her bed. She held on to his hips with her knees, taking the weight of him as they landed. He kissed her again—her face, her eyes, her throat—pushing pillows out of the way, knocking over everything in their path as they climbed higher across the mattress, their breath filling each other’s mouths. There was bumping, crashing, thumping, breaking—but none of that mattered. There was only the want. Joy could feel his kisses all over her body. Her leg snaked behind his knee, pulling him closer, tighter. He pressed against her, flattening the ripples of her shirt. She ran her hands along his ribs, sliding from his chest to his back to his shoulders. He kissed the side of her neck, her collarbone, her breastbone, her throat. He shook the dampness from his hair.
Joy squirmed. She couldn’t seem to get enough air to breathe. Her clothes felt uncomfortable, stuck to her skin. She pulled at her blouse, wanting more than anything to feel his bare skin against hers, lifting the hem in bunched fists. As he kissed her cheek, she turned her head and saw the pale, glowing slash on his wrist. It hit her like ice water.
“What...?”
Ink froze. He didn’t need to ask what she’d seen.
He gasped quietly into her hair, the sound of it deep in her ear, before he lifted himself up, turning his left hand over. The signatura looked like a jagged crescent moon.
“It’s a mark,” he said. Catching his breath, he swallowed. “Grimson’s mark.” He kissed her temple once, as if saying goodbye to the moment. “He lays claim on those who have murdered someone of the Twixt.”
Joy twisted beneath him, no longer burning with need. “Did Inq put it there?”
“It is her job,” Ink said. “It was my doing.”
“But...” She struggled to understand. “I thought marks were meant for humans? I didn’t think the Folk marked one another!”
Ink sat up, the muscles of his chest bunched and taut as if he were expecting a blow. He hung his head, ashamed. “You have seen Inq,” he said. “She is covered in marks, proof of her experiences. I think she likes to collect them like trinkets or boys, as if they might somehow tie her tighter to the world.” Ink touched the spot on his wrist as if he could feel its foreignness, someone else’s signatura on his skin. “That is what marks are for, of course—tying our two worlds together, keeping the magic that binds us alive with so much string.”
Joy traced the edge of his pinkie finger, not daring to touch the sigil. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “I know you and Inq mark humans for the Folk, but not why the Folk need to mark things in the first place.”
Ink turned his hand over, breaking her touch, and threaded his fingers together over his knee with a sigh.
“Imagine a dirigible,” he said.
“A what?”
He paused. “A hot air balloon,” he amended.
“Oh,” she said, tugging her plastered shirt away from her skin and leaning back on her pillow. “Okay.”
“The lines tether the balloon to the basket, or to the ship cabin. Without the ropes, the craft cannot steer or fly and the balloon will drift away, without direction. Both parts need to be bound to the other in order to sail the skies. Without strong tethers, each is lost.” He leaned back, pulling his arms taut and squeezing his knee. “So, signaturae are what tether us, binding our worlds together and us to one another. Sever the bonds or fail to have enough of them secured, and the Council fears our worlds will fly apart. We offer our True Names as a promise to uphold our auspice and keep the world’s magic alive.”
Joy hesitated, uneasy and uncertain. “A promise to who?”
Ink shrugged, a play of muscles and limbs. “To those who now exist beyond our reach,” he said. “And you know the Folk do not take promises lightly.” He sighed, and the mattress shifted beneath him. “In the beginning, the Folk claimed the land and a few mortal bloodlines as theirs, but since much of the land has been lost or damaged, the Folk needed to mark more humans—those who possess a bit of magic or fall under someone’s auspice.” Ink shrugged. “If someone survives a plane crash, that person can be claimed by whoever watches over survivors of the sky. If someone is lost in the woods—” he glanced at Joy, who swallowed back the bitter memory of wet leaves and burning flesh “—then that person might be claimed by the creature that rules there. And if someone intentionally kills one of the Twixt...” Ink’s voice hardened. “Then he shall bear Grimson’s mark forever.”
Joy stared at Ink. She barely breathed. This maudlin streak was unlike him, just as unfamiliar as his passionate crawl across her bed. It was as if his feelings had boiled to the surface, raw and unfamiliar, fresh and overwhelming, as if he’d never felt them before. And, she realized, he hadn’t—he hadn’t ever—not before he’d met Joy.
He had never taken a life or had another’s sigil mar his skin. He had told her as much when he’d gone after Briarhook. Inq had told Joy that she would be his very first kiss. His first lehman. His first love. His first heartbreak. Everything was firsts with Ink. Life was new—wonderful, disappointing, joyous, crushing—and he was feeling it all because of Joy. He’d once told her that he’d been proud of his purpose to safeguard his people; it was the reason that he and Inq had been created, after all. He could be counted on to protect the lives of the Folk—that was why they’d had to pretend to be lovers, to disguise the fact that he had made a mistake in marking Joy, because the Scribes had to be infallible, reliable, always. Their world, the world of the Twixt, depended on it. That integrity was his rock, the one thing he knew about himself, and now it was gone.
He stood up and crossed the room. Joy struggled to sit up. Her skin tingled. Her legs ached. The space on the bed was fast cooling and damp.
“I have always wanted to do good work,” he said, sliding the wallet chain through his fingers. “Yet I have also wanted to be more, and that was my failing.” Ink finally lifted his fathomless eyes to Joy—the hurt and confusion there was childlike and torn. “There is no greater loss than the loss of one of our kind, if only because we are so few.” His breath was coming shallow and fast. Joy felt she should do something, but didn’t know what. “As a Scribe, I was created to keep the Folk from harm—from human harm!—and now this.” His hands were open, helpless, exposing the stain on his wrist.
“Is this what it means to be more human, Joy?” His crisp, clean voice had a slicing edge. “I ended a universe of possibilities to save another universe of possibilities because I valued those more. Because that future was yours. Because you mean more to me than the life of someone I have never met who meant to do you harm.” He struggled with it, almost pleading; his chest heaved with the need to get the words out. He touched the space over his heart with hooked fingers, indenting the skin as if he could tear the feelings from his body.
“Do you understand?” he asked desperately. “I killed.”
The words fell like stones from the aether, heavy and burning. Even when she’d thought he’d murdered Briarhook for kidnapping her and burning his brand onto her arm, Ink had not killed him—he’d taken the giant hedgehog’s heart and placed it in an iron box. She’d seen Briarhook afterward with her own eyes, fighting in the battle against Aniseed with a metal plate welded to his chest—hideous, but alive.
But the blood-colored knight was dead.
She sat, stunned silent. She didn’t know what to do or say. She knew she could offer to erase Grimson’s mark but that Ink would hate it if she did. There were some things that could not be undone.
