“The gods have heard our cries! But the path is not easy. It is one paved with sacrifice. With the blood we give freely to the waters that sustain us.”
I glance around, half-expecting someone to resist. To rise. To question. But they’re all staring at him. Drinking in his words. Cries ofamenslash the air like a whip, and I’m not in the Kingdom of Cups anymore.
I’m back in that small, creaking church in South Carolina, sitting stiffly next to my mother. The heat of the day pressing in through the windows despite the rattling box fans. The wooden pew beneath me sticking to the backs of my legs. The pastor preaching about the holiness of suffering, about how pain and endurance will bring us closer to God.
My eyes burned with guilt, with confusion and humiliation. With the weight of sins already committedand those still lurking, unimagined. I didn’t always understand what I’d done wrong, only that my body was dangerous simply because it existed. Because I was a girl. A future woman. A vessel of temptation. A burden of shame.
Eventually, I got older and stopped going altogether. My mother called it rebellion. I called it self-preservation.
But now I’m back in church, listening to that same tone, those same promises, dressed up in new words but still the same ol’ poison. It drips out of the priest’s mouth and swirls around the chapel, a riptide pulling them under. And they don’t fight it. They drown.
I don’t need to know exactly what gods he’s referring to or the kingdom’s past to grasp the weight of his sermon, the power he holds. This isn’t just belief. It’s control. It’s a hand wrapped around a throat. Not with violence but possession. The kind that will teach Cups to whisper instead of scream.
The priest’s voice rises, smooth as still water, unshaken by the storm raging beyond the chapel walls.
“For generations, our kingdom’s heart has been silent. But the path to restoration is before us.” His hands spread wide overhead, wet robes dragging against the damp floor.
A murmur moves through the pews. There’s the rustle of silks, the shift of weight, quick, darting glances.
The priest tilts his masked face toward the high ceiling.
The congregation seems to hold its breath in collective anticipation, hanging on his every word, caught in the pull of his tide.
“The High Priest before me, Droskyn Vayne, spokeof our great contraptions of steel and iron. He said the machines withered because the apple blossoms faded. Because the royal line lost its power.”
My chest tightens. Apple blossoms. The Tower. The dead trees.
“But I have found a way for the trees to bloom once more.”
A breathless silence.
“The Rothmore bloodline is not lost,” he says, his fingers splaying wide as if reaching for the heavens themselves. “And neither is its power. A great sacrifice is coming. A celebration. A ceremony!”
A gust blows through the chapel, and his damp robes billow like the wings of a carrion bird. The congregation leans in, a sea of eyes shining with devotion, desperation, hunger.
“And it, my loyal flock, will be the last sacrifice the Kingdom of Cups will ever need.”
Twenty-Three
The rain is merciless. It comes down in sheets, soakingthrough my dress, plastering the fabric to my skin as I stumble into the courtyard. The chapel’s weight still clings to me—its incense, its lies, its worship. My lungs feel too full. My ribs, too tight.
As soon as the final blessing fell from the priest’s lips and the nobles surged forward like a river breaking free of its dam—pressing toward the dais, clamoring for closeness, for purpose, for proximity to power—I ran.
Because if I hadn’t, I would’ve screamed.
I press my back to the stone wall beneath one of the crumbling archways and tilt my chin toward the sky, letting the rain wash over me.
Footsteps splash through the puddles behind me.
My hands are fists at my sides. My spine rigid. My heartbeat like a ticking bomb.
I don’t turn around. I know it’s him.
“So, what did you think?” Alder’s voice is rough, worn thin by the storm and everything that camebefore it.
I laugh. It’s not soft. It’s not kind. It’s a hollow, bitter sound that scrapes out of my throat like it’s been lodged there for years.
“What did I think?” I echo, still facing the rain, still refusing to give him the dignity of eye contact. “I think I just watched a kingdom bow to a murderer and call it salvation.”
