“Say your goodbyes. Do it now,” my mother whispered, her tone disarmingly gentle. Far more gentle than I’d expected. Demetri, supported by his parents, had caught up to our slow pace at the base of the steps.
I buried my head in her neck, inhaling the comforting scent of bay leaves and boiled thread.
“Ashara, this will be your last chance.”
I paid her no heed.
I didn’t lift my head; instead, I hid it. I didn’t look but fixed my eyes on the small curls of her brown hair, damp on her nape. I didn’t say goodbye, for there were no words for it this day.
Everything hurt.
It hurt.
It hurt.
It hurt.
My body, yes, but also the sting ofinevitability,spearing into my heart like the spikes of an acolyte’s belt.
Eight cycles. Eight cycles before we were offered.
It was a truth that pressed down upon my shoulders with the weight of mountains. Demetri would be at my end as he was at my beginning.
8 Cycles Later
Chapter six
Ashara
The Last Rite
And when the woman saw that the Blood God demanded her daughter, she screamed. Not in fear but in rapture, for tosuccumb to His wrath is a blessing. -99:6 - The Book of Dendralis
I entwined my fingers around those of the First, palms sweating, heart sputtering uselessly in the depths of my stomach. My lungs, useless things, had sunk to the soles of my feet, where they could stay, for all the good they were doing. I forced a shallow breath, willing my hands to still. They wouldn’t listen—they never did.
She was nothing like I’d expected.
Her replica outside the chappellum shone glassy and smooth. On a clear day, it sparkled like a polished gem, glinting red in the sun. But the real Her, the one whose hands I now cradled in my own, wasrough, like sandstone, her palms unsmoothed despite the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who had grasped them before.
But it was not the feel of her hands that robbed me of breath, but her face.
Gone was the smile of her marbled double. In its place, a mouth twisted and agape. Gone were her upturned eyes, creased in a smile. Instead, they were wide, round as buttons, ridged with small beadings of unshed tears. Gone was that wrinkled nose, scrunched in delight as she reached for the Blood God behind her, carved into the same slab of stone as she.
The real First was alone, with no mimicry of the Blood God looming over her shoulder.
No, she was nothing like the statue outside our chappellum. I stared into the true face of the First, and a terrified little girl stared back.
“Thrift, thrift!” I gripped her tighter at the bark of a paxiam. “We haven’t all day, laurel; say your dues.”
His spear lowered to my face, a tutor’s pointer rather than a weapon. They were everywhere here, the holy guards of GrandTemplum. Their red-tinted armour outnumbered the crimson-robed acolytes and brown-tuniced monks, ten to one.
“There be a long line of laurels this day, and the sun is near set.” He thrust its tip skyward, a sneer peeking through the cutout of his helm. Beating viciously, my heart returned to my chest, unsettled despite its sojourn to the stomach. What was it Demetri used to say?
“A paxiam’s as useful as a taper in a storm, and half as bright.”
Returning to the First, and unpinching my face, I readied to make the Pledge of the Dendralis. I knew my dues, the words as familiar on my tongue as my mother’s name—orDemetri’s—but only a choked, gargled sound bubbled from me, the sentences lodged in my throat like the core of an apple. Her wide eyes peered up, spilling with frozen tears as I sputtered and coughed. It was like gazing into a looking glass, but one that reflected the soul, not the body. For just like the First, I was afraid.
The blunt end of a spear nudged my shoulder, hard enough to bruise, to hurt. “Now,laurel.”
