Page 10

Chapter 9

Mom Strikes Again

A hand clamping over my mouth had my mind dragging up from the deep sleep I’d not long fallen into. It was joined by a stern voice hissing at me to be quiet. My heart pounded a panicked drumbeat in my ears, and I wondered if Elder Welkin had one final torment in store.

As I came fully awake, I realized it wasn’t a male holding me down. The hand was soft, the voice feminine, and a faint yet familiar perfume laced the air. Yet no matter how wide I opened my eyes, it was too dim to see more than a shadowy blur hovering over me.

“Get up. Follow me.” The twin demands were abrupt and hissed close to my ear.

“Mother?” My whispered question got no response as she disappeared.

My mother wasn’t a woman you ignored, nor did she wait for anyone. Long years of conditioning had me slipping, unquestioning, out of bed. Grabbing a clean robe from the hook on the wall to put on over my night slip and shoving my feet into my only pair of simple white slippers, I chose my footing carefully, already knowing which creaky floorboards to avoid. As did my mother, it appeared.

A glance out the window showed darkness fading on the horizon, yet shadows still haunted the window frame and the sky outside. Dawn was nearing, but not yet here. My wings twitched with the urge to launch out that window and flee. But where could I possibly go? There was nowhere to hide in either the citadel towers or the town where my mother and Elder Welkin wouldn’t find me. I had even fewer friends out there than I did in here. If I’d had anywhere else to go last night, I would have gone.

We slipped from the room as I trailed reluctantly in her wake, blinking rapidly as I stepped out into the brighter-lit passageway. Lumière slumbered still and silent around us, but as usual, the passageways of the citadel towers were garishly lit. Instead of heading for her suite of rooms, my mother surprised me by veering away.

My mother was a beautiful woman and was usually exquisitely put together, wearing luxurious gowns with her hair styled and bedecked with jewels. This morning, she wore a fine but simple lavender robe. Her face had been scrubbed clean, and her long blonde hair cascaded freely down her back. It made me uneasy and wary of our destination. She couldn’t be taking me to any communal areas of the citadel.

I watched closely as she took unfamiliar turns, moving purposefully, a queen resplendent within her domain despite her more natural appearance. She gave no hint of where we were going. She didn’t deign to speak to me at all.

My heartbeat slowed as I realized I wasn’t in immediate danger, but my hands still trembled, and a nervous tension kept my posture rigid. Any time my mother showed an interest in me was a concern. Being dragged out of bed before dawn on my first proper day as a potentiate felt ominous. I sensed a shift in the world that I couldn’t see or comprehend.

We began descending discreet stairwells into increasingly dimmer passageways. I tried to track our movements, to keep my bearings in case I needed to backtrack. As far as I could figure, we had entered the barren underground corridors used only by the citadel’s human thralls, and we were somewhere underneath the Aedis. There was an unsettling scarcity of lumis orbs to light our way. Even as an adventurous child, I’d never dared the dark voids of these lower levels.

My mother looked around before stopping at a rough wooden door with no obvious markings. She sketched a mark on it, then the faint click of a lock echoed, and she pushed it open. The staircase beyond appeared older and more roughly hewn than the others, and also strangely warmer. The yawning darkness was laced with a strange mineral scent I couldn’t place. Coupled with my mother’s odd secretiveness, it gave me pause.

She shook her head at the questions in my eyes before darting another look around as she waved me through. “Just go in. We’ll talk inside.”

There were no answers behind me. They all lay ahead, if only I had the courage to find them. So I gritted my teeth and stepped into the deep darkness.

She shut the heavy door, and the stairwell beyond plunged into an almost complete absence of light. I could just make out a faint glow below us that seemed to come from around a bend. My mother’s even footsteps echoed as she moved confidently down, but I kept one hand on the wall as I felt out each step, keeping a careful eye on the light. The walls here were damp and roughly hewn, pressing in closely and giving me the feeling of a tunnel more than a passageway.

