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“No,” he said, hiding the mark when he curled his hand around his cup. “It’s nothing.”
“I thought we agreed no more secrets.”
Lorik’s lips pressed together, and he gave a self-deprecating smirk. “You’re right.”
Then with a small moment of hesitation, he slid his wrist across the table and showed me.
Whether made by ink or magic, it was an intricate black symbol, resembling a shield, though at its very center there were words written upon it. In Kelvarian? I didn’t recognize it.
I got a strange feeling as I looked at it, and I met Lorik’s eyes. “What is it?”
His nostrils flared. He studied me carefully and then said, “It’s a crime mark.”
Suddenly, I understood what he meant. The Shade…Lorik had looked at his wrist after he’d killed him.Crimes, he’d said when he’d seen the markings. I remembered the flash of disgust I’d seen on his face, and I wondered what crimes the Shade had committed.
Dread pooled in my belly.
“What does it say?”
“Oath breaker,” he told me, taking his wrist back and tugging his sleeve down to shield it from my sight. He picked up his cup in that hand and took a long swig of his hot tea.
“Your blood oath,” I whispered, the color draining from my face. The one I’d forced him to break. “Tell me what it means for you.”
“Kelvarians are held to laws bound in honor. Every crime is marked on our skin like a tally. A shameful history, for all to see. Theft is one marking. Murder is three. Every Kelvarian is onlyallowed three markings, three chances…then you are sentenced to death or the land of the Shades by public trial.”
Horror clawed up my throat. “What?”
“It seems strict perhaps to an Allavari,” he murmured, “but the system works for the Below.”
“But you’re…you’re the Below King’s Hunter,” I said.
“Even the Below King is not above Kelvarian law,” he told me. “Even the Below King has a crime mark of his own.”
My lips parted.
“And…and how many more do you get before…”
“Oath breaker,” he repeated, staring down at the now-concealed mark, “normally counts as two markings against me. But mine was in service to the Below King, and so it was judged during the trial to only count as one. I have two chances left before…”
Tears sprung into my eyes. “It’s not fair,” I whispered.
Lorik took my hand again. “Nothing ever is, little witch. This isn’t your fault.”
“It is!” I said angrily. “How can you say it’s not?”
“Because I knew that it was very likely I would need to break my blood oath when the Below King tasked me with this. I went into this knowing that. You were never going to give me the hive heart with no explanation, and I didn’t want to lie to you anymore, Marion.”
“I wish you had!”
Gods…death? Or the land of the Shades—whatever that meant! Just the thought of Lorik no longer being a part of this world made mine feel like it was falling apart.
And that should’ve been my first clue that I was falling in love with the Kelvarian male who’d stolen a lot more than the hive heart.
“I’ve gone this long without a crime mark, Marion,” he said. “By the trial’s mercy, it is not so dire as it could’ve been.”
“Because you helped saved your people,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t have been marked at all.”
“No,youhelped save my people,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
