Page 34

Chapter 33

A Mother Meets Her Fate

I kept my eyes locked on my mother’s face as her fresh blood added to the congealed, half-dried pools around us. Nier let me go as I dropped to my knees beside her. Her wide eyes fluttered, almost in confusion.

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t understand what my eyes were trying to tell me. She had been right there beside me when we’d thrown the orbs.

She raised a bloodied hand to her face, seeming transfixed by the sight. “I’ve long had blood on my hands. It’s never been my own before.”

“She leaped in front of you as the wraith slashed at you,” Nico said, meeting my frantic gaze, “a heartbeat before you disappeared.”

“Mother, no,” I whimpered.

I patted at her stomach with a trembling hand, shaking my head in denial as blood welled between my fingers. She pulled my hand away with a grunt as Nico tore off his tunic, balled it up, and pushed it onto the wound, trying desperately to stem the flow of bleeding. There was so much blood that it soaked the finely woven fabric.

“Remember, Alula,” she warned, her voice thready, yet her gaze locked on mine as she clenched my hand. “Follow my lead, and don’t fight what comes next. Promise me.”

Her eyes bore into me, begging. I could deny her nothing while her life bled from her, so I nodded uselessly as tears tracked down my cheeks and I clutched her hand to my chest.

“I refuse to let you sacrifice yourself for me. We can fix this.” A sense of panic overtook me. Despite the years of cold indifference, my mother had always been a towering, powerful presence in my life. It wasn’t possible for her to be taken down by a wraith. She was too formidable and uncompromising. She would never allow it. “Adrita told me sharing light also shares health that prolongs our lives. We can fix this. I know we can. We just need more light.”

She squeezed my hand, hard. “Alula, listen to me. Light cannot heal what death has already claimed. Besides, that line of thinking does not lead anywhere good. It’s what drives the elders. Don’t become them. You will lose yourself, like Elder Welkin did long ago.”

Gripping her hand equally hard, trying to hang on so fiercely I’d force her to stay, I shook my head. “Mother—”

“No, Alula. I’ve known for a long time that one of us would die today.” Her words tore through the denial my mind was still trying to form. “I won’t let it be you. That I could not bear, and the world could not endure. My fate is my own, and I accepted it a long time ago. You don’t get a say in this.”

Her words sliced through me, leaving a jagged, gaping wound in my heart. I remembered her telling me in the pool that her fate was different from mine. Had this always lay between us?

“I may not get a say in what you do, but I don’t have to sit here and accept it,” I insisted. “I’m done with making myself small and enduring quietly.” My heart was overflowing with sorrow, intermingled with a building rage . What use was raw light if I couldn’t use it to save the people closest to me?

“You must,” she demanded. “Your time to act will come, I promise, but it is not today. The pieces are not yet in place. For now, you are here to learn your enemy, and to endure.”

Shaking my head, I racked my brain, not willing to accept her death while there was still life in her. There had to be something I could do. I tried pulling at my light again, but all I could feel was a pained burning sensation, as if my very blood was on fire. Still, I tried and tried.

“Stop, Alula…or we’ll both die, and many people will suffer.” She used what little light she had left to push against mine as she spoke, her words coming out on pained, breathless pants. “The goddess told me your light in hands other than your own would have repercussions for us all. That you matter to us all, and you must survive this day.”

“I don’t care. The goddess isn’t here. It’s just you and me, and I deny your sacrifice.” I was growing increasingly weary of having my voice taken away from me. Maybe it was time I started to deny others.

She ignored me, locking her gaze on Nier. “You must go now, or neither of you will survive what comes next. Be ready when she needs you, because she will. You’ll feel it when she asks.”

“Nier, she’s right. We have to go now,” Raed insisted. “The elders and the Apex Flight are coming. We cannot fight them all.”

A familiar hand landed on my shoulder, and shadows briefly enveloped me, but the comfort I usually felt from the touch of both was missing. There was no comfort in this moment.

“Ask me to stay and I will, Alula.”

My jagged breaths tore at my chest at the idea of them both dying this day. “Go, Nier. Please.”

“Only if you promise me you will stay alive.”

I nodded automatically without turning to Nier, but I had no thought for myself in this moment, not when my mother’s blood pooled around my knees.

“I’m so sorry.” Nier’s words were broken whispers as the hand disappeared and the shadows bled away from us. I wasn’t sure if they were for my mother, or me.

