Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(114)

“No,” I said, my voice steady. “First of all, we don’t know how all the memory trading has affected either of their currentgifts. We don’t even know if he can set Eijeh right anymore.”

“If there’s even a chance,” Akos said, “a chance to restore my brother, I have to—”

“No!” I pushed him back. “Look at what he did to me. Look at me!”

“Cyra—”

“This—!” I pointed to the side of my head. “All my marks—! Seasons of torture and trails of bodies and you want me to spare him? Are you insane?”

“You don’t understand,” he said urgently. He touched his forehead to mine and said, “I’m the reason Eijeh is the way he is. If I hadn’t tried to escape Voa . . . if I had just surrendered to my fate earlier . . .”

I ached.

Somehow it had never occurred to me that Akos held himself responsible for Ryzek unloading his memories on Eijeh. It had been clear to me that Ryzek would have found a reason to do that to Eijeh at one point or another. But all Akos knew was that Ryzek had inflicted that particular harm on Eijeh as a result of his failed escape.

“Ryzek was always going to do what he did to Eijeh, whether you tried to escape or not,” I said. “Eijeh is not your responsibility. Everything that has happened to him is Ryzek’s fault, not yours.”

“It’s not just that,” Akos said. “When we were taken from our house—it was because of me that they knew which kid to take, him or Cisi. Because I told him to run. It was me. So I promised my father, I promised—”

“Again,” I said, angrier this time, “Ryzek’s responsibility! Not yours! Surely your father would understand that.”

“I can’t give up on him,” Akos said, his voice breaking. “I can’t.”

“And I can’t participate in this ridiculous quest you’re on, not anymore,” I snapped. “I can’t watch you destroy yourself, destroy your life, to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Someone who is gone, and will never come back!”

“Gone?” Akos’s eyes were wild. “What if I had told you that you were beyond hope, huh?”

I knew the answer to that. I would never have fallen for him. I would never have turned to the renegades for help. My currentgift would never have changed.

“Listen,” I said. “I have to do this. I know you understand that, even if you can’t admit it right now. I need . . . I need Ryzek to be gone. I don’t know what else I can say.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, then turned away.

All the others were asleep. Even Akos, lying a few feet away from me on the ground near the ships. I, however, was wide awake with only my racing thoughts as company. I propped myself up on my elbow, and looked out at the bumps of renegades under blankets, the dying light from the furnace. Jorek was curled in a tight ball, his blankets drawn over his head. Teka was in a beam of moonlight that turned her blond hair silver-white.

I frowned. Just as a few memories began to surface, I saw Sifa Kereseth crossing the room. She slipped out the back door, and before I knew what I was doing—or why—I had shoved my feet into my boots and followed her.

She was standing just outside, her clasped hands resting on the small of her back.

“Hello,” she said.

We were in a rough part of Voa. All around us were low buildings with flaking paint, windows with bars twisted into decorative patterns to distract from their true purpose, doors hanging off their hinges. The streets were packed dirt instead of stone. Floating among the buildings, though, were dozens of wild fenzu, glowing with Shotet blue. The other colors had been bred out of existence decades ago.

“Of all the many futures I have seen, this is one of the stranger ones,” Sifa said. “And the one with the most potential for good and evil in equal measure.”

“You know,” I said, “it might help if you would just tell me what to do.”

“I can’t, because I honestly don’t know. We are at a murky place,” she said. “Full of confusing visions. Hundreds of murky futures spread out as far as I can see. So to speak. Only the fates are clear.”

“What’s the difference?” I said. “Fates, futures . . .”

“A fate is something that happens no matter what version of the future I see,” she said. “Your brother would not have wasted his time in trying to evade his fate if he had known that to be true, undoubtedly. But we prefer to keep our work mysterious, at the risk of it being too rigorously controlled.”

I tried to picture it. Hundreds of twisting paths unfolding in front of me, the same destination at the end of each one. It made my own fate seem even stranger—no matter where I went, and no matter what I did, I would cross the Divide. So what? What did it matter?

I didn’t ask her. Even if I thought she would tell me—she wouldn’t—I didn’t want to know.

“The oracles of the planets meet yearly to discuss our visions,” Sifa said. “We mutually agree on what future is most crucial for each planet. For this planet, my job—my only job, aside from recording visions—is to ensure that Ryzek leads Shotet for as little time as possible.”

I said, “Even at the expense of your son?”

I wasn’t sure which son I was referring to: Akos or Eijeh. Maybe both.