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I haven’t passed so much as a devout. Do they not use the All-Giver’s tower regularly?
Or have the scourge sorcerers done something to ensure the temple’s staff would be occupied elsewhere?
A breeze drifts down from above, carrying an acrid smell. Julita’s presence goes rigid at the back of my head.
That’s burnt dartling eggshell. Borys and Wendos thought it would help them consolidate sacrifices into a greater power.
At the same moment, I catch the first muffled voice from above. Whoever’s burning the stuff now, I’ve almost reached them.
I set my feet even more carefully as I continue my swift ascent, keeping my ears pricked. When I get close enough for the words to become clear, I recognize the voice of the man who approached me in the library and claimed to be Julita’s friend.
Wendos’s tone is harsher now. “We need more. I can’t quite connect our power with the others’. Focus your gifts.”
A youthful female voice answers, lower and pained. “We’re trying.”
“We’ll see through our duty to the gods,” another man says with a rasp. “We won’t let them down.”
They think they’re doing thisforthe gods? Are they insane?
I guess that’s a very real possibility.
I ease up the last spiraled flight with silent steps and breath held. Who are the “others” Wendos mentioned that he’s trying to connect his magic with?
My hand drops to the pocket where I tucked his sketch paper. The arrangements of three circles.
Was I right, and at least two more scourge sorcerers are at some other high points in the city? It sounds like they haven’t accomplished what they’re aiming for yet, though.
So what exactly is that? The college is already in chaos.
But they’re out here in the rest of Florian. Maybe they’re hoping to wreak the same havoc across the entire capital.
My blood runs cold. I push myself a little faster—until the final landing emerges into view around the next curve of the staircase.
I spot the top of Wendos’s head, his shaggy dark hair swaying as he shifts his view. His back is mostly to me.
Crouching low, I creep up step after step. Then I huddle with my back against the central post of the spiraling stairs, which ends at the span of floor just above my head.
At the sight before me, my stomach flips over.
Yes, Wendos is standing there, poised by the stone railing that surrounds the uppermost platform of the tower. Only the nine narrow columns that hold up the final spire of the roof break the view of the rest of the city all around us.
Julita’s childhood tormenter has smeared a dark, glinting powder across his hands and the stone edge, and he mutters words I can’t make out as he stares off into the distance.
Toward his far-off associates?
He has other associates here, though. Three of them, hunched in a ring around him—but they barely look like people at all.
Their scalps are bare patchworks of scarring where their hair was carved off. Only ruddy holes mark where their ears should be. The one I can see in profile has nothing but wizened hollows where his eyes once were.
And their bodies…
Their cloaks slump across shoulders far too narrow. I don’t think any of them havearms. A wooden post protruding from one figure’s skirt suggests she’s lost a leg as well.
No, not lost. Sacrificed.
Gods save us all,Julita murmurs.
As nausea roils through my stomach, I understand. The scourge sorcerers haven’t lured innocent kids into sacrificing their whole existence to fuel someone else’s power—at least, not all of their victims. They’ve had them give up every piece of themselves they can while still living to gain who knows what twisted gifts the godlen felt obliged to reward them with in return.
