Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)

by Veronica Roth

was scolding him, but instead I sounded like I was pleading with him. I cleared my throat. “Okay? It doesn’t make it better.” “Okay,” he said. “You were taught this ritual?” I asked him. He nodded. “Carve the mark,” I said, my throat tight. I extended my arm, pointing to a square of bare skin on the back of my wrist, beneath the knobby bone. He touched the knifepoint there, adjusted it so it was at the same interval as the other marks, then dug in. Not too deep, but enough that the feathergrass extract could settle. Tears came to my eyes, unwelcome, and blood bubbled up from the wound. It dripped down the side of my arm as I fumbled in one of the kitchen drawers for the right bottle. He took out the cork, and I dipped the little brush I kept with it. I spoke Lety Zetsyvis’s name as I painted the line he had carved with dark fluid. It burned. Every time, I thought I would be used to how much it burned, and every time, I was wrong. It was supposed to burn, supposed to remind you that it was no trifling thing, to take a life, to carve a loss. “You don’t say the other words?” Akos said. He was referring to the prayer, the end of the ritual. I shook my head. “I don’t either,” he said. As the burning subsided, Akos wrapped the bandage around my arm, once, twice, three times, and secured it with a piece of tape. Neither of us bothered to clean up the blood on the table. It would probably dry there, and I would have to scrape it off with a knife later, but I didn’t care. I climbed...