It was thundering that day, too. When they told her the world was ending.

Not raining, just thundering. The sky had no tears to shed on her behalf, but it could, at least, crack with a force that shook the earth. It was enough of a replacement for the scream she kept locked up.

They held her down and dragged the knife through the soft flesh on the back of her hand. They whispered sweet words as she crushed the rag between her teeth until her jaw nearly locked in an eternal bite. Each precise cut ripped up her arm, filling her veins with fire as her blood soaked the ceremonial table. Another cut. She tensed against a fresh wave of nausea, swallowing down her bile.

Outside the stained glass windows, the sky rolled with thunder, and she lost herself in the roar of it. Eventually, the cuts stopped and they—those priests or holy men of the Endiris family—wrapped the wound in a cool cloth, damp enough to soak up the blood and ease the hot pain. Her arm quivered as she lifted her hand, breaths shaky and vision tinged black at the edges. But it was there, a ghostly shape seeping through the bandages.

The patron sigil.

And the world rocked then, set adrift on a wild sea that raged in and around and about her, and the icy depths clawed at her as they tried to drag her under. She stared long at the sigil until it was watery, too. Like the hole inside her.

"You carry the sigil of the water spirit Marin now," a distant voice droned, murky as the waves lapped over it. "Her power flows through you, but you must never release control to her. Do not forget the black water, Calliope."

Her head was suddenly full of water, inky and full of death, and she was drowning already.

The sigil. The weight that belonged to her family for three generations. The patron who haunted their chapels, slithered through their water, dripped from the sky, raced through their blood. She, that great water spirit Marin, lived in the sigil, in anyone forced to bear it.

Thunder rumbled again, final and forlorn. Yes, it knew. The sigil was the end. Her control was too flimsy. The weeks blurred, maybe months, and the dull chapel and ceremonial altars and white-robed priests soon sunk beneath the depths. It crawled up her legs, flooded the streets, consumed everything in its path. All while the spirit laughed over the roar of the waves, and Cal was prisoner to her whims.

"Cal."

The scene shifted, wrenching her from the chapel in her memories, ripping the bandage from the wound that was no longer fresh, throwing her into the grassy flower fields far outside the Adeline estate at the edge of the forest to the south. An overcast sky hung in ominous dark sheets overhead, just like that day but alien all the same. She was staring up at her right hand, nestled in a black glove that fit as snug as a second skin. She could breathe again, too. There was no black water, no haunting screams or the ring of Marin's laughter.

"Calliope."

The life of a sigil-bearer was behind her. It had been for seven years, like the watery remains of her hometown.

She sighed and forced a smile as she turned to the source of the voice in the present. Soft, innocent, and too young to look up at her with such cautious eyes—that was her new charge.

Elowyn folded her skinny arms, flicking her gaze to the toes of her boots that peeked out beneath her navy skirts. She crushed her bundle of wildflowers to her chest. They said she would turn twelve come summer in a week, but she looked too small to be anything older than eight or nine. It was outrageous to think she could be anywhere near Cal's age of nineteen, not when all she ever seemed to want to do was shrink and disappear, but it was the truth.

"We should head back," Elowyn said, and it was more of a whisper than an order, a suggestion. "It's going to storm soon."

"It's not," Cal said. She would have felt it if it was—a thrum in her veins, an itch in the sigil. That was the mark her family bore, and it was hers to uphold now, too. The patronage of that dripping presence in her mind, the ocean that swelled within her.

Still, Cal dipped her head respectfully to her ward, folding her right hand and the scar on the back of it into her skirt. "I shall escort you back if that's your wish."

Elowyn uncoiled from herself then, a grin lighting up her sickly pale face. With flowers in one hand, she slid the other into Cal's, and it was such a frail thing that even the slightest squeeze could break every bone. "Do you know how to make flower crowns?"

"If we go back, you have to return to your studies. Miss Sophie will be cross otherwise." Cal kept her steps small so that Elowyn could walk alongside her, swinging their clasped hands.

"I'm tired of books," Elowyn whined. "I don't want to hold a pen all day."

Cal's hand burned, the lines etched in red aching with an old pain. "You have a duty as a daughter of the Adeline family."

That was all it took. Elowyn deflated, her fragile hand sliding from Cal's as she stopped in her tracks, head down, lips pushed out in a pout. Her mousy brown hair hung loose and wild and almost in her face, but not quite free enough of the bun at the base of her neck. A flush colored her pale cheeks, and her brows pinched into a foreign look, one that darkened her brown eyes a little too much.

"I don't want that, but no one ever asks," she declared.

The thunder cracked again, rattling Cal's bones and echoing with a statement so familiar that every part of her ached. The ocean within her surged again, curving into a wicked smile as it sprang forth, cooling the hot blood beneath her sigil. Cal dug her nails into her palms. She opened her mouth to speak, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, dry as the desert despite the well within her.

Colder than ice, a drop of rain splashed her nose. Cal flinched, and the ocean within her receded, but it was too late. It came down in sheets now—the rain that always followed her heavy thoughts. Glittering black as onyx, it stung her skin where it hit.

"Come on." She snatched Elowyn's thin wrist and tugged the girl against her side as she raised her sigil to the sky. The waters parted overhead, a shield that followed closely as they raced back to the estate. They left the withering flowers and the plains and Elowyn's embers of defiance behind, all doused beneath the black tears from above.

Though Cal knew better. The sky didn't cry, not for her, but the ocean patron inside her loved to kick up a storm when Cal tried to restrain her.

Three generations had tied down the great water spirit Marin. Three generations held back the flood, the rain, the evil. Calliope was the one that couldn't. How long before her control fractured altogether and there was nothing left of the Adeline family but a watery grave?

A pen would be the least of anyone's concerns, much less Elowyn's. That was the answer on her tongue, but she swallowed it. There was no point arguing anymore.

She kept Elowyn's gaze pointing forward, locked on the estate and the wash of sunlight that broke through the clouds like a spotlight. The black rain subsided with the ache in Cal's chest, but it had already eaten away the flowers Elowyn loved.

I've washed the slate clean, a watery voice slithered through Cal's ears, and it curved with the beginnings of a wicked smile. Now she, like you, has no reason to dream of anything but the whims of her family.

Cal flung her walls up, shutting out the spirit's voice inside her—though the solution was only temporary. Until she got rid of the sigil on her right hand, Marin would always be with her, and her all-devouring black water was only one misstep away from destroying everything in its path.

There wasn't time to waste. She had to get out of her pact before her control slipped again and there was no one left for her to turn to.

Hello and welcome to my new project! :D 

I don't have much to say about it, just that I'm excited to finally get to start posting! I've written a complete first draft offline so there won't be any hiccups with updates. This is also a novella, which means it will be completely uploaded much quicker than a novel with weekly updates lol. There's only fifteen chapters of BitS, so if you're waiting for it to be completed to binge, you won't have to wait long!

Thank you again for reading and I'll see you in the next chapter!