My mother raised her other bloodied hand to stroke my hair. I closed my eyes and leaned into it, knowing it was the last time she’d ever do it. Imagining we were somewhere else, anywhere else but here.

“This is bigger than both of us. Didn’t you tell that to Nier earlier? You can’t pick and choose when that applies. You’ve just saved many lives; now you must survive this day. The goddess and the fates demand it.” Dropping her hand to my shoulder, she pulled me closer, desperation lending her strength.

Her eyes softened as mine finally met hers again, too much revealed to her. There was no holding any of my emotions back right now.

“I do not resent you, or my fate, my child. I go willingly to it. You can always find me in the light. I’ll be with you, always, as will my mother, and hers before her. You are one now, but you are also many. Do you understand?”

I shook my head, beyond words now, hers making no sense.

“It’s okay. You will. Nur will help you. Right now, you need to pull back your light, and lower your eyes one last time, or you won’t be able to help the many who will need you. Need us…”

A memory rose to the surface on a swell of light. Of my mother, writing a letter to me when I was still a small child playing quietly at her feet. Telling me of her decision and her acceptance of her fate; apologizing for the years to come. She wrote it as tears dripped onto the page, blurring the words, then burned it, knowing one day I would have the memory of it. She picked me up, handed me to my brother, then pulled her imagined armor tightly around herself and buried her feelings deep.

A sob broke free, wrenched from that jagged wound in my heart as I shut off the memory and my light. I couldn’t watch it—not now, while I was soaked in her still-warm blood.

Nico stiffened. He looked behind me, and his eyes widened before darting back to meet mine. He didn’t need to tell me. I could feel the shift in the surrounding light. I struggled to shore up my own invisible armor, but it felt cracked and battered.

Steady, confident footsteps echoed in the passageway’s silence until they stopped just behind me.

“Well, that was a disappointing hunt,” the voice that invaded my nightmares announced. “I was hoping the two traitors and their guardian accomplice would put up a little more resistance.”

My eyes locked on Nico, and a determined, deadly gleam rose into his. It defied the stench of old death lingering in the air, and his own death he could see before him. I didn’t know him well, but I knew enough to know he was not a man to meet his fate on his knees.

Nico rose to his full height as a hand hovered above the blade at his hip in a pose that was anything but casual.

Elder Welkin and his son ignored him as they rounded me to get a better look at my mother.

“Vessel Elora, do you deny wielding an excessive display of light last evening with the sole purpose of drawing wraiths to the citadel?”

“I do not deny that I wielded light last night,” my mother answered from her prone position on the floor, her voice thin and pained but determined. “It was during a personal ceremony used by vessels to commune with the Goddess of Light. It was more light than I anticipated, but I had no expectation it would become visible, nor that it would have an effect on wraiths. I am no traitor to my people.”

“Was your daughter present for this ceremony?”

“No. We perform it privately.”

“Elder Welkin.” Nico addressed him formally, studiously avoiding the elder’s earlier taunt, for now. “The two wraiths have been defeated by Vessel Elora, yet we suffered great losses before her arrival. If she had not intervened, the losses would have been catastrophic.”

“How were they defeated? I see no wraith bodies before me,” Aeron asked in his father’s stead, pushing forward. Neither male mentioned nor showed any concern for the dead and dismembered guardians littering the passage beyond—the ones who had given their lives defending our citadel.

“I encircled them with orbs. I intended to contain them until you could arrive, but they pushed through, intent on reaching me,” my mother answered, her voice more thready by the minute. “I had no choice but to flood them with lumis. They appeared to break apart within it, but I was too slow, and one gored me first.”

It was a series of blatant lies that left me out of the equation. Not a single guardian beyond us contradicted her as Nico swept his gaze over them, threatening swift retribution for any that disagreed.

“Does anyone have a different story?” I could hear the sneer in Aeron’s voice, though I hadn’t yet looked at him or his father, my gaze riveted on each labored breath my mother took. Each one coming a little slower, like a clock winding down.

If she needed me to play the dutiful potentiate one last time, I would grit my teeth and do it for her. I could do no less as her weak gaze lingered on me, filled with an unspoken, blood-soaked plea.

The surrounding silence was profound. I’d never heard or seen anyone defy an elder before. Yet in this moment, each of the guardians around us chose to protect not only my mother and me, but also the Fallen who had come to our aid.

