Page 4 of The Garnet Daughter (The Viridian Priestess #3)

Chapter

Four

A ugust squeezes my shoulder before he lets go, running straight toward the booming sound that vibrates through the entire temple. I want to watch him, make sure he is not in danger, but I have to remind myself to focus as I walk up the stone floor toward Ferren.

She looks so different from when I left her a short time ago. I search her face for familiar emotion, but her eyes are wild as they fall to the spell book in my grasp.

“Did you find anything?” She strides with me as I flip through to the page I marked.

“I think so.”

“Do it.” 99’s voice booms over the sound of a battle outside, and only then do I look up and see pews stacked against a large, ornate door, Viathans and August barricading it as another bombarding crash comes from behind it.

“There needs to be three of us.” My voice trembles as I run my finger over the passages.

Selene stands behind 99, the fragrant incense smoke floating around the temple cloaking some of her expression.

But she is not looking at me. Her gaze is fixed on the spell book in my hands, the one she hid from me.

I am happy to see her unharmed, but the betrayal is not forgotten even in this moment of urgency.

Ferren steps forward to volunteer without question. “Tell me what to do.”

I rush to the raised portion at the front of the temple and stand near the sacred stones, all three laid together like I have never seen before. “Here.” I plant my feet.

A small voice comes from somewhere close, another volunteer to help with the spell.

“I will do it. I do not know you, but if you need a third and Ferren trusts you, I do too.” A priestess dressed in elegant grey robes steps forward.

She is dainty and beautiful, but she looks more defeated than any of the others.

I bow my head to her, thankful she is willing to help. Selene watches me closely. Whether she would have volunteered or not is irrelevant now.

“Join hands, do not break them.” I refocus and shuffle in closer to Ferren and the priestess. “Place your other hands on my shoulders.”

Ferren thanks the priestess next to her with such genuine affection that I’m not surprised when she addresses her by name.

Thea. The high priestess Ferren has mentioned many times; the one she has known all her life.

Ferren has spoken of her unwavering devotion to the temple, but she helps us now, volunteering with no certainty of who she aids.

Another forceful pound against the temple door dislodges some of the stacked pews and they crash to the floor with an unnerving echo.

August and the other Viathan commanders lift them back into place with ease and brace themselves against the heap.

August’s green eyes cut across the room, watching me as the thrusting door bounces the barricade they hold.

“Hurry, Calliape!” Ferren urges, squeezing my shoulder.

I run my finger across the passage and begin, trying not to picture the door bursting open and the enemy flowing in. “First Mother, hear us, cloak us in your embrace. Cast your protection across this land so that none shall pass!”

The verse sends a chill across my skin, a shiver running up my spine to where the women hold me.

The rest of the spell is much like the beginning, a plea for protection, and the further in the passage I go, the more the air around us shifts.

Ferren feels it too, her hair dancing across the page as I begin again, hoping to repeat it three times as it instructs for it to take hold.

A wind circles us, encasing us in charged energy that steals my breath and threatens to do the same to the words I recite. I’m unsure if the prickly sensation at the back of my neck is normal or if Thea sobbing next to me the more I speak the sacred words is from her fear or something else.

The pressure builds higher and higher with each word, more inflection added hoping to secure our safety.

But still nothing happens.

It’s not working.

Do I say the spell again? Do I beg this time?

Another bang at the door startles us. Any minute, it will give way to the tide of violence and August will be the first to fight it.

The wind whips up clothing and hair around our circle, blurring the figures watching and waiting for me to save them.

But I cannot place this ward. I am not strong enough.

I’m a fool to think I can open to a page of a sacred text used by the priestesses of old and command the spells to obey me.

I flip the page, looking for an alternative, but there is nothing, no other passages on warding an entire city, only one’s self.

Once more, I turn the pages so harshly the thin paper almost tears, but then the wind takes some and loses my place.

Ferren’s dilated eyes are on me, terrified and waiting.

I want to pass her the spell book, hand over the responsibility I did not ask for, one thrust upon me because I found a book in the abandoned temple I called home on Viathan.

But perhaps this is why I am here. Was this the voice calling out to me, bringing me here to this very moment?

The reason I found this spell book among dusty trinkets in the first place, why the rituals to wake First Mother drew me in, not because they were interesting and forbidden but because I must wake First Mother now and every old god, as the priestesses of old tried before?

I collect myself, my destined path laid out before me, and flip a chunk of pages until the section I never thought I would come across again opens widely for me. A desperate spell written by desperate priestesses.

“First Mother, hear us in our hour of need!” The cold spikes across my skin calms, but the splitting sensation of being pulled begins again.