“The darkness won’t hurt you, child, and the steps are even.” My mother sounded irritated at my slow pace but refrained from wielding an orb to light our way. She’d never been one to coddle. A few halting steps farther, and the stairwell turned abruptly to reveal a bewildering sight. “Oh my goddess.” The words burst from my lips before I could rein them in.

No longer looking where I was stepping, I stared, enthralled at the raw beauty of the rocky pool that spread throughout the cavernous space. The dark water reflected thousands of glistening crystal formations clinging to the ceiling. It made the flat surface of the water sparkle as if it were inlaid with tiny stars. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

“This is a sacred bathhouse used only by vessels to bathe and center themselves within their light. As a potentiate, you have permission to be here.” My mother’s tone was abrupt, and she seemed unmoved by the wonder laid out before her. I’d never seen so much water in one place—there didn’t seem to be an end to it. A lone lumis orb hovered over rough steps leading into the water, but beyond them, the water and the walls disappeared into seemingly impenetrable inky depths.

The cavern felt ancient, as if it had always been and always would be. It held the barest touches of civilization so there was little to intrude on the natural beauty of the space.

My mother raised one eyebrow at me in challenge as she stopped near the edge and stripped off her silken gown before dropping it carelessly onto a rock. Then she turned and made her way down the last few steps as they disappeared into the water, uncaring about her nakedness. She crooked her finger over her shoulder and gestured for me to follow.

I watched as she tucked her wings in tight and dove into the depths, causing ripples and making the tiny reflected lights flicker like genuine stars. As she surfaced, a glow radiated out from her body and turned the water for a body length around her into an illuminated pool. It was no longer just reflecting light from the ceiling. The water itself shimmered and glowed with a soft inner light, illumed from within. I’d never seen anyone use a sigil on water before, and I hadn’t even seen her make one, unless she’d done it below the surface.

My robe came off as I stripped and followed. I’d been living in a dorm for a decade, so I had no issue with the female body, yet my feet halted a few steps above the water as I wondered why I was blindly following my mother. It was a habit I’d had drilled into me for so many years that I did it without thought. I didn’t even require a command. Someone aimed a finger, and I did what I was told.

I’d thought I was playing the part of an acolyte, but it seemed somewhere along the way, the part had taken me over. The realization had my stomach sinking and my feet planting on the top step.

“Why are you lingering, child? You can’t bathe out there.”

The energy of this space whispered to me, crowding me, urging me forward. Still, I resisted. The light emanating from the pool held the same pure tones as the lumis thread in the portrait of Nur hanging in the grand foyer. It held no taint that I could sense. This was no simple bath.

My shoulders tensed as I slowly shook my head. I was no longer a child. My mother was a powerful vessel, but was she here as a vessel, as my mother, or for her own gain? If I was ever going to learn what was happening around me and avoid surprises like last night, I needed to start thinking and questioning. I just needed to figure out how to lead into the big questions, because she’d never answered any I’d asked before now, not even the small ones.

Surely if I could ask them of a Fallen, I could ask them of her.

My mother’s narrowed, assessing gaze stayed on me as I stood awkwardly, and I had trouble meeting it. I cursed the inability, knowing it made me look weak. “Not until you tell me what’s going on here.”

She sighed loudly, as if I was being incredibly difficult, which was unfair. It wasn’t like she’d been an open and trustworthy figure in my life.

“Centuries ago, when the citadel first rose—back when the goddess’s gift was still new and hadn’t become diluted over generations—a group of vessels illumined this water with a powerful sequence of sigils.”

A tiny spark of relief had me taking a deeper breath. It was an answer, and a start, but I needed more. A lot more. I had years’ worth of questions bottled up.

This answer settled something I had long suspected, though. If both the portrait and this pool were from before Lumière rose, then the taint had begun within the last two centuries, at a point after the goddess stopped appearing to us in her Neven form. It hadn’t come from Nur.

Pushing the rest aside momentarily, considering my mother was expecting me to step into the pool, I chose my next question carefully. “Why illume the water?”

That she continued to answer surprised me. “For two hundreds years, vessels have come here to imbue the water rather than wield their light in ways they are forced into and cannot endure. Yet sometimes, actions have consequences we cannot predict.”

