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He winced.
“Hurts, does it?” Her voice was cold but still raspy at the edges. He knew she had been screaming. Likely she still would be, if her voice and her will hadn’t finally given out. He thought her name was Evranin.
He clenched his jaw. “As I expected.”
“Your own fault,” she returned, “for letting them mark you.”
“I did not exactly—”
“Have a choice?” Her tone dripped contempt. “My congratulations to you today then, on finally making one. Should I say, better late than never?”
His teeth ground while Evranin worked her way across his shoulder blades, the prick of the needles delivered with a little more force than he thought necessary. But who was he to beg her for kindness? He knew what he was. He knew who she would rather be stabbing.
“I did not exactly let them,” he said with weary forbearance, “in that I chose it myself. I wanted to bear it.” He looked down at his forearms, emblazoned with the same star. She would get to them eventually, too; he wasn't sure how he would recognize himself after this, but wasn't that what he had wanted? To stop being what he was?
“Then you are nothing but a fool, and a dangerous one.”
“Well—yes.” He clenched his teeth again; the needles kept on dancing over his skin. “My loyalty was not coerced or mistaken. Unfortunately, I truly thought—well. I cannot say I thought they could never do—this. But I thought—I don’t know. I could not imagine doing otherwise.”
She snorted. His back had a brief respite while she dipped her needles in the mixture of soot and oil in the jar at her feet, but then she was back at it. He hissed through his teeth; she barked a laugh. “This is what hurts you, after everything?”
“You’ve mixed in something that burns,” he said, a little short of breath. “If you’re taking the opportunity to poison me—”
“If I were trying to burn you, you’d be in flames. And if the cool heads of Balar hadn’t prevailed, maybe you would be.”
“I am not even your enemy. Anymore.”
“We’ll see about that.” She jabbed him between the shoulder blades, over the rail of his spine. “I am doing this only because I was ordered to see that you not get yourself assailed on sight, walking around like a standard-bearer for our enemies. Whether your defection is sincere or just cowardly will remain to be seen.”
“It is both,” he said. “Sincere, because I cannot bring myself to kill anyone else for this wretched jewel. It is all in vain, all meaningless cruelty. It is cowardly in that I did not leave sooner.”
“Doriath was not enough for you.” It was reproach, not question. There had to be something in the dye she was using; it stung like hot coals, prickling over his skin. Tears smarted in his eyes. He bit his tongue.
“Doriath was terrible,” he managed. “I regret it. I do. Could you—just a little less pressure over the spine—”
“I was at Doriath,” Evranin said between jabs, “when you brought death there.” He wondered what she was doing to him, what new symbol or distorted wreckage she was making of that damned star. “And I lived. And I was here to face death again, and I lived. I watched the star-gem fall out of their grasp yet again, and I laughed while I wept.
“Did you ever even see it?” she went on. “Did you ever hold it? Do you even know what they were fighting for? I do. I held it. I wrapped it around a child’s neck and I watched that grown child holding onto it as the sea swallowed her.” Her voice was trembling, contorted into a growling thing. Fire smoldered on his back. She started a new line with her needles, down over his ribs. He gasped in a breath.
“Stay still,” she ordered. Her left hand curled around his bicep, holding him down. As her fingernails dug in he noticed the tattoos that snaked down her fingers, spiraling up toward her wrists. Delicate swirls and dots. He wondered if these too spoke of loyalty, or of ritual, memory, joy.
“What design are you making?” he asked her, finally.
“I’m not. It will always be obvious what mark you bore.” She traced its outline with a sharp fingernail, and he shuddered. “It would take more time and dye than I have to spare to disguise it completely. I am merely making it clear that what allegiance this once signified is broken.”
“So you’re just wounding me. For almost no reason at all.” He saw the mistake in the words even as he spoke them.
Evranin laughed, all air and no mirth. “Oh, horror! To think of wounding someone for no reason at all!”