Chapter 116: Mine to Contain

Kellan stared at them. "I made that worse."

Dario grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled him away. "At least we learned something."

"Not now."

"Agreed."

Marek let his Mark examine what Sareth was doing without opening any of his Scales.

Sareth’s route felt different from the one at the department store. Back then, he had used Laureen’s Gemini correspondence to reach the mirrors.

This time, Laureen was not involved.

The second gray Scale already contained a connection to Sareth, and somehow, Sareth was using that trace to reach Marek directly.

Marek could feel where the route pressed against the connection already in his custody. He focused on examining what Sareth was doing without allowing the trace to pull him any deeper.

A secret was not something Sareth could simply pick up and move. It existed because one person knew something another person did not.

That gap was what Scorpius Authority used.

Black Errancy had not given Sareth a different power. It had damaged the part of his Authority that should have kept those secrets contained, allowing them to spill into places and people they were never meant to reach.

Anything that left a trace could be dragged back into view, even when whatever returned no longer carried the context that had made the truth understandable.

The Scale pulsed again.

Sareth’s eyes lowered toward Marek’s shoulder. "Open it."

"No."

"You already carry my connection," Sareth argued.

Marek kept his hand over the Scale. "I carry the part you lost."

Sareth’s expression changed slightly.

The pressure against the gray Scale increased.

"Open it."

Marek felt the connection press against its boundary, but he refused to let it go any farther. "No."

"You think keeping it inside you makes it yours?"

"It makes it mine to contain."

Sareth’s smile thinned. "Containment does not make it yours."

"It doesn’t have to."

For the first time since appearing, Sareth stopped looking amused.

Rhovan glanced at Marek, and several civilians followed the movement without realizing they had done it.

Sareth noticed.

The black lines beneath the channel spread through the reflected windows, branching across the glass until each of them began curving toward Rhovan.

Gold erupted around him and flooded the shelter entrance with light. Several people recoiled and shielded their faces, but their attention did not leave him.

Marek and the others had already turned their attention to Rhovan, and the civilians followed without realizing it. Marek understood the problem a second too late.

Leo’s Authority could be strengthened through recognition. The more people accepted Rhovan as the center of a confrontation, the more strength his Mark could answer with.

Marek had already seen it happen before. At Cycle V, the Fabled Luminary, Rhovan became harder to push back once enough people recognized where the confrontation centered. His Authority did not create strength from nothing simply because people were watching him. Their recognition gave the Leo something more to answer.

Most of the civilians here knew none of that.

They did not need to.

They could see the gold surrounding Rhovan. They could see Marek and the six others reacting around him, and when something dangerous began spreading through the shelter, Rhovan was the one standing against it.

That was enough for more attention to settle on him.

However, Sareth did not try to break that recognition.

He used it.

The black lines along the windows shifted at once, each of them turning toward Rhovan. As more eyes settled on him, more lines followed.

Rhovan’s gold flared violently.

Then something went wrong.

The light that had been spreading outward suddenly bent back toward him. Rhovan’s body jerked as though the force surrounding him had turned from every direction at once, and one knee struck the concrete before his hand caught the ground.

"Rhovan!" Marek shouted.

Blood ran from his nose and fell between his fingers.

The reaction only made things worse.

People who had already been watching him stared harder when they saw him fall. More attention gathered around the wounded Leo, and the black lines responded immediately, pressing deeper through the same recognition that should have been strengthening him.

Marek reached him before he could drop any farther and caught his shoulder. "Rhovan."

"I noticed."

"You’re bleeding."

Rhovan ran his tongue over his lip and grimaced at the metallic taste. "That would explain the taste."

Marek ignored him and looked toward the windows.

Sareth’s voice came from every uncovered pane. "A center is only another place every witness agrees to see."

Rhovan tried to stand and failed.

His gold remained active, but every frightened glance toward him fed the same route Sareth had opened. The civilians were making it worse simply by waiting for Rhovan to fix what was happening.

"Stop looking at him," Marek said.

A few people obeyed. Most did not, because Rhovan bleeding on the floor was exactly the kind of thing frightened people could not stop watching.

Nadia understood before the rest of them and used Rhovan’s voice.

"Eyes down. Move away from the windows and keep your attention on the floor."

The command rolled across the shelter with enough familiarity that heads turned almost at once. Parents pulled children closer, and the volunteers who had frozen near the treatment area began guiding people toward the center aisle instead of staring at Rhovan.

The pressure around him weakened.

Rhovan took a deeper breath and looked up at Nadia. "That was disturbingly convincing."

"You can complain after you stop bleeding."

"I can do both."

The water in the channel opened wider before Nadia could answer, and the sound of it pulled Marek’s attention back outside.

This time Sareth was no longer only an image.

A human hand pressed against the concrete edge from inside the water as though the shallow channel had become the mouth of something much deeper. Fingers curled over the rim, followed by a forearm wrapped in dark fabric.

Marek felt the second gray Scale tighten beneath his shoulder.

Sareth Venn began pulling his physical body through.