“How did you get enough power for that? There wasn’t enough within this passage,” Elder Welkin finally asked, making no move to aid her.

“From the dying guardians around us.” Defiance glinted in the depths of her eyes as she finally met his. The silence seemed to swell until it became oppressive.

“I don’t know how you would do that outside of the Sanctorum, but if that is true, then you have betrayed one of our secrets,” Elder Welkin said, “and damned everyone here.”

Her eyes shifted back to mine, and the love within them had all the air evaporating from my lungs. “Forgive me,” she whispered.

I nodded, unable to get any words out that wouldn’t betray us both.

The simple show of love for me was too much for the elder, and he snarled behind me, sensing her duplicity. “Aeron, have two of your men take her to the Sanctorum. Her death may as well be useful.”

A war cry built in my head as my denial morphed into fury. I battled the urge to turn and take on every guardian coming for my mother. The urge to stand over her body and defend her was shocking in its ferocity. I shook with the need, but her gaze remained fixed on me, forbidding me from interfering.

“It’s okay, Alula. It’s my duty as a vessel.” She gave my hand one last squeeze before she released me from its grip. “Find Kiran. He’ll take care of you until you’re ready to make your choice.”

“Kiran has his own troubles, I’m afraid,” Elder Welkin sneered, “but I’ll gladly take care of Alula for you. Her choices will be limited, of course.”

A chilled, bony hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me away, half dragging me before I could get my feet underneath me. It was a vile replacement for the one that had been there only a moment ago.

“There’s nothing to forgive. You lived your life with your truth,” I called out to her, my words sounding harsher than intended as they choked me. “I could do no better.”

She nodded, tears in her eyes that she refused to let fall. She blinked rapidly as she looked toward the two guardians descending on her. “Help me to my feet, Nico.”

He complied, bending to help her as she groaned and a fresh surge of blood soaked her robe. She paled but waved the guardians off as they reached for her. “I will walk to my fate.”

She gave me one last, long look before she turned unsteadily. With her head held high, she gathered her dignity around her like a silken cloak and walked into the deepening darkness. It would terrify many—that yawning, darkened tunnel that had so recently spawned wraiths and held only death—but not my indomitable mother.

My body strained toward her, desperate to witness every last moment she was in sight, but I was given no time to watch or grieve as she disappeared. My arm was yanked upward, and I was pulled unceremoniously to my feet before being spun to face a furious elder. I hadn’t earned the respect my mother was afforded, even as a traitor. I kept my gaze trained on the filthy stone beneath our feet.

“What about her daughter?” Aeron asked, gesturing to me. “She knows too much.”

“She doesn’t deserve the honor of the Sanctorum,” he hissed, spittle flying and landing on the side of my face, “and it would be a wasted effort. Her mother was one of the strongest vessels in generations. Alula’s light is weak and unpredictable. I can barely even sense any within her now.”

He unclasped the giant diamond on the chain around his neck, curling it into his palm, before he pushed both onto my chest. Fear spiked as I recalled Adrita’s warning about the diamond and her advice about hate being a strong emotion when sharing light, I pulled my grief for my mother over every other emotion, drowning them, until there was only an aching numbness.

The diamond heated beneath his hand, becoming hotter, to the point of pain, as I dropped my gaze. I could feel the intention of the wielding trying to draw light from within me with a sickly insidiousness that had a sweat forming across my brow and my stomach heaving. Only my light was a charred wasteland. Closing his eyes for a moment, Elder Welkin breathed deeply before he yanked the diamond from my chest, leaving a red mark behind, and looked me over with a sneer. “Barely a spark. There is nothing even to drain from her.”

“I’ll take her. I’m sure my flight can find a way to keep her busy.” The implication of Aeron’s words was clear, but his face was impassive.

“No,” Elder Welkin barked at his son. “She’ll suffer the fate of all false idols. I will not let anyone undermine us. We’ve worked too hard to put all our plans in place.”

Everything my mother had been trying to tell me finally clicked into place as I realized the long game she had been playing. She’d been fooling Elder Welkin into thinking I was weak for all those years to keep me out of the Sanctorum today.

The snarl he wore twisted his face into something sinister as a glint of madness flickered in his eyes. He was having even more trouble than I was keeping a solemn, devout facade in place. This was his true face if ever I’d seen it.

