Nix slowly peeled the blood and sweat soaked camisole from her chest as she sunk beneath the foamy water. She pulled up the once stylish gown. The chemicals in the bath had already eaten through most of the blood, but that hadn’t returned it to its previous state. Even without the tears through it, the dress was ruined by the strain it had endured while weighed down by blood.

  It was a formal piece, after all. Not designed for the extreme circumstances Nix had been through these past few hours.

  She definitely wouldn’t be buying something like this again. A thick robe that wouldn’t tear so easily and could hide her mutations from any passing inspection would be great.

  The carers had left her alone, but not the way she expected. While Nix had assumed they would run off at the sight of her, or her blood-soaked body, they’d done anything but. Actually, it had been hard to convince them that she was fine before they took off her top and revealed the feather beneath.

  Her hand found its way down to her side, and was immediately thankful that she had been able to stop them.

  Nix brushed away the foam to see half a dozen sprouts surrounding the fully formed piece of fluff. The black feather with red tip had bloomed. Barbs were yet to peel out from the other hard tubes, but it wouldn’t be long.

  By the end of the week, Nix thought. I’ll have a full plumage.

  She wasn’t sure what to think about them. The feathers themselves weren’t terrible — soft to the touch and easily hidden — but it was the promise of her future that made Nix dislike them. As she’d already seen today, the future could be changed. She already had two more names than the same time yesterday. But her feathers, and therefore all other changes, would remain a constant.

  They weren’t something she could hide from or fight.

  Nix let her head dip beneath the water as her clothes sunk besides her. Her hair splayed outwards. Chemical cleaners were quick to scrub anything unwanted from her locks, while also enriching them with moisturisers.

  When the women had helped Nix into the bath, she’d asked the only question that was on her mind. ‘Why did they keep their distance?’ Their answer gave Nix a mixture of frustration, and complete understanding.

  It was K’tan.

  The man had told them in the past that Nix was troubled and needed her space. They were to only help her if she reached out herself. And, of course, Nix being as self-conscious as she’d been, had seen that as them avoiding her, and never called out.

  K’tan had isolated Nix so that she would only trust him. She had only made it worse by not questioning their change in behaviour when it happened.

  But why?

  It wasn’t like he’d known she was the perfect sacrifice back at this point. She didn’t even think he knew that when he’d passed her off to the Fleshsmiths. What had been the purpose? Even if she now knew him as a monster, she didn’t know why he would want her as isolated as she’d become.

  Would things have been different if she’d told those ladies about her mutations rather than K’tan?

  Nix immediately dismissed such an idea. There had been a hundred thousand cultists to witness her death. They’d all seen how desperately she didn’t want it. And yet not a single one opposed. Her death hadn’t even been a question for them, much less something they’d fight for. They might be kinder than she thought, but that hardly meant she could trust them.

  Still, it showed that some things you always assumed to be true, never were.

  The water was wonderful. It slid over her tired, aching body and soothed her soul. She relished in the feeling. So long had it been since she’d last enjoyed the peaceful comfort of a bath.

  And a private one at that!

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  Right before her sacrifice, they’d washed her down. Not with a bath, but with a hundred bound leech-spawn that ate away a few layers of skin and cycled her blood through their stomachs before returning it to her. That had been slightly uncomfortable, and left her feeling more filthy than when she’d been literally covered in filth during the worst parts of her confinement.

  This? This is paradise.

  How had it not even been a day since she’d been sacrificed? An eternity had passed since then and now. She’d returned to her naming day, discovered a second additive, and apparently even earned a Feat. And that wasn’t even taking into account how close she’d come to dying.

  As soon as she got back into her room, she would be leaping into the naming ritual to discover just what Feat she had achieved. She was exhausted, but she’d been exhausted all her life; Nix was sure she could push through.

  But for now, she couldn’t move. The water was too nice. Warm. Relaxing. If somebody walked in right now, the only thing blocking them from seeing her budding feathers was the foam surface. That was not going to be enough in the future. She needed to move out of the Rearing Ward before her limbs started growing.

  If she ignored the hardening of her fingernails which would be easy enough to hide with gloves or even some nail-paint, the first change she couldn’t easily hide beneath her clothes would be her wings. She never actually had been able to grow them fully, but it was about six months from now that they began. That was her deadline.

  Nix needed to find a place to live outside the safe zone before her wings began to break through her skin.

  Unfortunately, the option to take a safe zone residence was off the table for her. She needed a place with its own plumbing and private shower or bath. Relying on public baths would eventually end in disaster.

  And I refuse to give up bathing. She thought. Never again.

  Water was a terribly strong anchor for corruption. So much so, that any piping anywhere, even in the safe zone, was bound to become a seedbed for its growth and spread. To counteract this, only large baths like the one Nix currently soaked were used. It meant that they could layer every surface with runic sinks and insulation. It also meant there was no privacy.

  In the outer regions, they held no reservation for corrupted water, so they didn’t have to go through the same hoops to bathe or drink. They had showers. Nix so desperately wanted some of that.

  But… it wasn’t an immediate concern. She would need to work around everyone else’s timetables to bathe when nobody else was… but she’d been doing that the first time round anyway. As long as she kept her body beneath the foam whenever others came in, she shouldn’t have a problem.

  “Why do you not let them grow?”

  Nix snapped her eyes open to find her little imaginary eye staring down at the foamy water. As she looked down, she realised she’d been playing with her feather. The sensation was slight, but she could definitely feel through it.

  She snapped her hand away, pretending like she’d done so of her own volition, and not because of the fictional eye.

  “You refuse?” it slunk through the air without haste until it stopped right before her face. Nix did her best to look anywhere but directly in that pitch black pupil. “You deny what you have. Why do you pretend that you are less than you are?”

  “You think I wanted these changes?” she snapped, finally acknowledging the little creature. “I’ve wished they would disappear since the moment I grew my first feather.”

  “You have?” it’s inquisitive tone never deviated, but all Nix heard was an accusation.

  “If not for these mutations — these curses — my life could have been so different.” Nix suddenly realised she wasn’t exactly in a private place and lowered her voice to a hiss. “I’m back to the past, but these changes will only grow the same. I have a second chance, but my paths haven’t expanded; they’ve narrowed to one.”

  Nix huffed, annoyed at having argued with herself, and rose from the water. She’d become far too used to talking to herself. It was a habit she needed to crush.

  Picking up her clothing that was now free of blood and sweat, she shook herself of water and made for the changing room. She found a set of fresh robes. One of the carers had been nice enough to fetch them for her. Unlike her expensive gown, this one had to be tied on manually.

  She breathed out, and found the frustration sliding from her body. Her body felt too good. Much too pleasant to lament over accusations thought up by her own mind. The bath had almost washed away the lingering pain in her ribs and arm, and she’d regained enough energy to enact the naming ritual in the privacy of her own room, even if it took hours.

  She stepped through the airlock. Waving away the steam that rose from her body and clothes, she pushed through the second door and strode down the hall to her dorm.

  Only… as she walked down to her room at the far end, she found one of her ward-mates twiddling a pair of metal frames — eversight assists — right in front of her door. He glanced up, locked eyes with her, and strode towards her.

  It was Dan-yae; the first boy to be named today. He wasn’t a part of Grif’s group, but that wasn’t much of a relief to Nix.

  None of her dorm-mates spoke with her. Ever. And there certainly hadn’t been one that approached her like this on their naming day. Had something changed this drastically already? Was that a good thing? A bad thing?

  Anything was better than the way things played out last time… but she also knew things of the future that she could use to her advantage. If events changed too greatly, how could she abuse them?

  “Nix,” he started, and she could only blink.

  What does he want?