Elodie held Cassian's sword to her throat."Put it here.""You asked me to cut your throat.""Today is not the day I die."She pulled the edge closer. Blood beaded on white skin; no sinmark appeared."What shall I put in?""What you least want returned.""There are many.""Choose one. Experiments must be simple."Two chairs faced each other in the white carriage. Elodie occupied one; the other remained empty. Cassian stood on his broken foot while Ria opened her ledger."Terms first.""Put one sin and one false command into me. Stop if a sinmark appears. If not, open my shadow.""Who stops it?""I do.""If you lose consciousness?""You will continue."Cassian did not deny it.Elodie wrote on the wall, a habit before lying.`Elodie Aurelia. I am safe.`"A lie?" Ria asked."We will find out."
* * *
The carriage reached the sealed baptistery where Elodie had first been washed.A silver basin held water from twenty-two years ago, neither rotten nor evaporated. The White Papal Court called it birthwater.Elodie did not touch it."The Church says this water washed away my sins.""Sins committed before birth?""That made it convenient to call a miracle."She opened a hidden drawer. An infant's baptismal gown held a bloody handprint larger than a baby's."Your mother's?""I don't know.""Seraphina?""My sister never says she knows.""Nor that she doesn't.""That is why she lives."Elodie returned the gown. She had come to inspect evidence, not remember her birth fondly.Ria sealed the entrance."Begun at Her Highness's request. Stopped at Her Highness's order.""Why write it twice?""Cassian takes more than permission grants."Elodie looked at him."Will there be anything to take today?""I am looking because there isn't."His gaze traveled from throat to wrists, heart, belly, ankles, shadow.No entrance for sin.He wanted to know why an empty room had a door."People will mistake that look for love.""People have bad eyes.""What do you see?""A locked torture chamber."Elodie laughed for the first time."Open it and you may be inside."
* * *
Cassian chose one pain from Martin's house: the final hunger of a man who ate rotten bread and his child's portion to survive. The child died next day.The sin remained as a small tooth in Cassian's belly.He cut it out. Elodie held out her palm."Swallow it by mouth.""A hand is also body.""Fewer exits make it easier to trace."She swallowed the tooth.A black line descended her throat, stopped before the heart, then vanished.Hunger and rotten bread entered her. She remembered the dead child's name. The pain became hers; the sin did not."Do you regret it?" Ria asked."The child's death? I did not kill him.""Now it is your memory.""Memory and responsibility differ.""The Church would like that answer.""That is why I doubt it."Her palm remained clean. She did not look relieved.Three appraisal gates waited inside.The first read blood and stabbed sinners with thorns. Elodie passed untouched.The second read memory. Though the dead man's last memory lived in her, no face appeared.The third read regret."Do you regret it for him?" Ria asked.Elodie wrote her name on her palm."No."No bell rang.All three missed her.Then alarms exploded when Cassian put one foot on the first gate.Hundreds of thorns sought wrist, throat, heart, and shadow. Dead faces crowded the second gate. The third bell nearly tore free.Elodie watched him from beyond.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author."You make an excellent control instrument.""A compliment?""A measurement."Cassian broke a thorn."You make a useful carrying case.""Then we find who made me."Elodie walked backward through the gates, untouched again.But her shadow lagged one beat at each threshold.A wrist adhered at the first, a face at the second, an unrepentant mouth at the third.Only Cassian saw."A miracle should have defeated sin," Elodie said."You diverted it.""Where?""Put in the next thing."Cassian opened the purchase ledger and placed a tooth from the idol fragment over Elodie's name.A small mouth spoke in his voice."Cassian Crow pardons you."Elodie reached out."I bought that.""For one sin.""Something I never had.""What did you pay?""An absence. The seller wanted a vacancy where sin could enter. Passing commands through my body erased their sinmarks.""You took it to the eleven.""I opened it first in that house.""Why?""To see if they believed the lie.""If they did?""I thought I might believe too."Ria's pen stopped.Elodie wrote beneath her name.`I experimented on eleven people.`Still no sinmark."Regret it?""I want to defend myself by saying none died.""You are doing so.""That is why you disgust me. You understand my defense too quickly."Cassian drew the black command from the ledger. It coiled around his wrist.Elodie opened her mouth.He stopped at her lips."Shall I stop?""No.""Certain?""Ask only once."Adel's words.Cassian laid the command on Elodie's tongue and closed her lips without touching her.It felt more intimate than pushing a blade into flesh.Elodie swallowed.
* * *
Every candle died.Black writing ran beneath Elodie's dress from throat to heart, belly, and toes, then vanished.No sinmark. No change in pulse. No command emerged when she opened her mouth."A perfect carrier," Ria said. "No trace in the body.""In the body," Cassian said, looking behind Elodie.Her shadow remained though the candles were out.It was white, with darkness only inside the human outline.Elodie tried to turn."Don't move.""My body is mine to move.""Your shadow moved first."She stopped. The shadow took another step away.A white circle ringed its ankle, small as an infant bracelet.Not a seal blocking sin, but a door diverting it behind the shadow before it touched flesh.Its rim bore no baptismal name, imperial surname, or prayer.It had been made before Elodie."I did not create this absence," she whispered."Happy?""More horrified.""Why?""Someone chose my use before I was born."She faced Cassian."Open it.""Opening the shadow may split the body.""Is that asking permission?""A warning.""I heard it."Barefoot, Elodie pinned the white circle."Open it."Cassian reversed his sword and stabbed the shadow's throat.The edge passed stone into dark flesh. Elodie's body remained whole, but a stranger's breath left her mouth.The shadow caught the blade with both hands.Church executioner seals layered every finger—one, twelve, a hundred, from different eras.Cassian twisted. The empty rim opened.Black commands poured out: sins and sentences that had passed through Elodie, executions the Church transported without trace. The false pardon was only the newest."Close it," Ria said."Not yet," Elodie stopped her. "I need to see who made it first."An eye opened inside the shadow, neither infant nor adult.It saw Cassian, smiled, and chose his voice.Every bell outside rang.The capital executioners' guild sign split. White warrants rose beneath gallows in every city.Elodie's shadow spoke in Cassian's voice."Execute every executioner."Ria's ledger opened by itself.Names filled the first wanted page: royal executioners, Church executioners, retirees, even the dead.The pen paused at one name, then pressed deeper.`Derrick Morn.`Cassian pulled out his sword.Too late.Bell marks meaning execution complete began appearing beneath the warrants.