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Among the destruction, plain wooden houses were being raised with black sigils painted above their entrances—had Popova found a way to keep out the undead?
At one half-standing wreck on the end of Platine Street, no different from any other, my feet stopped. The hard-packed mud street bore no traces of Alexei’s and Kirill’s blood. People passed, children kicked a ball, but I still saw their bodies. Saw how Kirill’s knife struck before I could react.
Alexei had not condemned me. How much would have been different if he had lived? Could he have bridged the distance between the prince and me, avoiding the deadly conclusion?
Further up the street, something crashed to the ground. Men swore. Snapping out of my reverie, I sank into the shadows, ready to run. Lowtown was never safe.
The sun had fully set and swinging lanterns and the first Spirits illuminated the night. As I looked toward Temple District, a Spirit solidified.
People stared at it as it took on human features. The magic inside played, my determination faltered. I already knew what would come.
For one brilliant moment, the bond blazed and my sister’s eyes met mine, then her Spirit vanished. If not for the reverent whispers around me, I would have thought it a vision driven by grief and guilt.
I repeated familiar words, as if it would make them true.Spirits hold nothing of their living memories. They are interchangeable and equal. They have no will.
All Talians knew this. We had all been wrong.
I ran.
Each corner I passed was decorated with a bloody stick figure, raising my terror. Ealhswip and her supporters were everywhere, a secret cult living in the shadows.
The magic slipped from my grip. Anger, anxiety, and most of all, anticipation filled the crowd. Something was coming.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Spirit shaped like a girl with chopped-off hair. People fell to their knees whispering the Goddess walked the streets and of blood to come.
Sprinting away from guilt and anger and the past, I entered Temple District.
Morovara had said I was always welcome, and I was sure she knew more than she had said. The high priestess held secrets for the Temple and the dead—well, I was dead and needed to know.
The chants of the dead rose around and inside me.
I no longer felt the Spirits dotting the twilight—I was no death keeper—but as I rushed past, I remembered the pressure and ancient anger. What would happen to Tal if the priestesses quieted?
Again, one white shape solidified. I turned and pounded my feet harder into the cobbled path. There are things you can live with and those you cannot, and I could not face my sister.
Morovara’s great ziggurat of black stone steps rose before me, the squealing bats rising like a cloud from the top where my great-grandmother lived. I had thought I could be the final shove that brought Ealhswip down—the connecting tissue between therebels and royals. I had been a foolish girl, unable to see how they sidelined me.
Last time, I entered like a princess. This time, I was a wraith, fleeing truths and life.
I arrived at Morovara’s floor, praying for someone to take all my lies and make something out of them. Instead, I found a lone tabby rolled up on the floor-bed in the corner. Would the high priestess still be at the palace following the coronation? I had been foolish again, expecting her to be waiting for me.
With nowhere else to go, I settled on the bed, petting the cat. The oil lamps remained lit by the entrance, but here in the far corner, I sat wrapped in shadows. Stone arches opened to the sky outside, allowing bands of stars I had never seen to shine. So far away. So great. Each a god or goddess who might have been or once was.
I raised my hand, holding it so that it looked like if I only reached a bit further, I could catch them. Sacrilege, here in the holiest place in Tal.
“Sometimes I wonder if they are leaving or arriving,” Morovara said behind me, making me jump.
Before I could excuse my presence in her private space and bed, she wrapped her bird-thin arms around me.
“I thought you dead, girl. Both of you at once and there was nothing I could do.”
I hugged her back, inhaling the scents of incense and dried roses.
“Iamdead.”
“Then you’re in the right place.”
Morovara called for food and for the first time since Dimitri left on Cherny, I felt my hunger. She spoke of her day, little things, whilethe tea’s minty steam filled my lungs and spicy meat pastry in butter dough warmed me from the inside.
