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Chapter 1

The Worst Acolyte

Hours. There were always too many of them. Or not enough, depending on your level of desperation.

As acolytes, studying the Lumière Codex was usually a short, focused activity after our noon meal, designed to settle us into our afternoon of light-wielding lessons. Yet today, the minutes had become drawn out into long, interminable hours that left the world outside the pale stone walls of this classroom feeling like a fever dream.

Despite this, I’d silently pleaded for more of them knowing today was my last day as an acolyte and my future was far from certain.

Hairs rose on the back of my neck as something stirred in the air, perhaps in response to my plea. A feeling of being watched that had haunted me all day from an origin I couldn’t pinpoint. A more elusive watcher than the elder whose eyes had been fixed on me since our lessons began this morning.

Risking a glance up, my eyes rose to the young woman across from me, but the odd sensation wasn’t coming from her.

She was the perfect acolyte—silent and pious as she studied the sacred text in front of her. A mirror image of the other dozen acolytes sitting on hard wooden chairs in two facing rows within the narrow room. Her long, dark blonde hair was neatly tucked beneath her white hood, and her brown eyes were studiously averted, as they should be.

Until they weren’t.

She glanced up at me without moving her head, as if she’d felt my attention and could no longer ignore it. Her eyes narrowed before flicking pointedly down to the book in my lap, then promptly back to her own. A simple, wordless instruction, and a warning.

Those eyes held a dread I knew was reflected in my own. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen her smile. She’d done it so often when we were young. A big, bold laugh had usually followed that smile, making me laugh right along with her. I missed the laugh, and her, even though she was sitting right in front of me, as she had every day for the last five years.

Mara wouldn’t stick her neck out for me anymore, but she’d try to help me if no one was watching. I didn’t blame her. She was doing what was best for her family. Yet it was the most care I’d felt from anyone in months, maybe years. I was no stranger to feeling alone in a crowded room.

My neck ached as I stretched it subtly and forced my eyes back down to the simple wooden bookstand in front of me. It held the same heavy tome as every day—our codex, containing the history and rules of our people, and the only book we were allowed to read.

Reaching out, I flipped a page without seeing the words. I’d stopped paying attention to them hours ago. Still, my eyes stayed fixed in place as I listened for when other acolytes turned theirs, and I subtly pinched my leg to keep my focus.

My head throbbed as the words I could almost recite blindfolded swam before my tired eyes and my wings became heavy and cramped from keeping them tucked so tightly into my side. My fingers twitched with the urge to hurl the codex across the room, but the punishment for such an act would be worse than the satisfaction I’d earn from it. Especially today, of all days, when my entire future was at stake. It loomed alongside the setting sun, and right now, felt as impossibly out of reach.

Without warning, an intimidating presence hovered over me, and my fingers stilled where I’d been about to pinch my bruised leg again. I hardly dared to breathe. It amazed me that a being supposedly blessed by the goddess left such a dark shadow. I tried not to tense or flick my eyes up to meet the gaze of my elder. Experience had taught me he would be anything but benevolent.

“Alula, you’re fidgeting. I don’t understand why you still have so much trouble with the simplest of tasks I set you.”

That crisp, hardened voice, loaded with disdain, was too familiar. The sound of it behind me felt like an old stone wall was waiting to tumble and crush me under its weight. That voice had stalked me since childhood, as had the cruel gray eyes I knew were roving over my form, making sure I was suitably deferential. Those eyes were always hunting for any sign of spirit so he could stamp it out. Violently, if needed.

The silver-haired elder of the Welkin Wing, our leader, had a reputation for being tyrannical and rigid in his approach to both teaching and life.

Despite how hard he’d tried over the years, and how much of my curious nature I shoved down deep, Elder Welkin couldn’t seem to make me suitably pious. It enraged him. His need to break me was as palpable as the shadow of his cane that fell over my lap, poised to strike. Today, I gave him nothing. It was my last chance to prove I had what it took to become a Vessel of Light.

He hovered behind me without speaking, but I purposely kept silent. I’d long ago learned that questions and answers had rules, and breaking them brought swift punishment. He hadn’t asked a question, so to address him now would be considered impertinent.

“What passage are you having so much trouble studying? If you were reading at all…”

He was prodding me. Baiting me. I forced my breathing to remain steady as I ran my eyes frantically over the page the codex was open to. He snatched the codex from the rickety bookstand, making it teeter briefly, and pulled the tome out of my view as I willed myself not to react. Keeping my gaze averted, I focused on my hands as I placed them flat on my lap, as expected of acolytes.