My body begs to fold away to safety, where no one utters words like the ones written here.

But I have no choice, so I continue. “We come to you at the edge of destruction. I speak into your ear while you slumber to bring you news of the end.”

The spell breaches my lips in a rapid string, not knowing if a word is more important than the next, just wanting to get them out before we all meet our demise.

“Calliape, stop this!” Selene’s voice is lost on the wind.

I command the women to repeat after me as we move through it.

The temple shakes, the turbulent winds around us pull every curl of my hair from the tie, but I cannot stop. Even if this temple falls, I have to finish this spell.

“If Mother does not slumber alone, then those who lie at her side, do my bidding, wake!” The moment I finish, I know something is not right. I hear the voice as clearly as I did the first night in the forest of Frith, but it is darker, more ominous, and not of First Mother.

The spell has failed and it rejoices.

I was wrong. I was so very wrong.

Stone cracks beneath us, the walls opening as the temple purges what I have brought into it. A presence crawls to the surface, something powerful and ancient, the spell working partially with my untrained words. I feel it slithering its way up, freeing itself from the bounds I have broken.

The floor under our feet shakes and splits open, the old god I have summoned wanting to swallow us whole on its ascent to freedom.

I give into the splitting sensation of longing to fold and launch myself toward Ferren as the floor opens.

Her gasp manifests as we land across the temple, out of the circling storm around the place we just occupied.

Thea lets out a helpless sound, an agonizing echo in my ears as she succumbs to the fractured stones, disappearing as if she never stood there at all.

Ferren screams for her friend, her voice cracking and desperate as the quaking world rolls to a calm finish and finally settles.

I am frozen, staring at the giant crack, knowing an otherworldly presence is beneath it and I am to blame.

A blinding blue light shoots out and explodes into the space, readying itself to birth what is hiding inside.

“What happened? Where is she?” Ferren begs me for answers, and I curse the cowardly step I take away from her.

In the next moment, I fall to the floor, all the wind that collected pushing out and sending anyone in its path down.

When I open my eyes again, a figure is rising from the crack in the floor, and I know with every part of me it is not Thea.

It’s as if each one of its features is off by a fraction, mimicking a human woman but missing some details.

An orb of bright blue light spins above the creature, sending splinters of lightning across its frail-looking form before it oozes down the monster as it pulls itself out of the crater.

It basks in the bright light and transforms from creature to old god. Beautiful and terrifying.

The old god looks to Ferren and me, its head made of cracked pottery and liquid stars, water sloshing as it moves but never spilling over.

Celestial orbs in place of eyes blink in a humanlike manner when they fall back to Ferren.

And then I hear it, a word I have never heard in a language I did not know existed but somehow understand deep within myself.

“Abomination,” the old god declares upon Ferren.

The stars suspended in its open skull dart to the door, to the stones upon the altar and around the room at all who occupy it, as if taking in the place it was summoned to.

But with a push from wings that unfurl, the creature sends out a burst of wind. It opens the great doors and emits rays of light so bright, when they fade, my vision is so distorted I can only make out its shadowy figure departing through the stone canopy.

The sight of massive, flapping wings sobers me enough to see that it’s leaving with one of the stones.

My ears ring with the sudden silence, Ferren’s cries for her friend replacing everything else. I walk in a stumbling trance toward the altar where the worlds’ stones are laid; one is missing, and I am at fault. Water blurs my vision when I glance at Selene, her expression dazed and unreadable.

Ferren’s screams turn to rage as she speaks to an elder priestess in words I cannot make out. My heart beats in my ears, slow and steady, as if it is too weak for panic, too shattered to give me anymore strength.

Selene walks past me, maybe even through me, rushing to Ferren and telling her to seal the temple.

I turn away from them, a sob building in my whole body about to break me in half. My legs are bogged-down trunks as I walk toward the exit.

August strides down the broken aisle, jumping over a fallen beam to get to me faster as I say his name.

I reach him as the weight of my body is too much, dragging me down and crushing me into dust. His arms wrap around me, catching and holding me together.

I lean into the relief and give myself over to the pulling sensation wanting to take me to safety.

Breathe.

Fold and breathe.

My lids squeeze shut as the sound around us changes, both our breaths unifying in their rhythm. The ground beneath my feet softens, my boots sinking into a welcoming cushion. The air encompassing us is no longer dry and spiced with temple smoke. It’s thick with humidity and flora.

I lift my head from August’s steady shoulder and dare to view our final destination, sobering.

Moss.

Moss everywhere.

We have folded a great distance. Farther than I have ever traveled or thought possible.

I inhale the undeniable scent of my home planet.

The smell of the forest of Frith.