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Fourteen

KURAI

A contemplative expression settled on Ciana’s beloved face.

From what I knew, there wasn’t that much to miss from her life in the human world.

She often felt relieved about leaving it all behind.

But there were people she remembered fondly.

Her wistful longing slipped through my tendrils and tugged at my heart as we walked up the stairs to the main floor of the temple.

Her nostalgia didn’t ease while we searched the icebox in the side room for food and found none.

“The sun will be down soon. The temple will open its doors to the visitors, who bring us food and sometimes money in exchange for us taking care of the Joy,” I assured her.

Ciana nodded silently. She had no means to connect to our Source of Joy, but I hoped that just being in the same room with it and seeing it would cheer her up as it had always lifted my spirits.

“Wow!” She stopped as if struck by lightning as we entered the main hall and faced the shimmering column of the Joy. It rose to the vaulted stone ceiling, like an axis supporting our entire world with its light. “So, this is… ”

“Our Source of Joy,” I replied with reverence that warmed my chest.

She slowly walked around it along the lacy high fence of the enclave, taking in the golden facets of the crystal-shaped cells.

Each cell initially held joy from one person—a fae from the Above.

But connected within the Source, the shimmering essence of the Joy had blended into the divine magic that I worshiped.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ciana said in a voice filled with wonder. “I never knew an emotion can be gathered and kept like this.”

Even the fae from the Above didn’t know that.

“The First Priestess discovered the way to collect and store the Joy for the generations ahead. She was the first of our people who felt it, long ago when most of us were still only shadows.”

“Did she?” Ciana’s forehead furrowed in thought. “How did she know anything about joy at all if the rest of you were just shadows?”

“In times of need, the gods give knowledge to the most capable of us, as well as the strength to use that knowledge for the greater good.”

“So, you believe that your gods just singled out a shadow, taught her all about joy and happiness, then gave her a body and made her the First Priestess?”

I paused, taken aback by the simplistic way she had relayed the holiest events of my people’s story. It all had been described in the most reverent way in our scriptures. But I sensed no disrespect in Ciana, only her desire to understand and a hefty share of doubt.

Doubt was hard to accept. I grew up with these beliefs, surrounded by people who not only shared them but nurtured them in me and the others. I wasn’t used to anyone questioning them.

“That is a rather facile summary of what takes up an entire room of texts in our archives.” I pursed my lips before begrudgingly agreeing, “But yes, your summary is accurate in its principle. ”

She glanced at the paper bookmark that she’d brought with her from the study room.

“Did your First Priestess leave more texts other than this?” she asked.

“Yes. She lived a long and productive life of over six hundred years and left a large legacy. The design and function of your leilatha harness was also found in her writings, as was the process of gathering and preserving the Joy.”

Ciana cupped her chin as she stared at the Source, looking lost in thought for a moment.

“If she lived for over six hundred years, she couldn’t have been a human then, could she?”

Shock seized my breath at that assumption.

“Why would you think the First Priestess was a human?”

“Well, I don’t know, Kurai. You tell me. Why would your ancient saint write in my language?” She waved the bookmark in front of me. “And sign it with a name that’s pretty common in my world.” She pointed at the signature under the quote.

“Not all of her writings are in that language, and most we haven’t translated yet. She wrote in our language too.”

“That still doesn’t explain this .” She dropped her hand with the bookmark.

The restlessness I sensed in her bothered me. It buzzed through my tendrils, disturbing her usually quiet, cheerful disposition.

“Well, all worlds along the River of Mists used to be connected in our distant past. It is possible that a human language made it into our world at some point in our ancient history,” I tried to ease her confusion.

She remained doubtful. “Maybe it wasn’t the First Priestess who wrote all these things? You said the belief is that she wrote in both languages. But maybe it was two different people? What if the First Priestess and the woman named Melanie were not the same person? ”

That idea was blasphemy, but I couldn’t hold it against an outsider who only just started learning about our history and our beliefs.

“Or maybe I’m overthinking it.” She sighed. “After everything that happened, it’s not easy to focus properly.”

