Page 25

Chapter 24

Hidden Depths

“What scent?” Nier repeated when I didn’t answer him, his voice getting lower and rougher.

“Have you been spending time in the orchard?” I asked innocently, not turning around.

He paused as if unsure why I was asking. “I’ve slept in the orchard a few times. It’s mostly empty at night except for stray teenagers also looking for a spot away from prying eyes. I’ve occasionally stolen apples when I’m hungry too. Why?”

“You smelled like apples and apple blossoms last night, and I’ve been scenting it all day. It’s been driving me mad.”

“Oh.” There was another pause before I felt his breath against my shoulder and shadows spilled tightly around me as they hugged him closely. “You scent of a dozen different males. How many touched you today?”

I sighed, not wanting to think about it, let alone count them. Every male who had laid eyes on me today had been stretching the bounds of propriety to touch me. “All of them, I think, except Aeron. He only stared.”

Nier’s voice was low and vibrated against my skin as he spoke. “Do you have any idea how maddening it was feeling your heart beating out of your chest, not knowing if you were excited or terrified? Only knowing you walked in looking so exquisitely pure and delectable to meet a parade of males that all thought they had a right to your body?”

That deep, melodious voice, so close to my ear, drove all thought of any other male from my mind. “How do you know my heart was beating fast?”

Even if he’d been there somehow, watching, he couldn’t have known that.

“I could feel it. I felt every breath you took too.” Phantom lips slid across the back of my shoulder, above my wings, as he spoke, so faint I couldn’t tell if it had happened or I’d imagined it. It made the light within me surge until it was vibrating like a siren call underneath my skin, reaching for him the same way his shadows twisted around me, pressing me closer to him.

I sucked in a gasp as my breaths came too fast. “How?”

“I can still feel it now. How fast your heart is beating, and every little gasped breath.” Warmth bloomed across my chest as the wisp of shadow I’d forgotten about slipped out from between my breasts. It drifted silkily over my skin to nestle against the heartbeat throbbing erratically at my throat. “Do you remember when I told you my shadows and your light were a part of us? Do you know what this shadow is, Alula?”

“N-no,” I stuttered.

“It’s a tiny part of me. I sense everything that goes on around it, feel everything it touches.”

“Oh.” Oh my goddess. I’d felt a sentience from it, but I’d thought his shadows were something apart from him, something he controlled, not a part of him. I’d had it between my breasts all day.

“So you haven’t been deliberately tormenting me?” he asked. The question held a dark challenge I didn’t yet know how to meet.

“No.” Not intentionally, but the thought that I could torment him made my curious nature flare.

“Good, or I may have felt the need to retaliate.”

The shadow drifted back down, leaving a trail of warmth that felt the same as his breath against my neck. It flowed back underneath the edge of my dress, then dipped lower to curl possessively around the lower curve of my breast.

I swallowed hard, trapped in place between the twin sensations despite having no part of his body touching mine. My breaths became shallow and thready. I’d never before felt so utterly alive, and in such utter torment at the same time. I hung there, waiting for his next words, his next breath.

That dark, throaty noise he’d made the first night we met made me shiver as it vibrated through me again like a battle horn, stirring my blood and calling me to war.

“You need to bathe and wash their touches from your body.”

It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say next, or hoped he’d say next, yet the idea of bathing while he watched did something wicked to me, melting my insides. I didn’t move. My body was no longer responding to me. It was more in tune with the rhythm of his own.

“Alula. Bathe. Now.” Frustration laced his voice, making the gruffness more pronounced.

Still, I hesitated, even though I desperately wanted to wash, because I also wanted more of whatever this was. Despite the fact he remained frustratingly out of sight. “Are you staying?” I dared ask.

The sound of pebbles shifting as he moved away made me regret the question. I already missed the warmth of him, even as his shadow remained. I should have kept my mouth shut.

“I’ll turn around.” His voice came from near the far wall, and it was steely with determination.

I was no longer an acolyte, and as a vessel, sharing my light physically would be expected; only, the lone male I wanted to touch me—this infuriating, intoxicating Fallen—now refused.

I had been a terrible acolyte, and I now realized I would have made a terrible vessel too.

Sighing, I moved closer to the water and undressed, leaving my clothes and towel on a nearby rock. I glanced at the shadow still nestled around the curve of my breast.

“Can your shadow get wet?” The question sounded ridiculous, but I was worried it would disperse or become diluted somehow.

His chuckle was dry and held a dark, tense undercurrent I didn’t understand. “Yes, Alula. It can get wet.”

Okay, good to know. I wasn’t sure why the question had provoked such a response, though. I picked my way to the rough steps but hesitated once again as I realized he’d dodged answering my earlier question.

“How long are you planning to stay?” What if he left tonight, under the cover of darkness? What if I never saw him again? It was ironic that the world felt like a darker place without him haunting the shadows.

