“The rumours circulated between the Three Courts for centuries.” Jin said, still tracing the silvery landmarks.

Arden scoffs beside him and rolls her eyes. The necklace between her breast pulses a glowing moss-green and she ignores it with the same sneering distaste of the paint-brushed barons, born and bred for the same ignorance.

Frost and Feya seemed all too familiar with what Jin had to say, rolling their own eyes and crossing their arms in unison. It was their annoyance that almost put a stopper in my question, their sudden lack of patience that twinged my own, but still, I asked: “Rumours?”

Jin bore his sharpened teeth as he looked over his shoulder, emerald eyes entrapping my own. “Oh, yes. Rumours. Ones that travelled from the townsfolk to their servants to the Courts and their enslaved. They spread so quick, so far, that there was no way for the Emperors to underwrap it…” He paused for a moment, obstaining the dramatic silence I was coming to realise he put into practice any chance he got. “But they didn’t mean they couldn’t warp it.”

“Warp it?”

He hummed. “Rumours have a funny way of twisting on peoples tongues. Not quite a lie but never a full truth. The Emperor’s would take use of anything that benifited them and none of them quite wanted a mass hysteria; of course, no one would, so we can’t blame them.”

“So, what?” I asked, stepping beside him. “It got lost in translation, in misinformation?”

“Yes and no.” Jin waves a flourishing hand, tracked by a shadowy blueberry outline. “There are people that whisper of the truth, in the depths of Argon, hidden by Sparks and pseudonyms, but it come with a price. One not so worth paying.” He firms a fist, his voice wavering.

“And the price,” Feya pipes in, stepping forward. “What is it?”

Jin’s quiet is different to the one before. It lacks the brandish of forced patience and darkens his face with a tentative warning. When he speaks his voice is low and gravely and whips a sharp whistling slash through the air: “Knowing the fates… is a curse. Knowledge is only fun when it holds the opportunity to be changed, to be proven wrong — the fun disperses quick where certain doom holds inevitable.”

I swallowed. How bad could a rumour be that people still talked of it now, hundreds of years later? How bad could a townspread, witch-spun tale be to make someone as thespian as Jin sober up?

“That’s nice an’ all. Truly. I love the whole world-ends-people-die-out thing you’ve got going on, really well executed.” Frost said sarcastically, nodding along to himself. Jin sneered. “But I don’t particularly care for what truth-teller, do-gooder, cave-dwellers have to tell you about ‘impending doom’.” Feya snorts. “They’ve never been good for anything but salve.”

Jin jerks roughly towards him, his lip curling into a snarl. “You can think whatever the hell you want,” He shoves a finger into the slender muscle of Forst’s chest; Frost staggers under the force. The odd blue shadowing his skin flares brighter and bleeds vermillion. “But The Omen has been tailing the Courts for months and it is only so long until everything you know is gone, everyone you love is gone, and once it is, you’ll have only your foolery to thank.”

My brows divot. Frost’s eyes pierce mine, swirling with concern and question; I try to look away, try to force the worry curling my stomach to dissipate, try to ignore his unspoken curiosity, but Frost could read me like an anaylised book and I’d picked apart his pages word by word.

Was The Omen creeping among us and weaving us into its spinning web or was it just more witchy hokum?