Chapter 11

Sable's POV

Rook brought me over to Yarrow's tent right after the midday meal, not giving me much time to think of an excuse to put it off. Not that I had one. I wanted answers as much as anyone else did at this point.

The old woman was sitting cross-legged outside her tent, sorting dried leaves into small piles when we walked up. She didn't look up right away, though I got the feeling she noticed us long before we reached her.

"Rook," she said, still sorting. "Took you long enough to bring her by."

"Been a busy couple of days."

"Mm." She set the leaves aside and finally looked up, studying me with sharp eyes that didn't match the rest of her, tired and lined as she looked. "So you're the one who healed Bram with your bare hands."

"I don't really know what I did," I said. "It just happened."

"Things like that usually do, at first." She waved a hand toward the ground in front of her. "Sit. Let me have a look at you."

I sat, cross-legged like her, close enough that I could smell the dried herbs on her hands, something earthy and a little bitter.

"The mark," she said. "Let me see it properly."

I pulled the collar of my shirt aside, exposing the brand still raw against my collarbone. It had faded some since that first night, but the two crossing lines still stood out sharp and red, like something had carved itself permanently into my skin.

Yarrow leaned in close, studying it without touching. Her hand hovered an inch above the mark, fingers curled slightly, like she was testing the air around it for heat.

"Rook," she said, without looking away from the mark. "Give us a minute."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Rook hesitated, glancing at me like he was checking whether I wanted him to stay. I gave a small nod, and he walked off toward the far side of camp, leaving me alone with Yarrow and whatever she was about to tell me.

"How long has it looked like this?" she asked.

"Since the Ceremony. Three days now."

"And the color. Has it changed at all?"

"A little. It was brighter at first. More like a burn."

She made a small sound, somewhere between acknowledgment and concern, and moved her hand closer to the mark without quite touching it. I watched her breathing change, slower, more careful, like she was handling something that might still be hot even though her fingers stayed an inch away from my skin the whole time.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"Sometimes. An ache, mostly. Not like it did that first night."

"What about strange feelings? Anything you can't explain."

I thought about the water rising in my dream, the frost on the canvas wall, the warmth that had poured out of my hands into Bram's wound without me understanding how or why.

"Yes," I admitted. "A lot, actually."

"Tell me."

I told her everything. The dream, the frost, the blanket soaked through with water that shouldn't have existed. The way the blade had gone cold in my hand during training with Ivy. The warmth under my palms when I'd healed Bram, and how drained I felt afterward, like something had been scraped hollow inside me.

Yarrow listened without interrupting, her eyes never leaving the mark on my collarbone the whole time I talked. When I finished, she sat back slightly, her expression unreadable.

"That's a lot to wake up in three days," she said.

"Is that normal? For a mark like this?"

"No." She said it plainly, no hesitation. "Nothing about what you're describing is normal, not for a rejection mark. Not even for a real one."

"What do you mean, a real one?"

She didn't answer immediately. Instead she reached out, hovering her hand over the mark again, closer this time, close enough that I could feel a faint warmth radiating off her palm even though she still wasn't touching me.

"This isn't a standard rejection brand," she said slowly. "I've seen those before. They fade fast, they don't ache like this, and they definitely don't wake up with abilities that were sleeping in someone's blood."

"So what is it?"

"The Words of Unbinding." She said it like the words themselves carried weight. "I've only ever read about it. Never seen it used, not in my lifetime. It's not a rejection. It's meant to erase a bond completely, strip it out at the root so it can never exist again."

My chest tightened. "That's what he did to me?"

"Apparently. Or he tried to." She finally pulled her hand back, folding it into her lap, her expression settling into something careful, almost troubled. "The Words are supposed to be absolute. Once cast properly, there's nothing left of the bond to wake up again. No connection, no pull, nothing."

"But mine's still here. Whatever this is, it's still active."

"That's what's bothering me." She studied the mark one more time, her jaw tight, her breathing still shallow in that careful way it had been since she first leaned in close. "A finished casting doesn't leave room for power like this to surface. It doesn't leave threads dangling that something could still pull on."

"So it wasn't finished?"

Yarrow finally looked up at me, and whatever she'd been about to say a moment ago seemed to vanish, replaced by something more direct, more certain than the tone she'd used through the rest of the conversation.

"This wasn't finished," she said. "Whoever cast it stopped halfway through the words.”