Chapter 18: The Scar Left Open

Chapter 18: The Scar Left Open

Sylvia’s voice cracked through the room like the lash of a whip.

“Where were you?”

Forten flinched. He had faced beasts, blades, and men twice his size, but nothing bit like those three words.

“I-”

“Don’t. You. Dare.” Her finger stabbed the air between them. “Don’t you stand there with your ribs half-split and tell me nothing happened. Two days, Forten. Two days without word, without a note, without even a rumour I could trust.”

Her voice faltered, then rose sharper. “The Guild wouldn’t tell me a thing. Do you know what that means? It means they thought you might be dead, and they didn’t even bother to say it out loud.”

The room shivered with her breath. She was too thin for her fury, scarf slipping from her shoulders, but her eyes burned with a heat that made the stove feel like frost.

Forten swallowed. “I wasn’t dead.”

“I thought you were.” Her voice broke like glass, then hardened again. “I thought I’d lost you the same way I lost him.”

Bryin. His name didn’t need to be said. It was written in the set of her jaw, the tremble of her hands.

Forten’s mouth went dry. “Mum-”

“You promised me,” she cut in. “You said you weren’t going to apply."

Forten’s jaw locked. “You let me go!”

Her eyes flared. “I didn’t know they would take you! I thought they’d laugh you out, same as they’ve done every other time. You’re Byrin’s son. Don’t you understand? They were never going to forgive that.”

Something hot burned in Forten’s chest. “So I was supposed to fail? That was your plan? Wait around, keep running errands, watch you get sicker every winter until there’s nothing left?”

“You think the Guild is offering you a future?” Her voice rose, raw with disbelief. “They’re offering a leash. They’ll bleed you like they bled him.”

“At least a leash gets me inside the Tower,” Forten shot back. His voice cracked, but the words kept coming hot. “At least it’s something. I could find herbs, glyphs, relics - anything that might slow your cough, anything to make this life less of a pit. And maybe - maybe I find out what happened to him.”

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Sylvia's laugh was short, sharp, and furious. “Herbs? Relics? You sound just like him. Always chasing answers in the dark, always thinking the Tower was going to give instead of take. Do you know what came back last time? Nothing. Do you know what you’ll drag back if you try? Nothing.”

Forten’s jaw tightened. “Then what other choice do I have?”

“Plenty. There’s always a choice. You could’ve stayed. You could’ve kept safe.”

“Safe?” The word came out sharper than he meant. Bitter. “Safe is running errands until my ribs cave in? Safe is counting coins? Safe is watching you cough yourself hollow every winter until- ” his voice broke, hard and ugly, “-until you’re gone?”

Sylvia’s face twitched. She straightened, pulled her scarf tighter like armour. “At least you’d still be alive.”

Forten’s chest burned, and not just from his ribs. “Alive doesn’t mean living.”

Her hand trembled as she grabbed the edge of the table. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t lie awake wishing I could work, that I could give you more than scraps and secondhand coats? I see how they look at us, Forten. I hear the pity. The whispers. Towerbait. I feel useless every hour of every day. And now you want me to watch the only thing I have left march into the Tower and vanish like him?”

Tears rimmed her eyes, but they did not fall. She would not give them that. Her anger held them back like a dam about to break.

Forten’s breath came ragged. He couldn’t meet her gaze, so he fixed his eyes on Walter, slumped on the cot like a corpse that hadn’t decided which way to fall. The seams tugged faintly at his scarf, as if mocking the silence.

“I can do it,” Forten said at last.

The silence cut sharp between them. Her chest rose and fell, every breath a battle. Then she laughed once - low, hollow, bitter.

“You really sound just like him.”

The words landed harder than any slap.

Forten’s voice cracked. “You won’t lose me.”

“You can’t promise that.” Her voice cracked too. For a heartbeat, she looked every bit as frail as the coughs had carved her, but her eyes - gods, her eyes - still burned.

The dam broke. She turned from him, one hand dragging across her face. Her shoulders trembled once, then twice. Not sobbing, not fully - weeping wasn’t a language she let herself speak - but enough.

Forten took a step toward her, then stopped. “Mum…”

Her hand shot up. “Don’t. Just… don’t.”

The silence stretched, thin and dangerous.

Finally she spoke, voice rough but steady. “If you go, you go. I can’t stop you. I can’t even work anymore. The Guild will take what they want, use you until there’s nothing left. And still you’ll go. Because that’s who you are. Because that’s who your father was.”

Her eyes softened then, against her will. “But I cannot lose you.”

Forten’s throat closed. “You won’t.”

She let out a long, ragged breath, half a curse, half a surrender. Her gaze flicked to Walter, slumped and still in the scarf. For the first time she looked at him not as a toy, not as a curiosity, but as something dangerous.

“That thing,” she whispered. “That’s what kept you alive?”

Forten hesitated. “Yes.”

Her face twisted, fear and grief caught together. “Then the Guild won’t let you go. And neither will it.”

Walter’s button eye flickered, faint and blue, as if to answer.

The light in the room seemed to shift, and the air grew colder.

Sylvia looked at Walter, then at Forten, her eyes shining with fury and fear.

“You’ll die in there. And when you do, you’ll take what’s left of me with you.”

Her words hung in the cold, heavier than the Tower itself.