Free Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton

She’d had a gun, but it was gone now.
    Briac pushed her over with his foot, sending her to the ground. “Stop it,” he said, his voice tinged with irritation. “Both of you.”
    Next to her, Shinobu tried to slow his desperate breathing. He had taken off his helmet. His red hair was plastered across his forehead, and his face looked pale, even in the warm light of the fire.
    Alistair was standing nearby, but he was not looking at Shinobu or Quin. Instead he was staring into the coals.
    Briac turned to the two Dreads, who stood again on the other side of the flames in their formal position. They looked as steady, as calm, as they had before they’d left the estate. In fact, if Quin had not seen them walking in their deliberate, graceful way across the grounds of that manor house, if she had not seen them standing silently in the great room inside that house as it had echoed with screams, she could have believed the Dreads had never left this clearing. The Young Dread still wore her blank look, as though her mind were mostly somewhere else, far away from these dark woods.
    “Have the standards been met?” Briac asked them.
    The Big Dread stepped forward.
    “The standards have been met. Their skills, in body and mind, are sufficient to use the athame.” His voice was strange, with an odd emphasis on each syllable, as though English were not his native language. As if speech itself were unusual for him.
    Briac bowed his head, accepting their judgment.
    “Bring the brand,” he ordered.
    The Young Dread pulled on thick leather gloves and removed the long piece of metal from the fire. The end of it, the end that had beenresting among the hot embers all this time, bore the shape of a small athame.
    Briac lifted Shinobu upright so he was kneeling before the fire.
    “Shinobu MacBain, I invite you to say your oath and become a sworn Seeker.”
    As he looked into Briac’s eyes, Shinobu was wearing an expression Quin had never before seen on his perfect face: hatred.
    Then Briac moved to Quin, pulling her up next to Shinobu so she too was kneeling.
    “Quin Kincaid, I invite you to say your oath and become a sworn Seeker.”
    She stared at her father, his dark eyes and hair, his fair skin, so like her own. But he was nothing like her. She felt the same hatred she had seen on Shinobu’s face. All her life, he had been lying to her. The existence she’d imagined for herself was an illusion.
    “Say your oaths,” Briac commanded.
    Neither of them spoke. The smell of the blood on her arm was in her nose, and she retched again, this time bringing up the remains of her dinner.
    Briac slapped her.
    “Say your oaths.”
    They did not speak.
    Briac nodded to the Dreads. The Big Dread came up behind Shinobu, put a knife to his throat. The Young Dread moved to Quin, and she felt a blade at her own neck. From the corner of her eye she could see Alistair. He had retreated to the edge of the clearing and was looking away.
    “Say your oaths,” Briac commanded again.
    The Young Dread pressed the knife harder against Quin’s skin. She could feel the edge of the blade, unyielding against her throat as she swallowed.
I was blind
, Quin told herself, feeling hot tears wellup in her eyes,
but I have done these things with my own hands
. She could see in her father’s expression that he was willing to kill her if necessary. Once she had gone
There
, she must take her oath or die.
    She could refuse; she could let this fourteen-year-old monster of a girl kill her. Was Quin willing to end it now, to never see her mother again, to never see John again?
    The knife was cutting her skin. Blood was trickling down her neck.
    “Say your oaths!”
    She had been trained to obey Briac. She began to speak the oath.
    Once she started, Shinobu’s voice joined in and they were saying it together, as they had always imagined they would.
    “All that I am
    I dedicate to the holy secrets of my craft
,
    Which I shall never speak
    To one who is not