Chapter 7 Dahvid Tin’vori

It began with blinding brightness.

Dahvid shielded his eyes as he walked into the room. The door closed behind him with a muted click. Everything around him dripped with cleansing magic. A pearl-white layer that looked like false snow. The room was furnished with a single table, set at the very center. Dahvid quietly stripped out of his clothes. He covered himself with a towel, then lay down on the table. Everything around him—the cushions and cabinets and walls—looked eerie for their lack of color, almost dreamlike. Once he was settled and his eyes were closed, the spell began.

He could feel layers of dirt peeling off his skin. It always felt nice. At first. But then the magic would dig deeper. He gritted his teeth against that sharpness. He knew the pain was necessary. He'd visited cleansing rooms since he was five years old. Any time a new tattoo had been chosen for him. The part of his body that would house the magic needed to be a perfectly blank canvas. There was dirt, of course, that might make his skin less receptive, but there was also dormant magic. Residual traces that the naked eye could not detect. Removing that layer always felt like having hairs ripped from his body with hot wax.

Pain,his father's voice reminded him, is a road to power.

Dahvid tried to keep his breathing steady. Eventually the claws of the magic retracted. The cleansing spell faded. His chest rose and fell. When he opened his eyes, the room had lost its dreamlike color. The table beneath him was normal, gray stone. The cabinets and the door were a matching bronze. Cath didn't bother knocking as she entered.

"Ready?"

"For you? Always."

He loved how easily she blushed. How she came to his side without hesitation. Even as a boy, he'd grown accustomed to startling others. Living life as a spectacle. Image-bearers were, by their very nature, eye-catching. Most people had treated him as something to be enjoyed at a distance, like a painting on a museum wall. In truth, his magic wasn't all that different from other branches. More powerful, perhaps. Not sourced from government warehouses like most. But that didn't stop the majority of people from thinking of him as something dangerous or exotic.

Cath had spotted him across the room at a tavern in Peska. Before he and his sister had decided to come to Ravinia. All of the tattoos had lured her over. She'd joined them for a drink, and then a second. Sometimes it felt like she'd sat down that night and simply decided to stay for good. He thought he loved her, but there was no one left to tell him what love was supposed to feel like.

Now Cath leaned over him, carefully repositioning his arms and legs for the morning's work. She let her nails trail playfully along one thigh before turning to unpack her equipment. He tried not to shiver, but goose bumps spread from the place she'd grazed. It felt so boyish, this lack of control. The two of them had been together for nearly a year now. He'd assumed that he would grow accustomed to her and all the impulses she drew out of him. The opposite had occurred. All this time, and he felt more in her power than ever.

"Calm down, dear," Cath said, arranging her supplies. "We only have the room for an hour, and it's not going to be that kind of hour.…"

Dahvid scowled at her, adjusting his towel. He fixed his eyes on the ceiling. A mirror hung there. He saw his entire body reflected back like a painting. All the tattoos he'd gathered over the years stood out, bright on his pale, muscled frame. His body existed as a living, historical record. Three different artists had made their marks on him over a little less than two decades.

His eyes drifted to the first tattoo. On his right wrist, a sword that shimmered with light. Martha had drawn it. His father had hired the artist when Dahvid was just five years old. He still found it remarkable that he'd been permitted to summon a weapon at that age.

Martha's second drawing sat on his right shoulder. Three golden circles, overlapping in such a way that the eye could not tell where one began and the other ended. She'd etched that just before Dahvid learned to hate her. Before he was old enough to understand that the way she treated him was not tough love but a pattern of abuse. It was particularly ironic, because the golden circles she'd drawn remained one of his best protective spells.

Her third tattoo was the smallest one. A reflection of their shrinking relationship. The slender glass vial stood out on his right thigh, frothing with golden elixir. Designed as a protection against poisons. Smart, he supposed, for one of the heirs to a major house. He'd learned how to use the spell's power for quick healing in recent years. Far more useful to him. No one cared enough about nameless gladiators to actually poison them.

That was where Martha's drawings ended. He remembered finally feeling brave enough to walk into his father's study. How smoke had drifted in the air between them like a haze. Ware had stood a few steps behind Dahvid. His older brother's presence was the only reason he managed to speak in a steady voice. He told his father how Martha used pain to demonstrate her control over him. How easily she'd blurred the lines between discipline and abuse. His father had watched him with an unreadable expression. When Dahvid finished, the man crossed the room and cupped his son's chin in one hand.

