Those Who Shatter

Chapter 4: Seeing Over Feeling

The golden glow from the late afternoon sun filters through the stained glass windows of the Orbs Hall when my ring deposits me in the glass encased entryway. It took me nearly a year to rid myself of the disorientation that travel to the Halls can cause, but now it takes me but a second to straighten my shirt and stalk down the marble floors on steady feet. I've never been able to figure out the time difference between here and there; it changes every time I flit back and forth between the Halls and the Peripherals. The dwelling of the Seers remains simply otherworldly, in a different time all of its own, and it sounded magical when I had been ten.

Now I wonder if it's just meant to confuse the hell out of us Settlers, nothing more than a practical joke.

Old Man Ewan would get a kick out of that.

The Seers' motto glares down at me from its engraving in the marbled archway: Videns supra Affectum.

Seeing over feeling.

I desperately want to chuck something at it.

"Guinevere!"

Eleanor Styles greets me, her tone an octave higher than normal. The highlights of pink in her dark hair remind me of a chocolate-covered strawberry that has been planted and plucked by Serah Mallory, dropped behind the receptionist desk as if the Orbs Hall is nothing more than a bank. I snort. Yes, and I'm simply here to withdrawal some cash. If only it were that simple.

Her green eyes widen as I hesitate in front of her monstrosity of a desk, the mahogany startlingly dark against the transparency of the glass room.

"The Conclave is in session, and the Over-Seer—"

I twist the ring off my finger and drop it onto the desk where it rattles, rolling to a stop just out of reach of her purple-polished fingers. "Need I remind you that I'm still a Settler," I say. "I don't need Serah Mallory's permission to be here." I eye her. We had been friends. Once. "Do I?"

Eleanor nods, though slowly, taken aback by my formal tone, I imagine. Her thick hair falls from her ponytail, and then she shyly smiles at me. Some of her plum lipstick is smeared across her teeth. Still, it doesn't detract from the beautiful color of her dark skin.

"Welcome back, Miss James." She pushes a green, leather-bound book my way. It drags against the knotted wood of the desk. "If you don't mind signing in, then we can read your ring."

"I remember the procedures, El."

Honestly, it's only been a few months. She frowns a bit and casts her gaze off to the side. I don't mean to be short with her. In fact, Eleanor is only a few years older than I am. The two of us have always gotten along well, even if she did have more of a soft spot for my Comrade, but Serah's visit weighs on me like a dumbbell. The look that she scraped along my brother's spine still itches against my brain like nails on a chalkboard.

Screech.

"Your blood, if you will, Guin," Eleanor prompts.

My molars grind, but I slide the pad of my thumb over the sharp blade built into the desk like a stand on a piano that supports sheet music. When the blood bubbles from the shallow cut, I press my thumb into the thick parchment of the Seer's tome, making a bloody print.

It gets absorbed immediately, but my blood reappears, this time in the form of reddened words: Guinevere Paqad James. For three seconds, it gleams with the same fiery glow of the names that wrap around my ring, but then it dulls, finding my blood of worth. Seers haven't always been so macabre. Centuries ago, an Obake Shade snuck into the Orbs Hall, wearing the stolen face of a prominent Settler in order to steal one of the Diviner's portal key. After that fiasco, Seers developed this procedure and the role of the receptionists that go along with it. Because even though Obake Shades may be able to shape-shift and wear any mask, blood cannot lie.