But, then . . . the wound closed. Teren saw it close, watched with his mouth agape as one side of the slashed flesh rejoined with the other, sealing shut. The pain disappeared.

Teren blinked at the sight. Then he tried slashing his wrist again.

Again, the wound bloomed with blood—before closing.

It can’t be. Teren tried a few more times, gritting his teeth at the pain and then in horror as the pain faded almost instantly. He cut himself more and more frantically, trying to spill more of his blood. But he couldn’t. Each time, the wound healed itself as surely as if it had never happened at all.

Finally, Teren flung the sword away. He collapsed at the feet of Sapientus, weeping. He couldn’t even end his life. He was cursed forever by the blood fever.

He stayed in the temple for another day. Then another. A few friends, other young apprentices, came to check on him. He pushed them away, refusing to answer their questions. He didn’t want to tell them the reason why he wouldn’t speak to them—that it was because he was no longer an equal, but a dog who dared to talk to a man. He didn’t want to speak because he was terrified of the horrible, secret power the blood fever had left with him.

The question haunted him every night he stayed in the temple. Why would the gods let him survive the blood fever marked and disgraced, and then take away the ability for him to end his life? What did they want him here for? Why were they forcing him to stay?

On his last night in the temple, he drove his fist down against the ground in frustration. To his shock, the marble of the floor cracked beneath his knuckles, leaving a hundred jagged lines in the stone. Teren stared, frozen. He held his hand up to the moonlight, observing that his knuckles had healed over and left no mark or injury behind at all.

The gods had made him an abomination—and then given him near-invincibility and strength.

Perhaps they have punished me for a reason, Teren thought. He knelt quietly before Sapientus for the rest of that night, thinking. The next morning, he left the temple.

Teren was sixteen in the third memory.

Though his father’s legacy shielded him from punishment, he’d been kicked out of the Inquisition Axis for being an abomination—but that still didn’t stop him from staying faithful to the crown, trying always to find some way or other to prove that he wanted to devote what little worth he had to serving the throne, to serving the gods.

So he scouted on his own, secretly helping the Inquisition root out malfettos without making himself known. He would follow those he suspected around the city, watching them talk and laugh with their families. Whenever he found a malfetto, he would creep to their door in the night and mark it with the Inquisition’s symbol. The Inquisitors didn’t know he did this, but they must have been grateful for his secret spying.

Then, one afternoon, he stumbled across an apothecary.

It was a charming, small shop, run by a white-haired old man and his cheerful daughter, a beautiful Tamouran girl with a quick smile and infectious laugh. Teren would stop by several times a week to watch them taking orders from customers. Something seemed off to him about the girl. Her name was Daphne. Sometimes, Teren would see her run deliveries in the city. She would take so many winding paths that he’d always lose her in the busy streets. When she returned to the apothecary in the afternoons, Teren would wonder where she had disappeared to.

Until he heard a rumor about a group called the Dagger Society, a supposed team of demonic malfettos with frightening powers not of this world. Apparently, Daphne used her father’s apothecary as a place where she would create pastes that would cover malfetto markings. She helped the Daggers and others paint over their markings. Teren thought that Daphne was the one responsible for keeping the Daggers hidden.

One night, Teren trailed Daphne as she left her father’s apothecary and made her way toward the University of Estenzia. What was a girl doing out at an hour like this? She disappeared for a long time at the university, but Teren finally found her in a narrow alleyway. She was exchanging words with a hooded figure and handed him a small satchel.

Teren reported her immediately. Several days later, the Inquisition came to take Daphne away. They dragged her to the Inquisition Tower not far from the piers—and even though he couldn’t see what happened to her, he knew what these soldiers did in the dungeons when they wanted to extract information from someone.

Daphne was supposed to burn at the stake. But she didn’t live long enough to make it out of the dungeons.

Later, Teren was summoned by the king of Kenettra and the young queen, Giulietta. Teren knelt before their thrones as the king praised his loyalty for identifying a traitor in their midst. The king reinstated him in the Inquisition, telling the public that Teren did not have a marking after all. That he was not a malfetto.

In that moment, Teren knew. He knew why the gods had chosen to keep him alive, why they had taken away his choice of dying.

He was an abomination sent here to rid the world of abominations, to stop those demons from corrupting the kingdom of Kenettra. He was meant to atone for his sins by protecting all that was pure and good.

This was his reason to live.

This was his reason, and now the gods have given him a chance to prove it.

I am the wind, calm and fierce and deep.

I am the soul of life, the howl of storms, the breath of sleep.

—Imodenna the Great, by Sir Elias Mandara

Adelina Amouteru

When we board our ship, Teren is still wearing his chains. We trust him only to the extent he has agreed to accompany us, but we know that won’t keep him from trying to attack us in our sleep. So he remains our captive, surrounded by guards at all times. As we sail from Estenzia’s harbor, he is the only one who remains belowdecks, chained in his bunk. I stand at the bow of the ship and try not to think about his presence under our feet. Sailing beside us is Raffaele’s Tamouran ship, gliding in unison through the waves. Magiano climbs up the mainmast and swings down with his usual ease. From the shore, I can still see Sergio on the pier with a troop of Inquisitors at his back, watching us go.