Page 35 of Six Burning Candles

The vision.

Keida’s vision. She would get hurt, Janus was going for her. I thought it meant he’d blame her for the kidnapping, but what if I’d made it worse.Coming in and trying to expose Janus put Keida in a strange spot!Panic pumped through me as I ripped away from my mother. “I have to go.”

“My Rosebud, take a moment—”

“I can’t allow him to blame her for this…whatever this is! Keida is down there, being brave for me, fighting for me. It’s only fair if I fight for her back.”

I ripped out of the smoke covered curtains of my four-poster bed and stepped out into the daylight of midday. Snow melted, light glittering through the crystal pane windows, I charged out of my room.That was suspiciously unguarded.There were no clerics posted to keep me in, which raised a few alarms but not enough to dissuade me. I followed the side stairs, down into the back hallways of the cathedral. Keeping out of sight of nosy paladins, I tried to listen to the rumble coming from the Hierophant’s office. There was a smattering of clergy all around, clearly unable to keep their own noses attached to their faces. I slithered along the wall, hearing raised voices that shook the hard wood of his office door.Oh no.I lunged out of the shadow, stomach twisted. Then I caught the sound of something that stopped me in my tracks.

“She is a spoiled brat who has been allowed to play games with you and this kingdom too long. The Order cannot allow a little girl to run rampant unchecked, doing as she pleases! You clearly cannot maintain the Order if you cannot even contain your daughter.”

A long, pointed silence filled the air. My hand trembled, stuck an inch from the door handle. I loitered mere moments from breaking into the room, fire burning through my belly.

“Cardinal, you do not get to decide who runs this Order. I do. I am Hierophant Rex. And I can either be Hierophant Rex of the Order of Avaris…or I can attend to Melrose. I simply cannot do both.”

My ears burned as I grabbed ahold of the door, and true to Melrose St. Augustine fashion, I burst into the Hierophant Rex’s office. I guess you really can’t tame me.

Chapter Twenty:

~Keida~

Itwasnotamatter of if Melrose St. Augustine would barge in, but when. I knew she’d only be detained for a sliver of time. I imagined she would immediately rappel from the ceiling. When I twisted at the sound of the door opening, I was neither surprised nor disappointed. I did, however, pray to Avaris for help. I definitely intended to bend her over my desk and spank her later but…preferably not in front of her father…and definitely without his knowledge.

“Melrose!” Leonardo barked, standing up from his desk. Prior to my favorite menace barging in, he’d been sitting behind it with Cardinal Janus in one chair, me in the other.

“As I was saying,” Janus growled, pushing to his feet to point at her. Melrose slammed the door behind herself. “She thinks she is above her station.”

“Mystationis a child of Avaris within her temple, Cardinal Janus. I do not need to be an Order Official to hold a voice in her most holy of temples!” Melrose stomped forward. “And you cannot deflect from what happened. You were behind that attack in the gardens today.”

“Leonardo, please,” Janus sighed, motioning flippantly at His Holiness.

“Melrose,” I murmured. She twisted toward me, fury in her gaze, but immediately halted her tirade as she saw my right brow raised.Do not make this worse for you.That’s what my face said and all she needed to hear. She stepped closer to me, rattling fists at her side like tiny rattlesnake tails. Janus furrowed his brows from over her shoulder. Leonardo’s eyebrows shot up on his face. And I took her chin in hand, forcing her to look me in the eye. “Enough.”

“It’s not fair,” she hissed under her breath. But my attention was at the small collection of baby’s breath, or gypsophila, caught in her hair. I was no botanist, but even I knew the little white puffs of flowers that I plucked out of Melrose’s mane. She glanced at it, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. I followed her eyes to the long stem that Janus used to weave it into her hair. The stem, where he carved little runes with his fingernails, I could see the beginning of a powerful enchantment. While the flower itself could be irritating to skin on its own, bunched together with many other flowers, and the right caster…it could be a paralytic.

An enchantment I witnessed my previous mentor use countless times.

My eyes darted to Janus, who silently shifted, eyes narrowing on me.

“I am taking care of it. Please, take a seat.” I moved away from my chair and motioned for her to take my place. Melrose sighed with exasperation but sank into the chair with a heavy ‘harrumph’. I dropped the flower onto Leonardo’s desk. The first nail in Janus’ coffin, as it immediately turned to dust upon touching a blessed object. “Cardinal Janus, you’re a practiced botanist. You, His Holiness, Melrose, and I can all agree you know plants better than anyone, correct?”

“Why does this sound like an accusation, Your Lunarence?” Janus shifted his weight, a hip cocked out with arms crossed over his chest. “We are here to discuss Melrose’s abhorrent behavior.”

“A behavior she only expresses to men who threaten her. As Leonardo and I can attest, most of the time, Melrose is perfectly well behaved. And an upstanding citizen.” I spared Melrose a glance, before continuing back to him, “Which begs the question why she felt the need to slap you? When accosted by a man in the festival grounds, she didn’t even slap him. And the man was a stranger, and in your eyes, below her station. She did not strike him.”

“Be that as it may.” Janus’ face hardened with fury I’d only ever seen once. Directed at a man who waltzed into the temple drunk and tried to pee on the pews for malicious delight. Janus had no mercy for a lost fool who drank too much at a dangerous elevation in the mountains and desecrated a holy site.

However, as he directed that animosity at me, I didn’t fear I was a fool. I knew where I stood, nestled safely in Our Lady Avaris’ hands, doing what she’d asked of me.

“Melrose St. Augustine is a feral creature left to her own devices with no purpose.” Janus jabbed a finger at her and caused Melrose to jerk upright in her seat. I put my hand out at my side, one of my wings flashing out as an extra wall of protection from her and the Cardinal.

“She is a person owed your most basic respect, and you will show it, or your welcome will be most overstayed, Cardinal Janus.” My voice was clipped. Despite the fact he was insulting my beloved Melrose, he was wrong. I did not spend the last six years loving Melrose St. Augustine from afar, to be naïve to her personality. Melrose wasmany things, but feral creature was far from the flirty, fun woman that held my heart.

His eyes narrowed on me sharply, and I felt the irritation of the flower’s dust bite into my fingertips. Without another word, I dusted my fingers against my robes, inflicting my own digits with frost instead to cleanse me of his poison, before tucking my hands behind me. His body swayed backward in confusion, realizing his powers…were not as strong as they once were.

It was said Cardinal Janus, once upon a time, could call forth a garden of stinging nettles with a single look. Those nettles could kill a horde of bandits or an army of heretics, their poison sinking into the skin within moments. Within a few breaths, those who opposed him would be choking on their own lungs, unable to do more than fidget and scratch at their itching skin.

That was back when he still held the All-Mother’s blessing. When he’d not gone against his word as her cleric.