Page 19 of Possession

Anxiously, I spot Silva taking a pair of scissors out of his jacket pocket. They’re sharp, long, and as silver as his eyes. All I can do is watch, frozen with terror, as he approaches the couch and leans down in front of me.

“Let’s get that off of you,” he says pleasantly.

Confused, I follow his gaze to my wrist, where a white identification bracelet stays wrapped. I hold out my arm silently.

His cold fingers brush against my skin as he reaches down to snip the plastic off, and it falls uselessly onto the couch beside me. I stare at the bracelet, rubbing the skin it abandoned. It’s been on me since the beginning of our imprisonment, and it feels wrong not to have it on. I already miss it on my skin.

“Well,” Silva says as he sits on a couch opposite my own. The stranger looms behind him, muscular arms crossed, and I try not to stare. He obviously doesn’t like me, though I’m not sure what I could have done to offend him so much.

“Well…” I say awkwardly, drifting off as Silva crosses one leg over the other and leans back, resting his arms on the frame of the couch. Again, I catch a brief glimpse of ink on his skin, but a glimpse is all it is. I can’t make anything out, but if the paintings are anything to go by, it’s probably of some girl screaming.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I brought you here,” begins Silva. His eyes on me are patient, even kind, and for all intents and purposes I should feel reassured, but that silver color is too uncanny. I have the thought to rush at him and knock his nose with the back of my hand, and suddenly the presence of the second man makes sense.

“Yes,” I say and tuck my feet even further under my legs. I cross my arms, too, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to hide my skin from him. I feel like he’ll devour anything in sight.

“Oh!” he says abruptly. “I never asked if you were hungry. Do you want anything? Something to drink? Water, tea, wine?”

Does he want to drug us?

No, says Aris, amused.

I clear my throat. “No thank you,” I say, despite Aris’ answer.

“You are old enough to drink wine, yes?” says Silva.

I say nothing for a moment. I have the feeling that this man knows absolutely everything about me. At the very least, he knows my age.

Clever girl.

Is he just toying with me? I ask, but Aris doesn’t respond.

“Yes,” I say aloud, to make conversation and because he’s still staring at me. “My birthday was last month.”

“Oh, how pleasant. I suppose they didn’t let you have a party,” sighs Silva.

I start to tell him that it’s fine, that I’ve gotten used to it, even though that’s a pathetic thing to say, but I realize in time that he doesn’t actually care.

“Why am I here?” I ask.

The older man tilts his head, and his smile suddenly seems a little more strained. “I like a straightforward person. All right, I’ll be straight with you. You’re here because I know that the great god of chaos is inside you.”

I shift in discomfort. I’ve never heard Aris called “great” before.

“I’m part of a… group I suppose you could call us, which has honored the true high powers through offerings and service for many years.”

The true high powers—plural?

Aris? I prompt, but there’s no answer

“When Dark Aris made his arrival known three years ago, we attempted to contact him to offer ourselves. Unfortunately, he was trapped before we had the chance to communicate. Since that very day, we’ve been working on a way to free the high deity Aris, and today, we finally accomplished that task.”

Silva leans forward then, eager. “Of course, my group is large, and our followers are very excited to meet the object of our long labors. A good deal wanted to meet you today, but we decided it would be best for a smaller reception. We didn’t want to overwhelm the host.”

What a strange way to refer to me, given that he knows my name.

Hm, says Aris, thoughtful. Again, I wonder what goes on in his mind, what he’s hearing. I’m left to make sense of this on my own.

Before I was taken away, I’d never heard of a group like Silva describes, so either they’re some kind of secret society, or newly formed. Silva did say that they’d been worshiping Aris for a while now, and they had the resources to infiltrate the mages and free us, so they must be fairly rich and powerful, or at least have magic of their own.

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