magic, she hadn't been able to linger. There was too much else to be done, still. Too many uncertainties.

So she'd let herself back into the torchlight of the familiar castle. The care administered to Lucien had been done quickly and with a promise to bring help, and now she stalked through the ruined halls to find said help.

He'd be fine. The infirmarists would find him and tend to him—or maybe Lord Novak or Aleksander would. Blodwyn didn't know.

She just...she had to get out of that place.

When the banishing was complete and she was left kneeling there on that precipice, clutching that black stone in her hand...the air itself had burned. With its purpose served and prophecy fulfilled, the sanctum seemed to want her gone. It had pushed her out, almost, as she fled the oppressive weight of the castle's lowermost levels.

She'd yet to find help, but she did find...

"Lady Terran—"

"Lazaro."

They stared at each other. His surcoat of white-and-purple was stained with dirt, ash, and blood, though she suspected he hadn't seen much fighting, if any.

"The banishing didn't affect you," she said, crossing the hall to where the bard was trying to claw open one of the shuttered windows. "Why."

"I—I think it's because I'm not one of them, not really," he told her. "You yourself know how it is. I had few options and made the one that, unfortunately, served my best interest. I am nothing if not human, and flawed, and—"

"Roslin," interrupted Blodwyn. "Selling us out for her was more than a flaw."

"I'm terribly sorry for it." The words came quickly, nervously. "I thought I loved her. The First was coming regardless. They—they told me that. I thought I might not be able to save everyone, but maybe if I could just save one person, save her, that maybe my existence wouldn't be a waste. It was wrong of me. I know it now. It was wrong of me to do it, and it was wrong of me to love her."

Blodwyn's hand—the black hand—curled into a fist at her side. She imagined Roslin laughing, wearing her pretty dresses, brushing her hair behind her ears. Dancing. Smiling. Sitting in Novak's lap. In Jon's. In Mercer's.