“And the rest of them?” Aeron asked, waving a hand at his fellow guardians with a cool dispassion.

Elder Welkin’s gaze shifted to the Neven around us, the monster within no longer hiding as he looked at the guardians lining the walls, trying to merge with the rough-hewn stone and avoid notice.

“Kill them all,” he ordered his son as he raised his chin imperiously, a high lord standing before his throne of bones.

“No, you can’t!” I shouted, the words escaping before I could swallow them down. My words were drowned out as swords were raised, and knives made their way into clenched fists. Elder Welkin paid my outburst no attention. Grabbing an orb from one of Aeron’s flight, he carelessly dismissed us all, as he dragged me to the stairwell with a fist of iron wrapped around my upper arm. “Don’t tarry. I won’t wait for you,” he called out to his son.

My feet dragged on the rough floor as I tried to turn, ripping my delicate silken slippers and tearing the skin from my shins. Anger flooded back in, bursting from the brittle barrier I’d held it behind. I couldn’t abandon Nico when he was only here because he’d come to our aid, or any of these men who had stayed silent in defense of me.

My blood burned in my veins as I desperately tried to summon light while my emotions rioted. I couldn’t connect to it in any way that I could wield it. The deep core of me where my light had always resided felt scorched.

The orb in Elder Welkin’s hand flared in a bright, fiery shimmer, then ebbed again, almost violently, in time with my surging emotions. Elder Welkin eyed it suspiciously but continued to brutally drag me away.

As I looked back over my shoulder, my desperate gaze landed on Nico as the stairwell loomed. He was trying to battle his way toward me, but from the wretched look in his eyes, he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He was already bloodied.

“Run, Alula,” he shouted at me as he fended off a vicious swing from Aeron, fighting until his last breath. “Live.”

But there was nowhere to run.

And I wasn’t sure the crushing despair threatening to pull me under was something I could live with. People were dying. For me.

I’d sent Nier away to save his life, and now my family was trying to do the same for me. I got that, but why did I get to be the one who lived? My life wasn’t worth their sacrifices.

My feet banged viciously on the hard steps as I struggled to keep up, making my vision darken momentarily as my eyes watered, both from my bruised toes and the light searing my eyes as I was dragged out into the main passageway. It was brightly lit, with orbs lining the hallways despite the sunlight pouring through the large windows.

I’d always assumed the displays of lumis were a decadent indulgence, much the same as nobles displayed their wealth in all their glittering jewels and finery. Looking at the orbs with fresh eyes as we passed down the passageway, I realized Nier was right, even if I hadn’t understood what he meant at the time.

It wasn’t decadence but a strategic defense against wraiths for the upper residents of the citadel. It was an armory.

As I sucked in a breath, I wrenched my arm against the grip bruising it, pulling Elder Welkin off balance, forcing him to stop and turn in order to keep his hold on me.

“You know. You’ve known all along how to stop the wraiths.” My voice vibrated with a fury I could no longer contain, despite my promise to my mother only moments ago. It spilled out messily.

He shot me a glare laced with scorn. “Of course we know. We create the light-damned things. You think we’d do that without figuring out how to keep ourselves safe from them?”

“So you choose to send the wraiths to terrorize the ground when you know how to stop them? Why?”

“Are you questioning me?” he demanded. Outrage poured from him in a hot wave that burned where it splashed. “You never could learn your place. I am charged with the defense of this citadel. I don’t owe you an explanation for anything I do.”

“You? What about the other elders?” I’d never had much contact with the other elders, but I’d held onto hope at least some of them had a heart.

He was so wildly amused he snorted. “My son being allowed to create his own flight reporting directly to me was no accident. They do what they are told.”

His voice echoed along the passageway, but it seemed he no longer cared about being overheard.

My own outrage rose high enough to challenge his own, messy as it was. I met his gaze, even knowing how my emotions would be etched into my face with how close they were to the surface right now. My armor was shredded, and my sense of self-preservation had gone with it. “So they just went along with your plan to let wraiths rampage through the lower levels of the citadel while you all sat in your grand chamber? You were going to let women and children die needlessly today.”

“If we are to succeed, we need more lumis. Your mother’s actions caused the wraiths to concentrate below us, making it dangerous to gather humans to drain without traveling further distances. Her sacrifice not only balances her mistake but makes things we thought lost to us a possibility again if she has enough power.”

“Succeed in what? What more could you possibly want?”