“As long as I’m needed.” His answer sounded gruff and reluctant as it echoed off the rock wall in front of him. It still wasn’t an answer, but it seemed to be all I was going to get. His earlier ease with answering my questions and comforting me seemed to have disappeared.

As frustrating as it was, he didn’t owe me answers, nor his touch. Only, I couldn’t figure out if it was his penance for almost getting caught last night, or mine.

A sudden, unbearable feeling of being alone shook me. I forced myself to move and not dwell on how I’d gotten used to the feeling of his touch or the way I missed his arms around me and his hand in mine. The pool beckoned, and I headed for it, desperate to feel any kind of warmth to fight the chill spreading through me.

The moment my aching feet touched the water, the relief was instant. A sigh slipped past my lips as the water rose teasingly up my heated body. I remembered what my mother had said about vessels releasing their light and emotions into the pool.

On instinct, I held my breath and ducked, letting the water slip over my head as I sat on the rocky floor in the shallows. It felt like a warm embrace, as if Nur and all the generations of women before me were with me. Letting go of my fear and my loneliness, I felt light flow out from me and join them to dance for eternity in their embrace. Starting to understand the link between light and our emotions, I got why my mother came here so often.

I opened my eyes, half expecting to see them floating around me, but gasped, almost choking myself as the entire pool flared to life in a wave of light. As I broke through the surface, stumbling and gasping, the light hit the crystal ceiling. My arm flew up to shield my eyes as a million sparkles dazzled my sight. The almost painful pulse of light within me eased as it flowed and merged with the essence within the pool. A tingling comfort spread throughout my entire body, and I sighed as I tipped my head back in relief.

“What—oh, light blast me.” The sound of shifting pebbles followed his words. “Alula, what in the darkness is going on back there?”

Nier sounded panicked, and I looked over my shoulder in time to see him right himself on a rock as he spun back around to face the far wall. I knew if he’d turned all the way, he still wouldn’t have seen much of my naked body, with my wings covering me from behind. A part of me felt disappointed. But after the day I’d had, I appreciated he was going to such great lengths to avoid looking without my permission.

“Alula.” Nier had clenched his entire body, not just his fists, and his wings had flared wide. I could see him now in the light shining off the pool. He looked like a savage creature stealing all the light as his shadows swirled around him in agitation. “I swear to the goddess if you don’t answer me, I will not be responsible for my actions.”

“Don’t curse the goddess in here. Just stay there. I’m okay, I promise.”

As I looked around in amazement, I could see to the farthest reaches of the cavern. It was immense, much bigger than I had thought.

Frantically, I tried to pull the energy in the water back into me, or snuff it out somehow, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know how that much light had come from within me. I’d expected a glow like my mother, not this flood of light.

The sound of a heavy door closing and the echo of rushed footsteps descending had panic hitting me hard. There was nowhere for me to hide. Not even Nier’s shadows could reach me out here without drawing attention.

My wings dragged behind me as I tried to wade toward the steps, slowing me down. My own curse died on my lips. I was too far away to make it out in time. I hoped it was my mother and she would help, but that wasn’t to be my fate.

Adrita came into view.

The older vessel ground to a halt when she saw the pool, and her eyes widened before they locked on me standing in the shallows. Nier had wrapped himself in his shadows in the curve of the stairs below her in an attempt to stay hidden. If she looked too closely, she’d realize the shadows didn’t fit the space.

“I knew your mother was hiding your power. Light bless us.”

Raw relief lit her face as she clasped her hands in front of her. My mother had told me there were secrets only another vessel could reveal to me, but she had seemed hesitant to reveal them herself. Maybe the pool hadn’t been the only reason she’d sent me here.

“I have questions for you,” I replied, not acknowledging her words, while keeping mine simple and to the point.

“I have answers.”

Trepidation rose as I nodded. Nier’s answers had changed many things for me. I had a feeling Adrita’s wouldn’t bode well for me either if my mother feared to speak them.

Adrita watched me closely as she continued her descent. She reached the bottom of the stairs as I finally waded out of the water, feeling bedraggled with water sluicing down my body and my wings hanging limply. It wasn’t the confident image I wanted to portray for this conversation, but it couldn’t be helped.

I’d grabbed the shadow from my chest before I’d reached the shallows and held it discreetly in my hand instead. To my relief, the glow faded the moment my foot left the water, although it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. At least the sudden gloom would help keep Nier concealed.

“What is it you want to know?” Adrita asked as soon as she stopped before me, not wasting time on pleasantries, not even giving me time to wrap the towel she handed me around myself. There was a challenge in the glint of her eye and the tilt of her head. Her fingers twitched as if aching to borrow my energy and wield something.