"Why didn't you tell me? Did you think I would not protect you?"

In the years since, Dahvid had forgotten so much of his father. All the little details that made a person more than just a memory. He would never forget the fierceness in his expression that day.

"You are my son. I would fight the tides for you. I would rip the moon from the sky. Mark my words, boys." He had looked back and forth between them. "The two of you—and your sisters—there is nothing I would not do to keep the four of you safe."

Dahvid never saw Martha again. As a boy, he'd assumed she'd been dismissed. Thinking back on his father's words—the fury buried in each syllable—he was less certain of her fate now.

As Martha's work ended, Ware's began. His brother had always been a fine artist, but he'd secretly been training to replace her. The proposal was accepted by their father, who liked the idea of his boys working so closely together. Ware was born a dreamer. Bringing strange spells to life through Dahvid suited the creative in him. Their first successful tattoo was the scarlet traveler—the one piece of art that caught everyone's eye.

The flower stretched from chin to lower chest, petals unfolding in the imagined sunlight. It was a credit to Ware that it still housed Dahvid's most devastating spell. Their second tattoo together was less useful. It ran down one bicep: a flock of birds taking flight. They looked like silhouettes against the pale sky of his arm. A natural choice for two boys who'd always pretended that they could fly as children. Even after years of training, the spell hurt more often than it helped.

Ware's final tattoo remained a mystery. Dahvid saw the edges of the image, beginning on his right hip, circling before vanishing onto his back. He never looked at it for long. He had never activated its magic, no matter how tempted or desperate. Ware had finished the tattoo and promised to explain how to use it. He never got the chance, because that same night the Broods killed him.

Dahvid closed his eyes. He heard swords scraping overhead. He smelled smoke as it started to filter down into their hiding place. He felt fear. Followed by cowardice. Then a sharp tug on his arm.

"Don't go there," Cath whispered. Her voice echoed in the small room. "You're thinking about your sister again. Stay with me, dear. There's nothing you could have done."

He stared back at her until his heart stopped thrashing in his chest. His hands had balled into fists. Slowly, he let his fingers uncurl. He hadn't been thinking of Ava, and he felt guilty for not thinking about her enough. His youngest sister. As lost to them now as the others.

Before his mind could stumble down those darker trails, his eyes sought out the newest tattoos. They always comforted him, because they were not drawn by a ghost. Each one had been created by Cath.

Martha's work had produced efficient, useful spells. Nothing that a wand couldn't summon. Ware possessed a rare ability to create images of great depth, which produced magic to match. Cath was more of a trickster god. Her artistic power rested in creativity and wickedness. All three of her spells had quietly become favorites.

On his left bicep, there were the twins. Two imps expelling mirrored blasts of frosty wind from their puffy cheeks. She'd also drawn the delicate rope that circled his left wrist. The pattern almost looked like it was weaving in and out—writhing over his skin—if he stared at it for too long. Finally, there was a perfectly drawn circle centered on his upper abdomen. A simple design that resulted in an equally simple but clever magic. Today, Cath would try for her fourth tattoo.

Again.

"What attempt is this?" she asked.

"It's our seventh try," Dahvid replied. "It will work this time."

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

He winced. That was one of Cath's only rules. Her life—at least from what he'd gathered—was full of little, broken promises. She'd made a point of calling out the quickness of his words early on in their relationship. He had a natural tendency to boast. A brashness that manifested from him. He knew it was a habit he'd learned from his father and his older brother. After all this time with Cath, he knew better than to claim something he could not actually guarantee.

"I am hopeful that it will work."

Cath nodded, bending over him. "You know what they say about hope."

"What?"

"It's the brightest bird in the sky and thus the easiest to kill."

Without further warning, she stabbed him. Just a pinprick, but the first one always jolted through his system. She moved methodically from there, poking and shaping and stretching his skin. He felt the area they'd chosen starting to go numb long before she even reached for the dyes. He truly was hopeful. Failure was so common. Not every image worked. His skin was receptive to magic, but it was a fickle judge of which spells were worthy.