He shook his head as his grip tightened on my arm, threatening to cut off my circulation and making my hand numb. “You are such a simple-minded creature. It’s a shame you didn’t inherit your mother’s intelligence or her ability to manipulate a situation to her advantage, not that it saved her in the end.”

“You don’t get to speak of my mother when you just sent her to her death.”

“I didn’t send her anywhere. She chose this path, and she knew the consequences. Who do you think has been draining the humans for us and creating the wraiths? Vessels may share their light with us, but it doesn’t give us the ability to do something like that.”

“No.” I wrenched my arm, trying to release it from his grip again, as I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear any more of his lies.

He grinned. Despite the years he’d spent trying to make me submissive, he seemed to relish my defiance at this moment. Or maybe it was the new opportunity to break me all over again.

“You’re either too stupid or too naive to see what’s right in front of you, despite all the questions you harbor that you learned not to ask. Only a vessel can wield the sigils onto an object used to drain someone. What did you think she was apologizing for? She has more sins than being an indifferent parent.”

Is that what she had been hiding from me? Tears welled, but I choked them back. I would not cry in front of this monster.

“Why would she do that?” I hated how small my voice sounded as my fury evaporated, leaving me feeling like a wilted flower.

A chill settled over me as I recalled Mara and I had wielded light into an ruby signet ring during our final test without knowing the intention of the sigil—because it had been demanded of us and we didn’t question it. Just like we’d been trained to do. As had my mother.

Yet that wasn’t the answer he gave me. “She did it for the same reason any of us do the things we do. Power.”

Too much power had corrupted him a long time ago. Nothing the elders had done was for the benefit of anyone but themselves.

Not everyone was like that though. My brother wasn’t, neither was Mara or Adrita. Nor my mother, she had more than proved that in the end.

My mother’s words rang in my ears again now like an echo that honed my focus. I was here today to learn my enemy and survive. Elder Welkin thought he finally had me at his mercy, and it had him almost giddy. He wanted me to feel how much power he had, and how little I had ever wielded.

“Life is more important than power.” My voice sounded weak, even to my own ears.

“You ignorant little girl.” His sudden grin told me he was relishing his moment of triumph, the feel my life underneath his boot. He got right up in my face. “Life is power. It is the only reason to do anything at all. Something you will never understand because you have none.”

“Are you so afraid of the Fallen that you need that much power? Nobody has seen them in centuries.” I’d never taunted Elder Welkin before, and he rose to the bait, his eyes ablaze with fervor as if he’d been waiting for this moment.

“Foolish child. The elders don’t care about the Fallen beyond how much of our secrets they remember. The stories of them are a tool to control people’s fear. If your mother was in contact with them, then she was betraying us and deserves to die.”

Biting my cheek, I ignored the barb about my mother, because Elder Welkin had already revealed something unintended. They weren’t worried about the Fallen attacking, which was why the halo didn’t keep them out. It was the Fallen’s histories and memories he was worried about. They knew something and weren’t aware of it. Or perhaps he only thought they did.

But what could they know that would be so important?

“You said ‘life is power,’ what do you mean by that? I don’t understand. If you helped me understand, maybe I could succeed where my mother failed.”

“How do you still not understand what is right in front of you? The goddess gifted us her light, her power, her eternal life. We need to learn how to wield it to its full extent.”

His face flushed and his breath sped up with excitement, as if he was imagining all that power in his control.

Thinking hard about all I’d learned, Adrita’s words came to me, overlapping and echoing with the elders. They had learned something when the citadel rose. They had been alive ever since, and they wanted more power.

With a flash, it all made sense. “Living for centuries isn’t enough? You want to live forever. You want immortality.” My legs felt weak, and my voice came out shaky and hoarse, as if I’d been screaming for hours.

Don’t be like the elders , my mother had said amongst her last words to me, when I’d tried to use my light to save her life.

My first instinct was that he was unhinged, but his eyes were clear, if wide and fanatical. “Ahh. So your mother has been spilling secrets, but it is only now you truly understand.”

“Why am I a threat to any of that? Why have you always hated me so much? All I ever wanted was to serve our goddess.” I needed to know how much he suspected, or knew, about me. It was the last piece of the puzzle I was missing.

He dragged me over to a mural of the goddess, similar to the one in the acolyte chambers, that showed Nur as a pillar of light. His hand finally left my arm, only to twist my hair in his fist and pull my head back roughly, forcing me to look up and take in the entire scene.

