“Yes.” She shifts her weight slightly, arms drawing in closer to her body. “And selected to be one of the Chosen sisters to receive special study in history and religious texts.”
“Such as?”
“I’d rather not speak of it.” Her gaze drops again. “If that’s okay.” A small pause. “It’s hard to explain… and I still miss them. Being alone is… not like I thought it would be.”
She turns away before I can respond, continuing forward.
She doesn’t look at me again.
But I feel it.
The shift in her.
Her aura darkens—layered with grief, anger… and something heavier beneath it all.
Shame.
Guilt.
It presses against me, so heavy I feel bowed by its weight.
She doesn’t ask me to, but I carry it with her all the same. Because in a way, it feels like the kind of burden that, if shared, might offer her comfort.
Chapter Twenty-Two
An Eerie Name
The Chosen
Speaking of the Order, even for only a moment, brought so much history to the forefront of my mind. Especially because the Horseman, one of the reasons for absolute secrecy and the sacrifices made in my life, walks by my side.
Walks freely by my side as though we are companions.
Which has me questioning the soundness of this choice, and begs the question…
Do I intend to invite him inside my home, and current sanctuary, as my guest or as my prisoner?
Each step brings me closer to a decision I don’t feel prepared to make.
I relive it backward, the years I’ve spent alone and learning all I can of God’s Chosen, these four immortal men he’s sent to judge and reset the world. The devotion and physical training, the morning and nightly prayers, the endless hours of study. The private lessons on matters that still trouble my heart. The tattoos, sigils, successful and failed, that at times have done more harm than good.
If I don’t move against him now, is it all for naught?
The rumbling. The terror. The desperate race through the monastery to make it through the nave and into the tunnel in time. The years spent in the dark, moving around only by candlelight with nothing but my own company and those of long-dead people in books, or the ghosts who haunted my days and dreams. The underground cave, now a tomb.
The worst of my dreaded memories and dreams come from that night. The culling, and then watching my two Chosen sisters, the last of us, drink from the lake while knowing what lay within the waters.
It changed me in ways nothing else, not even the elixir, has.
As I walk through the forest and the wind whips through the trees, the leaves whisper, and to this day, it reminds me of their whispered prayers echoing off the rafters in the nave. Some nights, I sit beside them in my dreams while we sing an old hymn. Those nights were some of the most pleasant. Days I’d do well to remember over the nightmares where they assault me with accusations and stare at me as blood spills from their eyes and wounds. Nights when my subconscious uses my guilt to twist reality and make me pay for past mistakes.
The Horseman said my own stores of it were tainted. Which in a way feels like divine karma… justice. Because I once knelt beside my sisters, watching them drink from tainted waters, while filled with pride for my ability to outthink them and rise above them.
As if this existence was some great reward for being far more underhanded than they were.
As if the calling of being the Order’s Chosen was an easy path to walk.
I willed this to be my birthright.