“I am waiting, Alula. You know I do not like to be kept waiting.” His voice had gone icy, and I knew I was in trouble, despite my efforts. The closer we’d gotten to this year’s Ostara Festival, where each wing would present their potentiates for offers, the more watchful and vengeful he’d become.

“I was reading the passage where the Goddess of Light gifts her chosen with the first lumis orb, filled with her blessings.” It was my best guess based on the words I’d glimpsed on the page.

At his silence, I risked the tiniest glance over my shoulder. He frowned as his eyes flicked down and held mine for a heartbeat before I looked away. An age passed as his calculating, furious gaze burned through my skull. He could no longer read well without the aid of glasses, but I doubted many people knew about that. Elder Welkin was far too vain and power hungry to let slip even the smallest sign of weakness. The only reason I knew was because I’d discovered it when I was wandering somewhere I wasn’t supposed to as a child. I suspected he had known I was there that day, although he’d been called away before he could discover my hiding place.

Crowding me, he leaned over and handed the book to Mara, who stood stiffly to take it from his outstretched hands. “Read the page to me, Mara. Let everyone hear the passage.”

It was now a test for her as much as for me. I’d put her in an awful predicament. This was the exact reason our friendship had fractured years ago. She kept her gaze averted from us both as she read, her voice even and steady.

“I give my people, the Neven, a sacred lumis orb—my divine energy given form. Your daughters’ essences shall be connected to the orb, and they will become Vessels of Light—my devoted enduring lights in this world. Through them, you shall wield light for the good of all.

“I shall appoint the strongest female amongst you as my Leóht, my righteous strength. I shall also appoint a guardian of my choosing, one who is pure of soul and will be your ally on your journey, who will watch over you all. My light shall flow through you to illuminate your path, empower your peoples, and guard you against enemies. Your light shall flourish and grow with the strength of the hearts my light passes through. I give thee—”

“Enough.” The harsh bite of the single word stopped Mara mid-breath. Elder Welkin circled around to stand between us. He looked at her suspiciously, but even if she had said that passage from memory, he couldn’t call her on it. Not without outing himself.

His hate-filled gaze swung to me before it narrowed again. With his long, slim nose and thinning gray hair, it gave him a hawkish look. It suited him. He was every bit as cunning and vicious as the territorial birds that claimed the very top of the citadel towers. All Neven knew not to fly too close to their nests.

My gaze dropped down again. I may have lived a sheltered life for the last ten years, but I wasn’t naive enough to think I had won anything.

“I am still unconvinced you are worthy of becoming a potentiate, much less a vessel, Alula.” His lightened tone and his steps were deceptively casual as he moved over to the lone tapestry hanging at the far end of the bare room and jabbed his finger at it. He would never let me off that easily. “Tell me what you see.”

The tapestry took up half the wall and was of Nur, the Goddess of Light, as were most of our artworks. This one depicted her raising our citadel, Lumière, and the fortified town surrounding it, from the ground. Showing it all rising on one giant piece of rock as crumbling earth fell away. Allowing us to bask in her light for eternity and sheltering us from both the Fallen and the wraiths they had created. The unearthly living nightmares, woven into the scene as dark shadows at the base of the tapestry, still terrorized the humans stranded on the ground to this day. They were the reason we were forbidden from leaving the safety of our floating citadel.

In the tapestry, the goddess wasn’t portrayed as a winged Neven, as she had sometimes appeared to us. Instead, it showed her as a column of light, guiding us to the heavens, with lumis-wielded thread woven throughout the strands to make the tapestry glow. Her original light had long since faded, but to this day, the citadel remained surrounded by a halo—a thin sphere of semitransparent lumis infused with her light. It protected and shielded us from our enemies, as well as helped nourish the plants thriving within it.

Our codex described the rising as a moment of great rapture, but I often wondered what that would have felt like for the people who had lived through it. If they’d had any warning, or if it had come as a terrible shock. Or what the humans on the ground had felt as they’d watched us rise to safety, knowing they had no means of escape. A welling sadness overtook me whenever I looked at it for too long, along with an unsettling sense of something deeply wrong within the weaving itself.

Telling Elder Welkin any of that would be a mistake, though. It wasn’t what I was supposed to feel when looking at the tapestry, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes I feared I would forever be out of step with what was expected of me.

Elder Welkin glared while tapping the tapestry impatiently, but gave no clues about the current direction of his thoughts beyond his frustration at my inadequacies. I had to give him an answer, but the wrong one would only provoke him further. “A reminder of our history, and why it’s important we learn it?”