Over the years, he'd learned his own opinion had no sway. It didn't matter how much he willed it to work. Sometimes, the more he craved the power of a particular spell, the less likely it was that the tattoo would survive the first usage. Martha had wasted a countless number of tattoos. It had been so painful to go through each etching as a child, only to watch the image fade from his skin the first time he activated the spell.

Cath hummed a song. Dahvid clenched his jaw against the occasional spikes of pain. He let out a ragged breath when she finally switched instruments. Slowly an image was taking form. A speckled hart that wrapped around his left thigh. Its head was raised. Two piercing eyes stared into the imagined distance. Only half the creature's head was antlered. Where the other half should have been—there was an echo, no more than shadows. Dahvid found himself staring into the hart's dark eyes, mesmerized.

"I am nearly done," Cath said. "Are you ready?"

This part was all superstition. Some believed a tattoo needed to be activated immediately. Others thought a year should pass, allowing it to sink properly into the skin. One could attempt the magic while holding a certain spice in their right palm. And of course, never activate it during a full moon. Countless methods, but Dahvid had not found any of them to be more certain than the next. Instead, he patiently watched Cath and waited for her signal. She finished a stroke, blew on the spot, and then set her instrument down.

"Now."

"Back up," he whispered. "All the way to the corner."

She moved obediently, clearing a space for him. Dahvid looked once more at the tattoo, taking in its beauty—imagining the possibility they'd discussed. He set aside desire and greed and all his other emotions. Reduced his thoughts to function and form. After a long breath, he took his feet. The cloth fell away. Dahvid settled into a fighter's stance. Magic flexed in the air around him—ready and waiting. He did not need a vessel. He was the vessel.

"Come on then."

With one fingertip, he grazed the hart's antlers. Magic hummed to life. He grunted against the onrush of power. It set his teeth on edge, raised the hairs on both arms. Dahvid ignored the discomfort and pressed that magic forward—forced it into being. He felt the weight of his creation a moment before he saw its reflection in the overhead mirror.

A great helmet crowned his head. Knife-sharp antlers extended out of one side. Shadows dripped out of the other. His eyes were no more than bright slits peering out from the forest-green, plated front of the armor. Dahvid could not help grinning. It looked wild and wicked. He cracked his neck, settled his feet once more, and pushed the magic a step further.

From form to function. The helmet's power hummed. A vibration that ran down his shoulders, his spine, through his legs. He was about to attempt the fullness of the spell when he heard it. A vague ripple became a resounding crack. Cath let out a cry as the helmet snapped in two. As if it had suffered a direct blow from an axe. Dahvid could only brace for impact as the material fell from his head. It crashed onto the floor, rattling for a moment, then dusting into inexistence.

The magic slipped away. His chest heaved breathlessly. He looked down and watched helplessly as the tattoo—all its bright colors and lovely details—vanished from his skin.

His eyes cut back to Cath. He already had words of comfort ready. They'd been through these failures so many times. But for a brief moment, she hunched over. A stray antler had broken off from the helmet. Launched across the room like an arrow. He saw it had pierced her stomach, deep and centered. A clear deathblow. There was a strange bruise on her throat. A great thicket of black-and-blue skin. There were smaller gashes on her thigh, her upper arm. Blood was pooling out. Cath's hands pressed to the wound, but nothing could staunch the flow.…

He blinked and there was no blood at all. Only Cath, whole and well, pacing the room with a thousand curses springing from her lips. He knew how hungry she was to get the tattoo right. Like Nevelyn, she believed this would be the tattoo that made the difference between surviving what was to come and dying an inglorious death. She believed she was leaving him vulnerable without it. Dahvid kept staring until he was certain the blood and the wound had been in his mind. All of it imagined.

"We will try again," he said.

There was the slightest tremor to his voice. He had not completely shaken that image of her away. It took effort to steel his thoughts again, before Cath noted the change.

"Again. Next week."

He kissed her forehead as she began packing up the materials. An attendant had appeared at the door. They would not be allowed a second more than what they paid for. That was how Ravinia worked. Everything a transaction. Everything at a price. Dahvid let Cath walk in front of him. The place where the tattoo had been was bright red and raw. He ignored the pain as they left but could not help pausing on the threshold. He looked back to where Cath had been standing. There was blood on the floor. A speckled pattern.

When the attendant activated the cleansing spell, however, the room took on its familiar white sheen. No matter how hard Dahvid stared—he could not see the blood. It was gone.

Never there at all.