It has been six years since Eden Tudor was formally inducted into the prestigious ranks of the Sentinels, but sometimes he wishes that he had never left his hometown of Everfall.

This wish is even more prominent now, when his best friend hands him an instrument of torture. It's a long, sharp, pronged thing, designed to grab hold of flesh and twist and cut until only bone remains. His comrades call it an answer. His best friend calls it a solution. But to Eden, it's brutal. Deadly. Singing, horribly, with all of the lives it has taken. There's still blood on it from last time, and the thought makes his stomach churn. If the word revolting had a physical form, it would be what he holds in his two hands.

"Focus," says a quiet voice. Valentine. "Remember where you are."

Eden dares to look up. Valentine, his best and only friend of six whole years, stands to his left, glowing cobalt eyes piercing the half-light. Those eyes are scrutinizing Eden, watching the way he stands a full foot away, the way he touches the tool gingerly in his gloved hands, probably even the way he gulps under pressure. Or maybe Valentine's not watching that at all. Maybe he's watching the strings of emotion and energy that supposedly hang in the air, suspended within the weave of the universe. Not that Eden's ever seen those strings, himself. He's not the right kind of person.

Valentine waits expectantly still, though a few moments of silence have passed. Eden doesn't know why he bothers. Each time Val practically drags him down into the bowels of the Citadel- the home of the city's Sentinels, as well as a prison for the country's most high-profile criminals- two things happen: Eden protests or vomits or both, and no good ever comes of it.

Eden steels his resolve and looks to their charge for today. It's a man hanging from the ceiling on a chain wrapped tight around his ankle. Just below where the chain clamps tight on his skin, a bullet wound stains his clothing with blood. He lets out a small whimper when Eden nears him.

"I don't remember," he sputters, blinking away the blood that streams from one of his nostrils into his eyes. "I swear that I don't remember. It wasn't me."

The glow from Valentine's eyes pulses. He's reading the weave for sure, now, as those with the Sight usually do. Then his eyes lower- he holds up a piece of parchment and recites the information written on it.

"Señor Juan Cortez. Forty-two. Merchant of exotic wares." Val circles Cortez while Eden looks silently on, his monotone echoing through the sparse, dimly lit chamber. "Known for importing gunpowder from the Vesennan Empire. You assemble pistols in your spare time. This is you, isn't it?

Cortez's chest heaves. "Yes, but-"

"And you were retrieved inside Solaris Palace, correct?"

"But... but I have no idea how..."

"With a loaded pistol in your possession, Señor?" Val presses.

"I..."

Val tucks the paper into his pocket. "Eden," he murmurs. "I need answers."

"Please!" Cortez exclaims. "I can explain!"

"Explain what, exactly?" Val crouches in front of Cortez so that they're eye to eye. The look of those glowing irises are unnerving that close; Eden knows firsthand. "You snuck into the palace with a loaded pistol and searched the king's quarters. When you couldn't find him, you stormed the throne room, hoping for better luck. What were you hoping to find? A king to kill?" Val shakes his head, dark hair finding its way into his eyelashes. "You'll explain nothing. Clearly, you have nothing left to say."

"No. Head Sentinel. Please." When he finds no purchase with Val, Cortez moves on to Eden. "Señor, you have to believe me." Tears leak out of the corners of his eyes. "I can't take this anymore. There's been a mistake. I couldn't have..."

Eden takes a step back. Val's gaze darts to him, somehow accusatory in spite of the blank expression on his ghostly pale face.

"Where should I..." begins Eden.

Val looks away again. He almost sounds bored. "Anywhere that'll hurt."

Eden sucks in a deep breath, swallowing the bile that creeps up his throat. He raises the tool in the air, and bring the sharp prongs down into Cortez's thigh. He claps a hand over his mouth when Cortez screams, attempting to hold back a scream of his own. He bites down, hard, on his lower lip, using the tool's finger grips to spread the wound open. He grits his teeth, grips a bit of exposed muscle, and rips it out. Another scream tinges the air, this one more poignant than the last.

"There was a girl!" Cortez cries at last. "She held me- but she didn't hold me- and I was a puppet, just a puppet in her hands..." His words fade until they're unintelligible mumbles.

"A girl?" Eden asks. He's managed to keep down his lunch, for now. "What girl?"