I didn’t hesitate either. It was a risk, but I wanted to shock her a little to see how she would react. Besides, I had no interest in starting out small, or with idle gossip. All the answers I’d been given so far had raised so many more questions in my mind.

“How much of the elders’ stories and the codex are lies?”

Adrita’s instant grin was wide and cunning.

“So, you want to take a big old bite straight outta the hog, huh? No nibbling delicately with leading questions?”

Adrita was certainly less formal than my mother, but no less savvy. I eyed her as I dried my skin while spreading my wings out and rustling them in an attempt to dry them too. She appeared to have lost all interest in bathing as she stood next to a rocky outcropping, if that had been her intention in coming at all.

“Not just the hog—the whole farm. I want all of it. I want to know everything you do.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Sweet child, we don’t have that long. I hold the memories of all the vessels in my family line, the same way your mother does.”

“You’re a nexus vessel, like my mother?” I’d never paid much attention to the hierarchies within other wings.

“Yes, I am. So, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, it’s all one big lie that takes a long time to unravel. It might help if you could be more specific about what you want to know.”

How in the light had the elders kept an entire citadel blind to this level of deceit? It seemed so vast I didn’t know where to start.

My bravado faltered. I wanted to get the most out of this conversation, and so far, I hadn’t seemed to ask the right questions to find out what I needed to know. Drying my face with the towel, I gave myself a moment to think.

Talking felt so natural with Nier. Words and questions had come tumbling out once I’d opened up to him. But with Adrita watching me with expectation, it felt so much harder. Almost like a test, as if she was silently urging me to ask the right questions too.

It struck me how much the elders had taken from me in trying to break me. Not only had they altered my nature—they’d taken my voice, and I hadn’t even realized until now how much that had changed me.

There was only one thing I knew for sure right now. I wasn’t going to get the answers I needed from Adrita if I wasn’t straight with her. If I didn’t find my voice. Not Alula the acolyte, or Alula the potentiate. Me.

“Honestly, I don’t even know enough to figure out which questions to ask. I know next to nothing.” It was the blatant truth, and I couldn’t help but wince as I said it while pulling my dress back on and struggling with the silken fabric against my still damp skin.

Adrita’s brow furrowed as her grin dimmed. From her expression, it wasn’t the right answer, and I tried to swallow down my disappointment. She turned me around and helped free me from where the dress had tangled at my back, smoothing my damp hair aside. “Has your light-damned mother not taught you anything?”

It was a deliberate slight on my mother, but I didn’t react to it as I turned back to her. We had a complicated relationship, despite our new understanding. It didn’t sit well with me, but I also didn’t want to detract from this conversation and risk my chance at answers.

“She told me the codex is lies, that my emotions affect how I wield, and explained the pool, but not much more than that.” I wasn’t sure enough of Adrita to confess to my mother’s plans to get me out. Answering questions was one thing; trust was another. “My mother has been deliberately keeping me in the dark. But since she released the block Nur placed on me when I was young, I’ve started to remember some things, although not much.”

Adrita’s face went almost comically slack as she fell to her knees on the rocky ground, and her hand went over her open mouth. She stared up at me as if I was some kind of mystical creature she’d never seen before instead of a disheveled female with wet hair. It didn’t sit well to have her kneeling before me. Adrita was a highly respected vessel.

As I thought over what I’d said, I figured out what I had just revealed. I knew mentioning the goddess to the elders would be a bad idea, but should I not have mentioned the goddess to the vessels? I silently cursed my mother for leaving out so much.

“Adrita?” I asked as I kneeled down in front of her to bring myself to her level, wincing as a sharp pebble bit into my knee.

Her eyes had glazed over and become unfocussed, as if she was in shock.

“Truly…you’ve met the goddess? After all this time, she’s reappeared?” She seemed almost hesitant to ask, as if maybe she’d misunderstood me. She reached out, almost absently, and grasped my hand.

I hesitated, but there was no point denying it now. “Yes, but not recently. When I was a child.”

“You can shed light, but can you wield lumis? I heard you struggled during your last test.” Only vessels from our wing attended our final acolyte tests, so Adrita hadn’t been there.

As I hesitated again, not wanting another blunder, she squeezed my hand to the point of pain. “We don’t have time to mess around. I can’t answer your questions or teach you our secrets if you don’t tell me what I’m working with.”

She was right. I tried not to look at Nier, knowing he was listening and I was potentially revealing more of our secrets to him. “The goddess took my memories to protect me when I was young, and whatever she did blocked my ability to wield light. I couldn’t draw light through me without pain, and not just because of the block. The light within the citadel has always felt tainted to me. Since my mother removed the block, it’s been easier, but I have no control.” I eyed her nervously, unsure if I should tell her more. What I’d just revealed was enough to potentially get us both killed. I hadn’t even spoken of the taint to my mother.

