been
beckoning to him with love on her face, drawing him forward down a hall. The kindness she'd
offered had been as warm and soft as skin, as soothing as calm water, as sustaining as the
sunlight he no longer knew.
Still, though he might feel no remorse, he did blame himself for the fear and anger in her face
when she'd come to. Thanks to his mother, he'd gotten a nasty look at what it was like to be
forced into something, and he'd just done the same thing to the one who'd saved his life.
Shit. He wondered what he would have done if he hadn't gotten that vision, if he hadn't had his
curse of seeing the future speak up. Would he have left her there? Yeah. Of course he would
have. Even with the word mine running through his head, he would have let her stay in her
world.
But the fucking vision had sealed her fate.
He thought back to the past. To the first of his visions…
Literacy was not of value in the warrior camp, as you couldn't kill with it.
Vishous learned to read the Old Language only because one of the soldiers had had some
education and was in charge of keeping some rudimentary records of the camp. He was sloppy
about it and bored by the job, so V had volunteered to do his duties if the male taught him how to
read and write. It was the perfect exchange. V had always been entranced by the idea that you
could reduce an event to the page and make it not transitory, but fixed. Eternal.
He'd learned fast and then scoured the camp for books, finding a few in obscure, forgotten
places like under old, broken weapons or in abandoned tents. He collected the battered, leather-
bound treasures and hid them at the far edge of the camp where the animal hides were kept. No
soldiers ever went there, as it was female territory, and if the females did, it was just to grab a
pelt or two for making clothes or bedding. Further, not only was it safe for the books, it was the
perfect spot for reading, as the cave ceiling dropped to a low height and the floor was stone:
Anyone's approach was instantly heard, as they'd have to shuffle about to get near him.
There was one book, however, that even his hidden place wasn't secure enough for.
The most precious of his meager collection was a diary written by a male who'd come to the
camp about thirty years prior. He'd been an aristocrat by birth but had ended up in the camp
being trained due to family tragedy. The diary was written in beautiful script, with big words
that V could only guess the meanings of, and spanned three years of the male's life. The contrast
between the two parts, the one detailing events prior to his coming here and the one covering
afterward, was stark. In the beginning, the male's life had been marked with the glorious passing
of the glymera's social calendar, full of balls and lovely females and courtly manners. Then it all
ended. Despair, the exact thing Vishous lived with, was what tinted the pages after the male's life
changed forever just after his transition.
Vishous read and reread the diary, feeling a kinship with the writer's sadness. And after each
reading, he would close the cover and run his fingertips over the name embossed in the leather.
DARIUS, SON OF MARKLON
V often wondered what had happened to the male. The entries ended on a day when nothing
particularly significant occurred, so it was hard to know whether he'd died in an accident or left
on a whim. V hoped to find out the warrior's fate at some point, assuming he himself lived long
enough to get free of the camp.
As losing the diary would make him bereft, he kept it in the one place where not a soul tarried.
Before the camp settled herein, the cave had been inhabited by some manner of ancient human,
and the prior inhabitants had left crude drawings on the walls. The hazy representations of bison
and horses and palm prints and single eyes were considered curses by the soldiers and were
avoided by all and sundry. A partition had been erected in front of that portion of the walls, and
though the artistry might have been painted over in its entirely, Vishous knew why his father
didn't do away with them. The Bloodletter wanted the camp off balance and edgy, and he taunted
soldiers and females alike with threats that the spirits of those animals would possess them or
that the eye images and handprints would come to life with fire and
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