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The wound is one you inflict.
Yes, Bren starts the fire: a bolt of flame, meant to strike enemies at a distance, brought clumsily, wrongly into close quarters. But you did not flinch or shield yourself, and you turn away the salve offered by the apprentice healer. When they observe the wound is not so deep, you snort. When they insist a few layers of this will make you pretty again, you laugh outright.
The three of you had a running joke, which only lasted as long as it did because Master Ikithon agreed. It was Bren’s job to be the pretty one.
The senior cleric comes around in the morning and sees still-bloody flesh, and her smile freezes when you insist the injury is unobjectionable as-is. She holds in the fury until well outside your earshot, except you have conjured a sensor to hear it. You do not trust them to discuss the injuries honestly to your faces; they softened as soon as they saw you and Eadwulf, mistaking you for children.
The apprentice does a poor job of explaining themselves, and the cleric rails against them. You take advantage of their mutual distraction and mage hand the keyring they have left unattended. While you have managed the divination, Eadwulf physically cased his side of the hospital last night and messaged you in the early morning, having identified the “good” potion cabinet.
What is the meaning of this, the cleric exclaims. Her cry rattles too loud in your sorry skull, a sudden stab of agony you can hardly explain to your healers. Upon identifying an ornate silver key that matches Wulf’s description of the cabinet lock, you cast invisibility and slink out to handle all this yourself.
Wulf broke your mirror a few months back, when he and Bren got a little ambitious with their positioning. Perfectly capable of keeping your clothes in order with prestidigitation, you never saw the point of replacing it.
So it is not until you step onto campus on Miresen morning that it sets in that others can see your mark too. You sit in your honors classes, now with twice the space to spread out your work, and feel the whole world’s horror focusing in upon you. Some students stare too long. Most take care not to look your way at all, keeping their distance by the same instinct that makes children flee monsters.
You are glad for this. You are sworn to protect them, but you watch their cloying, carefree joy and itch for your vials of poison. Whether you would feed your selection to yourself or to them remains an open question.
Trent Ikithon does not visit sickbeds. According to the rumors, Bren is once again his exception.
He did not visit yours, so the first time you face each other is in class. You have been summoned, though you cannot guess what else he would teach you.
When you arrive, the chairs are full, and he beckons you towards the front, to the place of a teaching assistant. The program has new students.
Without hiding it from them, Master Ikithon inspects you as if weighing a flawed diamond, determining whether it might still prove adequate for the spell at hand. He says nothing to you. He clears his throat and turns to address the class, all Soltryce first-years who know very well how you looked one week back.
“Our first demonstration,” he instructs evenly, as though he is simply translating one more passage of coded Undercommon. “Complacency is possibly the greatest danger in our field. Betrayal may strike from anywhere ...”
You do not hear, as your clever mind numbed itself before you even stepped into the room.
The morning after the first snowfall, Eadwulf wears his mother’s scarf. She sat outdoors all summer to see her work by the sun, bent over painstaking embroidery. The pattern is vanishing white on white: a plain block of featureless cloth unless you know precisely what to look for.
The Becks’ belongings were shipped to you too in the following weeks, and staring at the ungainly stack of boxes, you began to think Bren had the right idea with his fire. You targeted the boxes with every divination spell in your armory and then relocated them to an extra-dimensional space. You want for nothing, so there was no point in opening them.
You catch Eadwulf wearing a smile a few days later. You suspected it before, but there is no doubt now that he has found someone else. The Raven Queen enjoys all his spare time, and you must recognize an astute choice: enthroned beyond the Divine Gate, she might just be out of the Assembly’s reach.
Eadwulf stumbles to your door, a few days after that. Blood on his knuckles. Brandy and suude on his breadth.
A familiar sight. You let him in, and he pushes you to the wall, steps to a dance you thought abandoned. You thought the scar might have driven him off, through symbolism if nothing else, but instead his mouth lingers on it, laying out kisses in a methodical grid.
This gentle diligence of Wulf’s is familiar too. Hateful, because you have never once been its target.
The scar fades, hardening and settling into numbness. Flitting out of your grasp.
Sometimes you think about Blumenthal, and how your parents kept firm control of you as a child. Nothing in excess, only handprints, and at twenty-five, you realize that early discipline is how you have survived your life. It is why, against all odds, you’ve turned out alright.
Your first memory of Bren was second-hand: his mother exchanging stories with yours. This one decided to run off with a scythe, this morning, Mutter laughed. I had to shout and give her a lesson she’ll remember, and she pinched your cheek where it was still stinging from the imprint of her palm. And Una had laughed too, free and silvery, at how Bren’s been set on touching the stovetop for weeks. Leofric and I are in a constant race now, to scoop him up and pull him back to safety.
She should have let him touch the stove. Just once, so he’d learn.
The scar on your neck threatens to fade, so you press a witch bolt to it. Deadened nerves barely twinge in response, and you easily keep your concentration as you darken it by just a few shades. You focus the electricity into the barest shape of a handprint, like laying flowers at a grave.
There is a ghost in your living room, exquisite and dustless and unused.
Bren Aldric Ermendrud is haunting your living room. Reaching out. Offering fingertips to puckered skin.
You do not flinch.
His words seek to shame you, yet his touch cools, claiming the wound. Perhaps this is how the salve would have felt, if you had dared take it.
“Too many scars,” he says.
“I regret none of them.”
You have practiced these words well. You have practiced believing them.
“Except for one.”
Those last words escape against your will, like rope slipping from your grasp, burning as they go. Bren departs, oblivious to the tinder catching behind him.
The odd tiefling dominates you, amidst the smoke of the Blooming Grove. It is an addling charm, swirling your thoughts like a finger through paint.
Yet in that moment you see clearly that Ikithon was right, betrayal may strike from anywhere. From your fingertips lightning flies free.
Your mind is dominated, yes, but this wound is one you inflict. You hope it leaves scars.