Wystwood

43. Crowned in the sea

Scarlet spiderwebbed across the fox-seer's palm, seeping from the dagger's hilt and forking up her wrist. Welts and blisters bubbled beneath the iron, her flesh cauterising before blood could simmer to its surface. The scent of charred meat singed the air, more rancid than the smell of Little Crestbury's butcher shop in the dead heat of summer.

But most terrible of all was her screaming. Each cry didn't leave space enough to echo, piercing through the cave and into its tunnels beyond, unending and unrelenting, without even a breath to break it. Despite her rotting finger no longer pointing at Ada, the young woman couldn't force her feet away, the wailing breaching her thoughts. Raeph, too, stood paralysed, but his face was shattered in an expression torn between horror and stomach-turning disgust.

The snake-seer howled in time with her sister, fingers clawing at her scaled jaw and eyes tightly shut. But she stayed by the cauldron, her panic overpowered by an eagerness for whatever was yet to come. Only the bird-seer remained calm, and when her sister's screams reached a shattering climax, her wrinkled hand shot out across the churning water and caught Ada's fingers within a cage of her own.

The old fae's broken nails barbed into Ada's hand with surprising strength, and her mind jolted back into her body as the seer wrenched her fist open. Candles quivered out as the fox-seer's screaming tapered, and she thrust the iron blade down into Ada's flesh.

Ada had been cut before. At the age of four, a healer in town had scored her arm for the cowpox vaccination, and she had wept for the five hours that followed. At twelve, her kitchen knife had missed its target, and she had scarred her finger with an angry ribbon that had softened over time. But nothing compared to how the seer now pressed the blade deep into her hand, iron slitting through skin as though it were silk. A matching slash ruptured Ada's vision, burnishing the world from a dull umber to a deathly crimson.

She cried out, tears welling up in her eyes as blood burst up from the gash. Her palm was split by a river of red, and its tides were fast and seething. Scarlet streams ran down her wrist and into the cauldron below, the first drop alone tinting its waters rosy. Ada heard the iron dagger thud to the earth, the fox-seer's screams dying with her own, both their throats left raw and ragged. She thought Raeph may have shouted something, but couldn't hear the word as the bird-seer ran a nail around her open flesh and a rushing filled her ears.

"You may ask your question, human," said the seer, her voice a whisper through the darkness now seeping into Ada's sight.

Her mind was quaking, thoughts refusing to flow together as she waded through her half-sunken consciousness. The words tumbled from her lips, small and fragile things. "Who is the Saltsworn?"

Satisfied, the bird-seer flung Ada's hand away. She stumbled back, velvet cloak sticking to the sweat sheeted across her arms. Raeph caught her before she could fall, his hands clamping around her waist as Ada's cheek met his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, each pulse matching the throbbing in her hand. It was a gentle noise, one that was at odds with his taut arms and rigid grip.

Behind them, the bird-seer brought her fingers, still stained with Ada's blood, up into the final slant of fallen sunlight. Her soaked skin shimmered as if she wore a glove fashioned from scarlet satin, and as the light was lost to dusky shadows, she plunged her hand into the boiling cauldron. Her sisters followed, the fox-seer hissing as her burnt palm hit the water. The three fae pooled their concoction within a mesh of fingers and then brought it to their lips.

They drank deeply, going back again and again, with quicker tongues and greedier hands each time. Their cheeks swelled and their necks fluttered with every mouthful, as though they hadn't drunk in years. Trails of bloody water ran down their lips and dribbled from their chins, drips and drops spotting the stalagmites carmine.