The Silver Mark

Chapter One — The Girl Who Learned Not to Cry

There were three things I had learned by the time I turned fifteen: never come home late, never argue with my stepmother, and, most importantly, never let anyone see you cry. The first two were rules my father had never actually said aloud. They were simply understood, the way most things in our house were. The third was mine. I had made it after the first time I cried in front of my stepsister and watched her smile as though my tears were the funniest thing she had seen all week. I hadn't made that mistake again.

Unfortunately, I was currently failing at all three.

The sun had disappeared behind the mountains by the time I reached the gates of the Everhart territory, leaving the sky washed in deep violet. A cold breeze slipped through the trees, carrying the familiar scents of pine, damp earth, and the river beyond the eastern border. I pulled my jacket tighter and shifted my schoolbag higher onto my shoulder, already knowing that I was late enough for my stepmother to have noticed. You forgot your lunch again, Vesper remarked lazily through our bond. “I didn't forget it.” You did. “I left it.” That is another word for forgetting. “I was distracted.” There was a pause before she added, By him. I stopped walking. “No.” You were. “I wasn't.” You stared at him for seven minutes. “I was observing.” You were staring. I rolled my eyes and continued toward home, trying not to smile. “You're unbelievably annoying.” You say that as though you didn't create me. “I didn't create you.” Then blame the Moon. “Gladly.”

Vesper made a satisfied little sound. She had been with me for as long as I could remember, although calling her a terrifying wolf was a rather generous description. She was small. Embarrassingly small. When the other girls in my year had shifted for the first time, their wolves had already looked impressive—broad shoulders, thick fur, long legs, powerful jaws. Vesper had emerged looking like someone had accidentally mixed a wolf with an unusually confident fox, with silver-grey fur, white paws, a narrow face, and ears that were slightly too large for her head. She insisted she was still growing. I had stopped believing her around thirteen. I am not small, she protested. “You are.” I am compact. “You lost a fight with a goose.” The goose was unusually aggressive. “You ran away.” Strategic retreat. “You climbed a tree.” Superior tactical position. “You couldn't get down.” There was a long pause. Temporary setback. I smiled despite myself. That was the thing about Vesper. She could make me laugh when almost nobody else could.

The smile disappeared when our house came into view. It stood at the end of the road, large and imposing, with dark stone walls and tall windows reflecting the last traces of sunset. It was the sort of house that made people assume everyone inside it was happy. I knew better. I slowed before reaching the front door, suddenly wishing I could turn around and keep walking until the territory disappeared behind me. We could run, Vesper suggested. I almost laughed. “Where?” Anywhere. “Very helpful.” I am full of solutions. “You're full of nonsense.” Also true. I opened the door.

Warmth greeted me first.

Then silence. Not ordinary silence. The dangerous kind. The kind that meant someone was waiting.

I closed the door carefully behind me and tried to make myself look less guilty than I felt. “I'm home,” I called, already knowing who would answer.

“Elara.”

My stepmother's voice came from the sitting room. I swallowed. “Hi.” Isolde appeared in the doorway, beautiful in the polished, effortless way that made people trust her immediately. Her dark hair was perfectly arranged, her clothes immaculate, and the delicate jewellery around her throat caught the warm light from the lamps. Her smile never quite reached her eyes. Her gaze travelled over me slowly, taking in my school uniform, the mud on my shoes, my untidy braid, and finally my hair.

I knew exactly what she saw.

The silver.

There had always been a few pale strands scattered through my dark hair, but lately there seemed to be more. I had first noticed them around thirteen. At first, I had assumed it was unusual pigmentation, something harmless that would eventually stop. Instead, the strands had slowly begun multiplying. Some days they looked almost white beneath sunlight, while under ordinary light they blended into the darker strands well enough to be ignored. Unfortunately, people rarely ignored things that made someone different.

Isolde's mouth tightened. “You're late.”

“I stayed after class.”

“Doing what?”

“Chemistry.”

“With whom?”

“My classmates.”

“Which classmates?”

I stared at her for a moment, genuinely unsure whether she expected me to produce a written report. “I know who they are. I just wasn't keeping a list.”

Vesper stirred inside me. That was sarcasm.

“I know.”

She doesn't like sarcasm.

“I know.”

I like it.

“I know.”

Isolde's expression hardened. “You always have to make things difficult.”

“I wasn't trying to.”

