Page 112 of The Castle & the Cloister

Afon took another step forward. She felt his hot, wanting breath on her face. Smelled the scent of old bearskin and sweat and armor grease. Saw the furious and frustrated light that gleamed, half-mad, in his eyes.

“Beg,” Afon said. “On your knees, the way you knelt for him.”

Overhead, the stars shone. Beyond them, the cloister gleamed.

“No. I will never beg for you.”

Afon gestured to his guards. From among them, a dozen women were led forward, bound with ropes and gagged with strips of linen. To a one, they wore sorias’ kirtles. At their head, white-haired and slight and unbending, walked Matria Serafine.

“Lock them in,” Afon said carelessly.

As the women passed Ariana without resisting, Matria Serafine met her eyes. The old woman inclined her head, not so much a nod, but a bow. Then they carried on into the cloister that meant so much to all of them, and to Corrin, and the Hand.

The doors were shut and barred. Another guard stepped forward with a torch and a glass orb of oil that glinted strangely in the light. Taking the oil, Afon threw the orb at the foundations of white stone. It shattered, and a slick spread across the threshold before the doors. Ariana watched without breathing as the torch followed.

Fire roared up from that strange oil, burning hotter and fiercer than any flames Ari had witnessed before. It engulfed the doors entirely, spreading to the walls with voracious hunger. From inside, a hymn rose, punctuated by screams.

“I expected you would be stubborn,” Afon growled. “So I arranged a reminder for you, of the price of disobedience.”

Ariana said nothing. She refused to speak. She would not offer him another word. But her heart was an open wound within her as she thought of the sorias she’d known, and the small daughter she’d entrusted to their care. Where was Ellimere? The thought throbbed in her, like a second pulse. Where was her youngest daughter, marked by the goddess of stars?

“Burn any other doors you find, and set fire around the windows,” Afon ordered. “Be sure no one gets out.”

Men fanned out around the cloister to do his bidding. Only then did he fix his eyes on Ariana again.

“Well,” Afon said, striding to her and speaking low, just for the two of them to hear. “I have one last gift for you. Ewan, bring the child.”

Of course. He was too wicked and thorough not to have found Ellimere and recognized her at once. She was her mother’s image in infant form, and a broad-shouldered guard stepped forward with the baby in arms. Ellimere had changed already, grown out of earliest infancy like Justus, the little stars so white against her skin. When the guard settled Ellimere into Ariana’s arms, she could not help the tears that ran down her face as she held her daughter close.

The screams of sorias rose to the night sky, and Ariana looked down at her child, knowing even for this, she would not kneel. If Afon consignedEllimere to the flames, it would be the ruin of Ariana’s heart and soul and sanity, but until whatever end, she would refuse to plead before him.

Let all the world burn. Ariana Lyrien would never give Afon the submission she’d offered to her goddess and her king.

But in this, the Beloved Three were with her.

“Ewan, Alfric,” Afon said with a sharp gesture, “you’ll see to it no harm comes to the woman or the child. If they require rough handling, so be it, but their lives are in your hands. Should either die, you and everyone you love will be forfeit. We ride for Caervallion.”

Ariana held Ellimere to her as if the child was the sole axis on which the world turned. Anguished brown eyes met starry blue, and despite the smoke and the sounds of the dying, Ellimere Lyrien smiled up at her mother.

“Enjoy her while you can,” Afon rasped, snaking an arm around Ariana’s shoulder. She fought the urge to shrink away, thinking desperately of Fia and channeling the postulant’s unbending nature. “When she’s a little older, she’ll take her place at my side. I will teach her of blood and death and the dark secrets of the moon, and make a worthy successor of her. Until then, you may manage her raising.”

Ariana fell in silently behind Afon as he set off, and guards flanked her to prevent any attempt at escape. As they went, her lips moved in a soundless oath.

By Gentle Lyria, goddess of my daughter’s mark, let her be a blazing star. Grant her endurance that never falters, belief that will not shatter, strength that is beyond understanding. Let her withstand and outlast tyrants, and be a harbinger of peace wherever she goes. Should I be anything but a support and a shield to her, may the merciful stars strike me dead.

EPILOGUE

Everywhere, there was light.

It was merciless and implacable, so overwhelming and encompassing that it drowned out all other sights, soaking its beholder in brilliance alone. The light could be heard, like the high, sustained note of singing crystal or snow falling on snow or the murmuring of deep woods. It got into you, and on the inside, it was not pain, precisely, nor pleasure. It was something else, which carried both pain and pleasure with it, but was more than the two of them. The sensation was too vast and too potent to be understood. The force of it sent consciousness fragmenting into a thousand glinting pieces, which all reflected the light.

There, in the light, Orden Inver rested, the scattered remains of a man, broadcast over some unknowable and fertile ground, bathed in illumination. Breaths of air seemed to wash over him—brine, petrichor, lavender, hot stone. Scent was the only thing he could fully understand in that hinterland. Even as a thousand pieces, he could still comprehend that, as well as a tiny part of the wind and light that moved over him.

After a thousand years, or a thousand moments, he felt someone or something stirring within that formless, peaceable realm. They moved quietly about, and at first Orden was at a loss as to what they did. Then, almost imperceptibly, he began to feel himself taking shape again. Pieceby slow piece, the unseen presence was gathering up his fragments and reassembling them into a whole. If he’d been able to struggle, Orden would have done so. He did not want to be whole again—he wanted only to continue as he was, sown like good seed and left to take root in the undemanding glory of this place.

There was something else too. Some half-recalled hurt that kept him scrabbling for brokenness, knowing that to be whole would be to feel that wound, and it would be a brutal one.

But even to desire something or form a thought meant Orden was more than he had been at first. He continued to struggle futilely against the unseen force that worked at mending him. He tried to fall apart again, tried to remember the feeling of being shattered and lying with no cares in the wind and light, on ground that seemed to breathe serenity. Resistance and memory were the product of personhood, though. He continued to reunite, and knew he’d lost the battle when the chill of unyielding stone drifted across his consciousness, followed by searing pain.