She twirled her hand through the illumed water, making it ripple around her, as she seemed to consider how much to say. I stayed silent, my feet firmly planted, wanting to know what they hadn’t known before I stepped in.

“Your stubborn determination is both a blessing and a curse, Alula.” She raised one arched brow, assessing me, but ultimately didn’t bother making me repeat the question that still hovered between us. “Lumis holds an essence of its wielder. Over time, this water has become something other, imbued with the memories of the vessels themselves as well as their light. It’s one of the many secrets we vessels hold close. Since then, nexus vessels have emerged—one from each wing to balance each elder. They receive the memories of all the vessels within their wing who came before. The role, and the memories, pass on when one of us dies, or at a time of our choosing. It connects us through generations and prevents us from forgetting what we have learned. I am the nexus vessel of the Welkin Wing.”

“Oh.” It felt wholly inadequate as a response, but I hadn’t been expecting anything like that. Hearing my mother had generations of memories within her was a lot to get my head around.

She sighed and gestured me into the water again, becoming irritated and seeming unwilling to continue talking on my terms. “If you want more answers, you’re going to have to get in. We shouldn’t be disturbed for a while, but I’d prefer to answer your questions while we bathe.”

Answers were something I’d sought my whole life, and very few people had ever been willing to give them. Decision made, I stepped down the stairs, keeping my wings tucked in like my mother had, until my toes dipped into the water. It was warm and sent soft tingles across my skin as it washed over my legs, higher and higher, making goosebumps rise.

All the tension in my body dissipated slowly, and a decade’s worth of aches drained from my muscles, replaced by a feeling of health and strength. It felt like a tender hug from someone who cared for me, or generations of them.

“Oh,” I blurted out again.

A small, genuine smile broke free on my mother’s face that was as startling to see as it was rare. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her smile.

My mother ran her hand through the shimmering pool again before she dropped her head back and closed her eyes briefly. When she looked back at me, the harsh lines of her face appeared softer somehow, as if she’d slipped off the invisible mask she wore and let go of her tension too. With her face scrubbed clean and her golden hair floating around her in the water, she looked younger and more vulnerable than I ever recalled seeing her. This mother was a different person to the one I knew.

“Be careful if you dive in farther out. This pool was once incredibly deep and was split in two when the citadel rose. At the center, the only thing holding the water in is the halo. If you accidentally touch it while swimming, the shock could temporarily paralyze you, and you could drown before it wears off.”

My gaze slid toward where the pool disappeared into the darkness of the cavern, wondering how wide that center was, and how deep. I’d be staying near the edge.

“There is a lot you need to know that I can’t explain right now. Goddess willing, we’ll have time for it later.” A feeling of unease skittered down my spine at my mother’s words, chasing away the mood of calm comfort the pool was coaxing me into. “I brought you here because it’s unlikely anyone will interrupt us at this hour. The goddess needs you to remember, and to see.”

“You’ve talked to her?” I dared to ask with a hint of sarcasm as I stepped toward her, making sure my feet stayed in contact with the ground. This smiling person in front of me talking in cryptic circles wasn’t the mother I knew. She was also the second person to call me blind since yesterday. It had me flustered.

“As have you.” The confidence in her simple reply confused me, but it was her actions that distracted me from questioning her more.

My mother placed one hand on my bare chest, and the other on my forehead, before her face became pinched in concentration. Warmth radiated from her hands, chased by a sense of reassurance that had me relaxing the last of the tension in my body. Something I rarely did. I should have known better.

She leaned in close and whispered in my ears, as if these words were for me alone and not the deities hovering near. “Listen to me, Alula. This is important. The goddess told me that darkness would come for you and you needed to embrace it. To do that, you need to remember your light.”

My mother surged forward and shoved with all her weight until my head sunk underneath the water. Taken by surprise, I struggled against her ineffectively, but she was deceptively strong. When she didn’t let go, a growing panic had me clawing at her as my wings thrashed underneath the water and my feet scrabbled amongst the pebbles, but no matter how much I twisted, turned, or clawed, I couldn’t budge her…

…or breathe.