I stroked her arm down to her hand holding the bookmark. “However these words arrived to our world, they brought comfort to many of our people over the years. We all need to remember that no matter how brutal a storm is, it’ll end, and peace will reign again.”

A shudder ran down her body, probably at the memory of the storms that had nearly killed her. She leaned into me, and I wrapped her into a hug.

“Can I keep this?” She lifted the bookmark in her hand.

“Of course you can. Every visitor to the temple gets one.”

“Thanks.” Folding the paper, she tucked it into the wrap around her chest. “What’s going to happen with us now, Kurai? Because I don’t think I can stay here when the other Joy Guardians return, can I?”

No matter how much I’d grown to think of Ciana as mine, no matter how close we had become, by law, she belonged to the queen.

Even if I pleaded with the Master Guardian, I doubted he would allow Ciana to stay.

Master Arter had always been fond of me and lenient to my requests.

But keeping Ciana at the temple would be going against the queen’s orders, which would jeopardize all of us.

I stroked along her braids draped over her back. Sooner or later, I would have to part from her, no matter how much it’d pain me. The thought sliced through my heart with sorrow, making it hard to breathe.

“You don’t want to return to sarai , Ciana?”

Two weeks ago, she decided she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as the Joy Vessel, but things had changed since. She’d learned how dangerous my world could be. She’d come way too close to death in the desert—a brutal lesson about how precious and fragile life was.

“Is that really the only place where a human can survive in Alveari?” she asked.

“The queen’s sarai is probably the safest place for a human,” I admitted reluctantly, but Ciana deserved the truth, even if every word I said felt like a brick in the impenetrable wall rising between us. “No storm would ever touch you there.”

“You wouldn’t be able to touch me there, either, would you?”

She lifted her face to mine. Her eyes glistened with tears like morning dew gathering in the petals of flowers. Her sadness flew to me like a moth.

I cradled her cheek in my hand. “No, my sweet. I’ll never be able to enter Kalmena as a free man again.”

“Is that what you want for me? For us? Do you want me to go back?”

“It’s not about what I want—” I tried to reason, but she wouldn’t let me.

“But that’s what I’m asking you. Just answer the question. Do you want me to leave?” Determination buzzed through her, vibrating anxiously through my tendrils. “Tell me the truth, Kurai. Give me that much.”

The truth would destroy us both. I couldn’t act on it. But oh, how I wanted to.

“You want to know what I want?” I grabbed her in my arms and tightened my tendrils around her until every part of her pressed against me.

“This is what I want, Ciana. To hold you like this and never let go.” I leaned my forehead to hers.

Every word came out from the depth of my heart, honest and brutal like a blade in a battle.

“I’m trying very hard to do what’s right for you, even if it kills me.

But what I really want is to selfishly claim you for my own and to annihilate anyone who tries to take you away from me. ”

Her eyes widened. Her breath all but stopped. I rarely lost my temper. I’d never acted like this before. But I’d also never felt this raw need or this unconquerable longing for anyone before her.

“What I want is you,” I exhaled coarsely through my tightening throat.

“Let’s do it then,” she said fervently. “Let’s go away together, somewhere where no one can find us.”

Temptation gripped me in its tender claws that were so hard to escape.

I gave into it for a moment and imagined spending all my nights with Ciana, never missing a single smile of hers or a chance for a caress.

But how long would her smiles last if she wasn’t safe?

Could I protect her on my own? Could I give her the comfort she deserved?

She’d asked me to be honest, and I couldn’t lie.

“It wouldn’t be an easy life, Ciana. Out there, every night would be a fight for survival.”

I was a wanted man on the run from execution. Sooner or later, the guards would catch up with me. What would happen to her then?

She inhaled a shaky breath, holding me so tight, her fingers dug into my sides. But she said nothing. There was nothing to say because no words would change the truth.

Her sorrow was breaking my heart.

A tear fell from her eye. She winced as it rolled down her cheek.

“It stings.” She brushed the tear away, rubbing the skin on her face that had been damaged by wind and sun.

The truth stung.

The reality of our future stung.

And I couldn’t do a fucking thing about that.

So I focused on the one thing that I could make better. I stroked the damaged skin on her cheekbone, cursing myself for not tending to it earlier.