“You were.”

I lowered my eyes. “Sorry.”

My stepsister appeared behind her. Seraphine leaned against the doorframe, looking at me with the lazy amusement she reserved for things she considered beneath her. “Oh. She's finally home.” I said nothing. Her gaze immediately moved to my braid. “More silver.” My hand rose instinctively toward it before I forced it back down.

“Leave it,” I said.

“I didn't touch it.”

“You were going to.”

Seraphine laughed softly. “Why are you so defensive?”

“I'm not.”

“You are.”

Isolde sighed, clearly irritated by the conversation rather than by the person causing it. “Enough.” For half a second, I thought she was defending me. Then her attention returned to me. “Go upstairs and change. Dinner is at seven.”

I glanced toward the clock. “It's six forty.”

“Then you have twenty minutes.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Seraphine tilted her head, examining my hair again. “You should really do something about that.”

I didn't answer.

“People are starting to notice.”

“I know.”

“It's strange.”

“Seraphine,” Isolde warned, though there was little force behind it.

Seraphine smiled innocently. “What? I'm concerned.”

I picked up my bag. “I'm going upstairs.”

Nobody stopped me.

I climbed the stairs quickly, keeping my face blank until I reached my room. The moment the door closed behind me, I locked it and stood there with my back against the wood, breathing as though I had just outrun something. My hands were shaking, and I hated that more than anything. I hated how easily they could still do this to me. One sentence, one look, one careless comment, and suddenly I was thirteen again, standing in front of the bathroom mirror while Seraphine laughed because I had found another silver strand in my hair.

Breathe, Vesper reminded me, her voice quieter now.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to slow down. “I'm fine.”

You aren't.

“I will be.”

I opened my eyes and looked around the room.

Cleaning had become my answer to things I couldn't control. When my thoughts became too loud, I cleaned. When my chest tightened, I organized. When someone said something that stayed with me long after they had forgotten it, I found something—anything—that could be put back into its proper place. It was easier to straighten a crooked book than to straighten a thought. Easier to wipe dust from a desk than to erase something someone had said. Objects behaved predictably. People didn't.

I dropped my schoolbag beside the desk and immediately noticed that one of my books was slightly out of place. I moved it. Then another. A pen sat crooked beside my notebook, so I aligned it with the edge of the desk. My blanket was folded unevenly, and I fixed that too. Vesper watched the entire process without saying anything until I reached for the cloth beside the window.

You're cleaning again.

“So?”

You're stressed.

“I like things clean.”

You alphabetized your notebooks yesterday.

“That was necessary.”

You cleaned the window at midnight.

“It had fingerprints.”

Those were your fingerprints.

I paused with the cloth in my hand.

“You are remarkably judgmental for someone who once lost a fight with a goose.”

The goose incident was classified.

I laughed quietly.

The sound faded as quickly as it came.

My gaze moved toward the small wooden box sitting at the back of my desk.

The pendant.

I hadn't touched it since the previous night.

I reached for it.

The silver chain slid into my palm, cool and familiar. The pendant itself was simple, an old silver setting holding a pale stone that seemed almost colourless unless it caught the light. My father had given it to me when I was six, telling me only that it had belonged to my mother.

That had been the beginning and end of the conversation.

My mother.

The woman whose face I knew only from photographs.

The woman who had died giving birth to me.

I sometimes wondered what she had been like. Whether she had my eyes. Whether she had liked books. Whether she had laughed loudly or quietly. Whether she would have loved me.

The last question was the one I never allowed myself to answer.

I turned the pendant over in my hand.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the stone warmed.

I frowned.

The warmth increased gradually, spreading from the pendant into my palm. I stared at it, waiting for something else to happen, but the sensation disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

“Did you feel that?”

Vesper was silent.

“Vesper?”

Yes.

Her voice no longer carried any amusement.

I looked toward the mirror.

For a brief second, I thought the silver strands in my hair looked brighter than they had before.

Then the light shifted.

They looked ordinary again.

I closed my fingers around the pendant and slipped it beneath my shirt before anyone could knock.

From downstairs, my stepmother called my name.

I looked at the clock.

Six fifty-eight.

Two minutes until dinner.

I took one final breath, opened my bedroom door, and stepped back into the hallway, unaware that the strange warmth beneath my collarbone was only the beginning of something that had been waiting far longer than I had been alive.