He shook his head, slapping his hand so hard against the tapestry I feared it would fall down. “No, Alula. This tapestry is about strength. Vessels are the bearers of the goddess’s most sacred gifts. They are so strongly blessed with her light that they can share it with others. For generations, every firstborn woman in your family has been a vessel. Yet after all these years as a novice and then an acolyte, you still cannot competently or consistently master the basics. How will you share light to benefit your people as a vessel, or help in your duty to keep this citadel aloft, if you cannot focus enough to complete a single task, or even wield lumis for yourself competently? Did you think I did not see how you struggled during the last test the vessels set? You may have passed, but only just.”

My breath caught in my chest, unable to work its way past my growing panic. There was a trap here somewhere within his angry tirade. I could feel it circling, taloned hooks trying to snag me. My palms began to sweat, but I had no way of escaping its clutches. I never had.

We’d been stuck in this dance for a long time, Elder Welkin and I. Neither of us wanted me here, but for reasons I couldn’t fathom, it seemed we both needed me here. I knew why I was here, but I’d never been able to understand his determination to keep me as a pupil despite his clear disdain for me. He could have failed me a long time ago, as he had many an acolyte with stronger gifts than mine, but instead made my life a daily torment.

To remain an acolyte, I’d whittled down all the parts of me Elder Welkin didn’t like and twisted myself into what he wanted, all for the chance to serve as a vessel. To wield and share our goddess’s light in her name. To learn her deeper secrets. I was so close now, mere hours from my goal, and still, he dragged this day out to torment me.

There had been so many questions within his heated rant that I didn’t know how to answer, so I remained quiet, but the tension in the lengthening silence told me he expected a response. Finally, I said, “I will give every gleam of light within me to the service of our goddess and our people.”

Nothing he did could make me falter now, not after everything I had endured. I just had to hold on a little longer. Provoked by the weight of his silence, I risked another glance up at him. Dread whirled deep in my gut as the way he strode toward me with rigid purpose told me I was in deep trouble. The trap had already sprung shut.

“If that is true, then you will have no problem with a final test, one of my design. You must pass it before I allow you to be presented as a vessel potentiate of the Welkin Wing.” He halted before me, wearing a fearsome, determined expression. “Mara, Alula, stand and face each other. I will give each of you a different sigil, and without knowing the purpose of either, you will wield it into the same object.”

Icy fear swept over me, producing a cold sweat along my spine as he stood between us and the window. Lumis was light made physical by drawing it through our bodies and giving it intention through the use of sigils. Most light wielders could create orbs of varying strength, with the strongest also able to imbue lumis into shiny matter, usually gems and gold. Vessels were so powerful that not only could they wield light into duller metals, like steel, but they also shared their light with other people, although the transfer was temporary and soon faded.

As acolytes, Mara and I could wield sunlight to make a lumis orb and imbue basic intentions into objects, such as creating heating plates for cooking. We usually required strong, open light to do it, though. The stronger the intention, the more skill and natural light was required.

Our formal testing had been undertaken at the very top of our citadel tower, with only the sky and the sun above us. The vessels and most important nobles of our wing had eagerly watched. We’d been required to imbue golden chains with a complicated holding sigil—a request that had felt so deeply wrong the light itself seemed to resist it. Wielding the sigil had been excruciatingly difficult, but I had done it, barely holding onto my breakfast after the exertion, all the while trying not to wonder how those chains would be used.

Despite his grim nod of acknowledgment after the formal test, Elder Welkin had since been a seething mass of sharp-tongued ire that had people scattering at his approach. While testing us again was unorthodox, it was within his power to deny us—and we all knew it.

Mara and I had no choice. If either of us refused or failed now, our path ended. There was no other way to become a vessel.

We both stood and made to step around him, headed for the wielding space in front of the lone window. I wasn’t at all sure my trembling legs would carry me, but it was a needless worry. Elder Welkin’s bony hand clamped down on my shoulder, jerking me to a stop.

“No. Do it here.”

Swallowing hard, I dared a glance at Mara. Although the pale limestone walls of the citadel towers reflected light around the internal spaces, the acolyte training room only had one window at the far end, and natural light was almost nonexistent this far back. There were a few lumis orbs in sconces along the walls to light our studies, but re-wielding lumis was extraordinarily difficult. We would also have to wield without knowing the intention of the sigil, something we had never done. Her eyes were wide, betraying her concern. She was normally so contained around our elder that it was almost startling.

Not one acolyte, scribe, or chaperone in the room would look at us.

Everyone knew this task was near impossible, and Elder Welkin had deliberately designed it that way.

For us to fail.