“Look at that raw power, at all that life being used for our purposes,” his breathing was heavy and fast, reverence lighting his face up. “But it was only the first step for us. Our next will come when we have enough light.”

He gave me no chance to respond as he dragged me into the grand foyer, my hair still wrapped in his fist. I cried out, feeling each strand that ripped from my scalp.

He paid no attention as he stopped in front of the central tapestry of Nur. “She is why you are a threat, but not why I despise you.”

“I’m not her,” I insisted. “I only look like her.”

“And nothing like me,” he replied, bitterness lacing his words.

“Why—” I asked, but he whirled on me before I could finish, seemingly fed up with my inability to understand quickly enough.

“Because you are your mother’s original betrayal. The life boost we received has started to fade. She was the strongest vessel in Lumière and a member of my wing, and as such, she was supposed to bear my child—a child that would be powerful and of my blood.”

At that moment, footsteps echoed from the passageway we’d just exited. Aeron appeared, leading the rest of his flight, blood and gore dripping from them and the weapons they still held aloft like conquering heroes. Giving an eerie resonance to the elder’s words.

“Because to love is madness is the real answer to that question,” Aeron added.

Elder Welkin had loved my mother? He gave no indication if his son was right or wrong. He ignored him, his eyes still locked on me.

Asking if it were true served no purpose, so I let it go too. “So because I am not your daughter, I had to be punished?”

He yanked my hair, forcing me to look at the mural again.

“If you had been my daughter and a strong wielder, your light and your blood could have made me immortal. But you weren’t. Instead of killing you on the spot when I discovered her betrayal, I made you suffer. Every time I punished you, it punished your mother too. She tried to make me think she didn’t care, but I knew she did. I found I’ve greatly enjoyed the last decade.”

“And my likeness to Nur?” I asked, when his eyes glazed and he seemed to become lost in memories. It earned me another vicious hair yank, and I swallowed my yelp.

“The simple-minded residents of this citadel insisted on whispering about you endlessly because of your accidental resemblance to the goddess. It has been infuriating. I watched you closely, and if you had shown any sign of power as well, I would have ended your punishment and killed you. It would have greatly disappointed me to cut our time short, but I don’t share my power with anyone. Your little display at the presentation is why you are accused alongside your mother. Although you’ll suffer a different fate today. A spectacle for the masses, but one that also suits my purposes.”

Mara had been right. He had meant to continue making me suffer for as long as he could. It was almost a relief to hear the truth. None of it had anything to do with me, and nothing I did would have altered his treatment of me.

Elder Welkin let my hair go as he turned back to his son, who was leaning against an archway and watching us with a cool dispassion. His flight stood at attention, ranged around him, looking anywhere but at us. Elder Welkin’s iron grip merely switched back to my arm, though, as he straightened his robe and smoothed his hair with his other hand.

“Is it done?” Elder Welkin asked, giving his son a disdainful once-over I knew all too well. It seemed being related didn’t mean you were immune from his condescension.

“Of course,” Aeron replied, arching an arrogant eyebrow in return.

My heart broke for the brave males who had come to our defense only to be betrayed. For Nico, who I barely knew, but whose death my brother would struggle to accept. And for me, knowing Elder Welkin would never have admitted any of that if he expected me to live another day.

He gestured at his son. “The chain?”

Aeron merely jerked his head and one of his flight stepped forward, pulling a chain from a pouch at his waist. A thin golden chain with a faint shine that called to me with my own light. The one I had imbued with a holding sigil during the final acolyte test set by the vessels of my wing. The sigil I had tried not to imagine how they would use, even as I’d wielded it.

Now I knew.

Elder Welkin smirked as he looped it around my wrists, yanking hard before dropping my hands to sit heavily in front of me. My body stiffened as the heaviness spilled into my limbs, holding them in place with more than the weight of the gold. The chains flared for a moment as the intention of the sigil settled over me. A snare of my own making.

His somber expression slid back into place as he shoved his fanaticism behind the mask of the solemn, cold elder, although he gritted his teeth, as if it had become an effort for him. “Gather the nobles and the vessels and meet us at the gates. It’s showtime.”

I had expected to be taken to the Aedis to stand trial before the elders for my sins, hoping I’d have a chance to plead my innocence.

It seemed that was not to be my fate.