Page 9 of The Amber Sunburst

Forms, she hates the Mothers. And they are more than wary of her. She doesn’t mind.

When she sits down, her favorite vegetable curry is in a bowl in front of her cushion.

She hums contentedly at her first bite. They’re meant to take an hour to complete the bowl because savoring it brings them closer to the Forms or something, but Ophelia scarfs it down like there’s no tomorrow.

The girls next to her send judging looks, so she smiles around her spoon and winks at them. This seems to win them over, if their giggles have anything to say about it.

“Only you, Ophelia. Only you could still look good shoving curry down your throat at record pace,” one of them says. She’s probably about seventeen with dark brown hair and pretty hazel eyes. Ophelia doesn’t know her name, but she wishes she did.

It’s hard to feel special as a Priestess, so Ophelia tries her best to appreciate each girl as an individual, not just part of a whole.

Before she can ask for hazel-eyes’ name, though, the girl is back to eating her curry and pointedly looking in the opposite direction. They’re not supposed to be talking, so Ophelia lets it slide.

With nothing to do and no one to yap to, her eyes wander across the landscape. The Sun Temple has a fantastic view, nestled into a cliff by the Academy dorms. The Temple of the Rose is on the flat grass platform below and the Temple of the Scale is sticking out of the cliff below that.

The gauzy pink curtains of the Temple of the Rose are gently rippling in the wind, as beautiful and entrancing as the Priestesses inside.

Through the windows of the Rose Temple she sees girls eating dinner in a highly decorated room full of gorgeous ornaments, intricate rugs, and golden lamps. They eat at an oval table of dark wood, low enough to the ground that they can sit on the floor. She can just barely hear them blessing their food by the Form of Beauty.

As for the Temple of the Scale, she can only really see the roof. It looks rather like a military monument, which, in a sense, it is. The windows are small with no curtains, and flags for the Form of Justice fly defiantly from nearly every surface possible.

The defiance is unnecessary; all Priestesses are well-respected no matter their faction. But the Priestesses of the Scale tend to act the same as their flags. Argumentative with no cause to be, with chips on their shoulders that Ophelia doesn’t understand.

From what she’s heard, they eat in an cave beneath their Temple. Some say that it’s a beautiful, crystal-covered cavern. Others say that it’s cold and sad, with a long, iron table and stiff chairs. They don’t allow anyone into their fortress, so she supposes she’ll never know.

She pushes her bowl away and turns to the horizon. The sun is orange and red in the west, setting into the ocean. The way that the light reflects off the sea makes everything sparkle. In the far distance, storm clouds loom, but she knows they won’t reach the Republic. They never do.

Night crawls up, patient and sure, and overtakes the horizon so the sun may lend its warmth to the desolate, uninhabited wasteland beyond the Republic.

It’s moments like these she thinks the Forms might be real. Or, at least, she feels like something is looking out for her.

And if not? Well, she’s perfectly capable of looking out for herself.

3

ALEXANDER

Maybe they read minds here. That’s the only plausible explanation Alexander can formulate right now.

The man shakes his shoulder gently. “You’re Alexander, right?”

All Alexander does is stare back, wide-eyed.

“Yes, sir. I mean, Councilman,” Caeneus responds for him. He looks surprised too, but more starstruck than horrified. “This is him. Alexander, introduce yourself,” Caeneus tells him, through smiling teeth.

Did these people know he was coming? This could all be some sick joke that his brother is playing, sending him to the middle of nowhere and hiring people to drive him mad.

No, his brother isn’t nearly that creative. If he wanted Alexander out of the way, he would put him on a ship and let him drown at sea. Which he did.

Caeneus’ eyes bounce between Alexander and the man—the Councilman, apparently—and he then speaks for Alexander again.

“Councilman, I think Alexander might be a bit… taken aback by your presence. He’s from the countryside, as I’m sure you know. Pulled up from the Producer Class to be an Auxiliary. But even lower-level Guardians don’t come all the way down here to escort new recruits, so for a Councilman to do it… Well, whatever he did must have been truly amazing.”

“Absolutely,” the Councilman says. Then he turns to Alexander with an empathetic smile. “I know this is unconventional, Alexander. We usually trust new recruits to make their own way to the Academy. But we very rarely pull people up over seventeen, so the Council thought it would be best for me to help you acclimate. When I got pulled up I had not even half your composure,” he says, chuckling conspiratorially. His teeth are a striking white against his chestnut skin and close-cropped black hair. “I always try to lend a hand when someone new is recruited.”

New recruit, the countryside, his name.

How does the Councilman know everything about Alexander?