Chaghan and Qara had been enlisted to prepare Rin and Kitay for the ritual, which involved a tedious process of painting a line of characters down their bare arms, running from their shoulders to the tips of their middle fingers. The characters had to be written at precisely the same time, each stroke synchronous with its pair.
The twins worked with remarkable coordination, which Rin would have appreciated more if she weren’t so upset.
“Stop moving,” Chaghan said. “You’re making the ink bleed.”
“Then write faster,” she snapped.
“That would be nice,” Kitay said amiably. “I need to pee.”
Chaghan dipped his brush into an inkwell and shook away the excess drops. “Ruin one more character and we’ll have to start over.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Rin grumbled. “Why don’t you just take another hour? With luck the war will be over before you’re done!”
Chaghan lowered his brush. “We didn’t have a choice in this. You know that.”
“I know you’re a little bitch,” she said.
“You have no other choice.”
“Fuck you.”
It was a petty exchange, and it didn’t make Rin feel nearly as good as she thought it would. It only exhausted her. Because Chaghan was right—the twins had to comply with the Sorqan Sira or they would certainly have been killed, and if they hadn’t, Rin would still have no way out.
“It’ll be all right,” Qara said gently. “An anchor makes you stronger. More stable.”
Rin scoffed. “How? It just seems like a good way to lose two soldiers for every one.”
“Because it makes you resilient to the gods. Every time you call them down, you are like a lantern, drifting away from your body. Drift too far, and the gods root themselves in your physical form instead. That’s when you lose your mind.”
“Is that what happened to this Feylen?” Kitay asked.
“Yes,” said Qara. “He went out too far, got lost, and the god planted itself inside.”
“Interesting,” Kitay said. “And the anchor absolutely prevents that?”
He sounded far too excited about the procedure. He drank the twins’ words in with a hungry expression, cataloging every new sliver of information into his prodigious memory. Rin could almost see the gears turning in his mind.
That scared her. She didn’t want him entranced with this world. She wanted him to run far, far away.
“It’s not perfect, but it makes it much harder to lose your mind,” Chaghan said. “The gods can’t uproot you with an anchor. You can drift as far as you want into the world of spirit, and you’ll always have a way to come back.”
“You’re saying I’ll stop Rin from going crazy,” Kitay said.
“She’s already crazy,” Chaghan said.
“Fair enough,” Kitay said.
The twins worked in silence for a long while. Rin sat up straight, eyes closed, breathing steadily as she felt the wet brush tip move against her bare skin.
What if the anchor did make her stronger? She couldn’t help feeling a thrill of hope at the thought. What would it be like to call the Phoenix without fear of losing her mind to the rage? She might summon fire whenever she wanted, for as long as she wanted. She might control it the way Altan had.
But was it worth it? The sacrifice seemed so immense—not just for Kitay, but for her. To link her life to his would be such an unpredictable, terrifying liability. She would never be safe unless Kitay was, too.
Unless she could protect him. Unless she could guarantee that Kitay was never in danger.
At last Chaghan put his brush down. “You’re finished.”
Rin stretched and examined her arms. Swirling black script covered her skin, made of words that almost resembled a language that she could understand. “That’s it?”
“Not yet.” Chaghan passed them a fistful of red-capped toadstools. “Eat these.”
Kitay prodded a toadstool with his finger. “What are these?”
“Fly agaric. You can find it near birch and fir trees.”
“What’s it for?”
“To open up the crack between the worlds,” Qara said.
Kitay looked confused.
“Tell him what it’s really for,” Rin said.
Qara smiled. “To get you incredibly high. Much more elegant than poppy seeds. Faster, too.”
Kitay turned the mushroom over in his hand. “Looks poisonous.”
“They’re psychedelics,” Chaghan said. “They’re all poisonous. The whole point is to deliver you right to the doorstep of the afterworld.”
Rin popped the mushrooms in her mouth and chewed. They were tough and tasteless, and she had to work her teeth for several minutes before they were tender enough to go down. She had the unpleasant sensation that she was chewing through a lump of flesh every time her teeth cut into the