Her probing gaze had me shifting uncomfortably. “We’ll get to the taint in a minute. Did you know lumis retains the energy of its wielder, kind of like a signature? Yet at its core, all lumis feels the same. Except yours. Yours has a different energy than the others. I can sense it. It’s deeper, older, more powerful. Lesser vessels wouldn’t notice, but I handled the orb from your first test as a novice and noticed it even then. I hid it so nobody else would.”

I took a shocked breath. “You did? Why?”

“Because you were young and there was too much I didn’t understand. I only knew you weren’t in control of whatever energy you were wielding. It made you even more vulnerable, and I couldn’t protect you back then. You weren’t in my wing. I’ve always watched you, though, and I noticed you changed after that day. I watched you even closer when you became an acolyte and I realized the first orb you wielded never faded. My constant watching made your mother suspicious of me.” She grinned to herself, as if she’d enjoyed needling my mother.

My first orb had never faded? If she’d kept my secret that long, I could trust her now.

“I can also draw light from within myself,” I blurted out in a rush.

“Show me,” she whispered, almost reverently.

Pulling up my hand, I drew a small amount of light from within me into a small orb that reflected pure white light onto both our faces, finding it easier every time I did it now.

“Can I hold it?”

Her hands trembled as I passed it to her. She caressed it gently while holding it in one palm as she watched it shed shimmers into the air.

“Thank you, goddess,” she said as she sat up straighter. “We may have a path again now.”

“A path for what?”

Adrita gave me a long look before she answered. “To stop the elders from draining the realm, and possibly the world, in their never-ending quest for more lumis. We have to be careful, though. If they get their hands on you before you’ve learned your own strength, it could set us back hundreds of years…again.”

“Oh.” That one word and a series of rapid blinks seemed to be all I was capable of as I absorbed what she’d just said.

Adrita must have seen the look on my face, because she switched gears.

“I don’t believe in hiding things, Alula—not amongst vessels. That’s how they’ve kept us ignorant for centuries, dividing us and limiting our knowledge. If you ask me a question, I’m going to give it to you straight.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke.

That was all well and good for her, but being on the receiving end of hearing you could die and set your people back hundreds of years held a different perspective.

Trying to keep my breathing even, I thought about her perspective for a moment, focusing on that rather than the words, and it helped. After all, they were all just words. “I appreciate that, but what you just said was a lot to take in.”

What I needed was details if I was ever going to get my mind around it, things I could actually do something about.

“You can’t hide from the fates, child, not once they’ve marked you.”

“I already tried hiding. It didn’t work out that well.” I waved my hand at her cryptic words, ignoring the fates part for now. “Just…can you give it to me in pieces? Bite-size chunks I can digest easier? Tell me what the elders are doing and how it relates to me.”

I’d learned so much the last few days that my mind had given up on reeling with shock.

“Yes. Good.” She clapped her hands together as if we were done with that part of the conversation. “We need to cover a few basics first so you have context. Sigils are loosely based on the symbol language of the ancients. As you already know, using them is a way to channel your intention into the light. Acolytes learn key sigils by the repetition of basic elements. When they become a vessel, we share a wider selection of sigils to learn. The most powerful vessels, including your mother and me, don’t require a sigil, but we are very, very careful about ever wielding without one. Getting caught doing so would be a death sentence. Yet we still require an external source of light or lumis in order to wield. The only other acolyte in our known history who has never required one was the goddess’s original Leóht.”

“What?” I’d become sidetracked trying to figure out why she was giving me a lesson we got as novices, and I’d almost missed the last part. It had been dropped so casually, like she’d tricked me into listening to her so she could drop an even bigger idea onto me.

“You heard me, child.” Her tone was gentle, but her eyes blazed, fixed on me, resolute and unwilling to let me avoid this one.

Apparently, I hadn’t given up on reeling with shock. The space was cavernous around us, but I couldn’t get enough air. The world felt like it was pressing in on me.

“The Leóht didn’t require a source of light?” I asked, struggling to find the breath to get the words out.

She nodded slowly, watching my every movement. “She was a source of light within herself.”

Keeping my neck stiff, I had to force myself not to look at Nier’s shadows. He’d seen me wield without light. He’d never mentioned it again, but he’d still seen it. Rising to my feet as well as I could on the rocky ground, I walked a few steps away from Adrita. Trying to put some distance between me and everything she wasn’t saying, I paced along the narrow space at the top of the rock pool stairs, scattering pebbles in my wake. I watched as one bounced into the pool and disappeared out of sight. I wanted to do the same. My mind tried to fix on anything but what Adrita had just said.

“This is why I started with the warning about fate.” She was blunt, not letting me escape this knowledge, or this fate, it seemed.

I’d been right in my earlier hesitation.

Adrita’s answers did not bode well for me.