The Rocklands, Lostwood

“Come—come with me. You know I’m, I’m right. You, you know Cintra is hiding things from us, keeping secrets, secrets.”

Cainan hated to look at his old friend in the way he was looking at her now, as though she’d gone mad, but he couldn’t help it. Sinna’s usually pristine white hair was a tangled mess upon her scalp, her fingers constantly rising to scratch at some invisible itch. Her silver dress was in disrepair, marred with thorns and brambles and dead leaves, as though she’d been crawling on hands and knees through the undergrowth. This was a woman who’d made a career out of controlling everything within her sphere, including her own expression, which was now a twisted shadow of what it had once been, one eye opened too much, the other narrowed to a slit, her lips a pale slash against her even paler skin. Her voice, usually so even and sharp, was a stuttering, frantic spew.

Her feet, which were bare, weren’t even touching the ground, a brazen and wasteful use of the Ability Narcissi’s godsblood afforded her. This was a woman he no longer recognized.

How she’d become this…this nightmarish version of herself was almost beyond Cainan’s understanding. Almost. “This is my fault,” he said, hating the truth in his voice. “I should’ve been there more. I’ve been…distracted.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Sinna said. “That’s not what I’m, I’m saying. You, you love her, so you, you should be with her. Why, why would a benevolent goddess forbid you, you from acting out of love, love?”

Her words were bordering on treason now, and the sooner Cainan extricated himself from the conversation, the better for all parties involved. Anyway, Cintra had already meted out Narcissi’s sentence: Sinna was to be exiled, forbidden from ever setting foot in the Rocklands again, her title of Sightless of the Forsworn stripped from her forever. It was brutal, heartless, and yet, Cainan knew, necessary. For Sinna Marin, once a revered member of the Forsworn, second in command amongst the Sightless after only Cintra herself, had become a terrific distraction to their righteous work. Several times she’d been warned against spreading her dangerous rhetoric, her conspiracies about secrets and lies, and her unwavering belief that they’d departed from the right path, following a trail that only led to wrongness.

It was absurd. Utter nonsense.

“I would eschew love for a million years to protect our goddess,” he said. “Now you must leave, Sinna. I cannot go with you. I will not go with you. Leave. Now. Go.”

Sinna stared at him, blinking as though in disbelief that the partner she’d worked with for more than eight decades could betray her. It wasn’t loss, or anger, or even sadness that he saw in her expression, which was exactly what scared him the most. It was a wildness, a chaotic swirl of thought that seemed to endlessly spin, tornadolike, through whatever was left of her shattered mind.