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The central stairs finally ended in an airy room covering the top of the pyramid. There was no door and it gaped open to the sky on all sides. It must have been freezing in winter, windy in fall, and miserably muggy in spring, but now it calmed my sweaty skin.
An old woman in white robes with bones and roses embroidered in gold along the hem sat behind a metal desk. She petted a large ginger cat and watched the puffy, white clouds drift by. When I moved closer, Morovara, High Priestess of Bones, turned to face me.
I had barely been able to make out her features when seeing her across a crowd. This close, there was only one word to describe her—invariable. There had been no other high priestess in my lifetime. She had always been, and seeing her wrinkled face, as if a larger person had shrunk to the size of a child, I could believe she had been here since the final divine ruler stepped down.
“Luminata?” she asked, her voice strong despite her age, then shook her head. “No, the sister. I expected to see you sooner.” She pointed to the chair opposite her and there was nothing weak in her movements. “Sit.”
“She came to you?”
The Book of Bloodlines had shown it and Lumi confirmed it, but my sister had also lied and withheld. The confirmation that the second most powerful woman in Tal knew us stole the air from my lungs. No one called Lumi Luminata besides our mother. I leaned against the wall, my knees no longer carrying my weight.
Morovara nodded. “We are family.”
The world spun.
The sun rose behind the high priestess, my great-grandmother, and she seemed more divine than living. I was imagining things. Maybe dreaming. That seemed more probable than that the High Priestess of Tal being related to us.
“You expected me?”
“I see she didn’t tell you.” The old woman approached and patted my hand, bringing me back to the realness of the moment. My magicsang of her care and exasperation. Her bone-deep weariness. “Sit before you fall. Have some tea.”
She led me to her table and filled two stone cups from the still steaming pot.
“How?” I asked, unable to formulate more words. I had come confident, with an agenda and demands, but this close, the high priestess’s face held an echo of my mother’s eyes and delicate cheekbones, and my focus slipped.
We did not know each other; I should feel nothing for a woman who had not been there. But this wasfamily.
Morovara sipped her tea and offered the cat a crumb from her plate before placing her hand on mine. “Your mother was my grandchild, her mother—my only daughter—married a foreign noble and broke all contact. She raised your mother to despise me, and I let it be because they seemed happy, and he had enough money to take care of them. When he died your grandmother followed closely behind. Your mother was eighteen. She refused to talk to me and already had a man paying her living expenses. I tried again over the years, but it was always the same answer. When I learned that she had died as well and plague curfew lifted, you two were already gone—to that damned moneylender, Lumi told me when she came to me two years ago.”
“Two years?” And lying each day.
“I offered her a place in the temple. I have few worldly possessions—everything you see belongs to the order—but she refused and declared you would make it on your own—free and unbeholden to anyone. She only wanted one thing from me, that I teach her how to use her powers, to be a death keeper. A necromancer. We’re holy to the Goddess. Many priestesses hold some power, but none besides meas great as your sister’s. I had hoped my daughter would inherit the gift, but if she did, she hid it well.”
Death keeper and heart turner. Bones and roses—oh, how we fitted Tal.
A deep anger burned inside me, fed by the betrayals. We might have gone here instead of risking our lives stealing. Kirill could never have reached us if we entered the Temple even if he knew where we were. Lumi should have given me the choice.
I gripped the high priestess’s still-strong hand. “Can you teach me as well?”
Morovara shook her head. “You are something else, sweet girl. Made for the living. Your sister and I were made to calm the dead.”
“Is she here?”
“I haven’t seen her since last summer. I ask the Goddess to turn away from you each night for I fear the anger Lumi carry. When you’re hurt, sometimes you turn the pain outward to cut others. It never ends well.”
I grunted. Seemed she’d shared more with our great-grandmother than me.
A year of teaching in secret and my sister had been able to control the Spirits. How long without even a teacher would I need until I understood my magic? Would it drive me insane before then? A fear deeper than any other sent a shiver through me. If I hurt others…
“Is there a way to stop the magic?”
“Stop it?”
“Take it away. Block it again.”
“Why would you ever want such a thing?” My great-grandmother’s searching eyes burrowed under my skin, as if she was the mind witch probing for answers.
“I cannot control it… Mage’s sickness seems unavoidable, and people despise my kind.”