Something's wrong with the silence in the chamber. It's too thick, too deafening. Val has straightened, but he's watching something that Eden knows nothing of. Val backs away, lips parting, just as a shadow springs to life around Cortez's quivering form.

Eden starts to back away, too- because while he cannot see the weave, like Val can, he can see the shadows it leaves behind. Like stains of ink, they always seem to appear as if by accident or afterthought, both abrupt and unkind. They're not earthly shadows; they're not shadows, plural, at all. There's only one shadow, time and time again, and he's been seeing it since he was fourteen years old, knee-deep in a blanket of snow.

The shadow of death.

A shift charges the air in the chamber. It raises the hairs on the back of Eden's neck. Unconsciously, he and Val move together, arms nearly touching, silent in the face of the darkness in Cortez's eyes.

Without warning, Cortez's hands dart out, grabbing onto the both of them. Eden lets out a squeak. Val gasps, wrestling with Cortez's grip, panic surfacing on his normally stony face.

"She was a girl," he whispers, "but not a girl. A monster, with the most luminescent eyes. She wanted him dead more than anything. I felt it... right in my bones, because it was in hers. She called herself a queen, and she told me she was coming- for him, for this country." Red-tinged tears leak from his brown eyes. "For all of us."

The shadow seeps into Cortez's pores and back out again in an instant, taking something bright and silvery with it, just as Val takes in a sharp breath.

The silence clears. Sound returns. Eden's head is light as Val leans in to Cortez's hanging form, eyes glowing far more brightly than ever.

"Did you see it?" he asks. His words are quick. "The shadow?"

Eden reaches up to his nose. Something's tickling his upper lip. A single dab of his shaking fingers confirms that he's bleeding.

"He's not connected anymore. He's been..." Val shakes his head. "He's been ripped from the weave."

Eden staunches his nosebleed with the sleeve of his dark blue coat. Seeing shadows never fails to strain him. "Isn't that normal?"

"No. The threads... well, they should still be there, after death. But they're not this time. They're-" Val pauses, stepping away, handing Eden his handkerchief. Eden's cheeks heat; Val always knows when to lend a helping hand, and he never even has to look. "They're just gone."

"Surely that can't be so bad."

Val turns to him, and Eden finally sees the problem. His best friend's face is paler than usual. His glowing eyes are wide with alarm. His gloved hands are trembling.

"They were ripped away," whispers Val, as if anyone could be listening. "Stolen, so suddenly, and it killed him. I don't know of anyone- anything- that can do that."

"He mentioned a queen, didn't he? A queen made him do it."

"There aren't any queens in this country." Eden doesn't miss the twitching of one of Val's dark eyebrows. "Not since my aunt died."

Eden remembers Val's aunt well, even if he's never met her. She was the first foreign queen to ever be crowned in Edeiros; a Wilshorian, like Eden, who never ceased to better the country she ruled over. Not that it mattered in the end- Queen Tamsin passed suddenly, leaving room for someone else to take her place- and Eden knows, deep down, that Val must have been devastated.

"We have to tell the king," Eden says.

"We will not," Valentine replies. "He's halfway to Covigo by now. If we disturb him now, we may as well put off the wedding. He'll come running right back here, to Migos, and all of his planning will be for nothing." He quiets for a while, before repeating himself. "We will not tell him. I can do this. We can do this. Just you and me, like it's always been."

Eden brings the handkerchief away from his nose. It's saturated and heavy with blood by now. That must be why his head feels so airy; all of its weight has flowed into this little square of stitched fabric.

"He said she was coming for us."

"And?"

Eden gulps. "That sounds like a threat."

"As all threats do." Val glances sideways, the light from his blue irises shining on Eden's skin. "Go back to the dormitories, Eden. I know you hate this part."

"I hate every part," he admits. "But you need me."

"You're bleeding. I'm not. Besides," he says, and there's an almost-frown on his face, "the shadow came again. You need your rest before I run out of handkerchiefs to give you."

The relief Eden feels will eat him alive. He takes one last look around the room, sweeping over the chains dangling from the ceiling, the floor that's crusted with blood both new and old, the crimson staining Val's white gloves, the swaying of Juan Cortez's dead body.

"See you." He can't keep the gratitude out of his voice. "Later, I mean."

He catches Valentine's harrowing breath right before his feet carry him far away.