Chapter Eight Kian #2
Unmatched. I knew it was a possibility, of course, but hearing the matcher say it aloud makes fire shoot across my back. I was convinced the worst possible outcome of tonight’s ceremony might be getting paired with a jackalope.
“Both of those failures were within the last year,” Sarai says coolly. “Your magic is waning.”
Adela turns away from Sarai and pointedly toward the gytrash, the pegasus, the unicorn, and the dragon she matched. “Is it?”
Oh, I like her bite.
I lean slightly forward, even as I wonder at this strange draw she holds over me.
She is the opposite of what I should want.
A member of the system I’m here to topple, a farmer of creatures.
She uses their bones to provide society’s most powerful, and most corrupt, with even more power.
And yet… I think of her on the unicorn yesterday.
Surely no livestock would carry their captor and eventual slaughterer so willingly?
Whatever the cause of her pull, surely it’s meaningless, physical, base. My goals are higher than a woman who rides unicorns as if they’re mere war horses and she’s leading a charge to battle. She cannot distract me from my task.
No one can.
As if she senses my longing, she steps closer to me, and I feel her skirts practically engulf my legs. “You seem eager, novitiate Kian.”
“Who isn’t eager to meet their future?” I reply in a voice huskier than intended.
She makes a sound deep in the back of her throat. “Perhaps we give Svena a bit more time to rest.” She steps back, and I shiver as she says formally, “Novitiate Kian, are you ready to meet your soul’s fate?”
“Absolutely,” I reply. The next words have been practiced so much they’re rote. “Lead me, Matcher, and prepare me to show my face to the goddess’s helpers. May one see my worth and mark me as their own, so we can be joined forever. First in this world, then beyond.”
I reach out my hand, and she turns. The assistant matcher takes a mask from the torchbearer, placing it on my face. It’s solid, without holes to see or speak through. She positions my right hand on Adela’s shoulder and she leads me to the hut and the grotesque bones of the creatures inside.
Behind us, the chanting grows steadily louder.
We step onto the porch and I pause, gripping Adela’s shoulder to avoid tripping over the unevenly hewn boards. I hear the door open and we step inside. The matching hut smells earthy, like once-green things now dried, and there’s a zing in the air that is like inhaling dried, ground peppers.
It makes me itchy, and I remove my hand from Adela’s shoulder to scratch a spot on my neck.
It’s a mistake.
She keeps moving. I try to follow her soft steps across the uneven wooden planks of the floor, but without her warm shoulder to guide me, I instantly run into something low and unmoving.
“Water cistern,” she says and I can hear the slight smile in her voice.
I curse under my breath, move to my left, and hit my hip.
“Workbench.”
I move forward, and something dry and fragrant bounces off my mask.
“Sage. We hang it to dry.”
I take a much more tentative step, shuffling, and trip on the edge of a floorboard. I throw my hands up in disgust. “Help me.”
She chuckles, and the soreness of my shin, hip, and toe fly away at the allure of her amusement. “Come here,” she says.
She guides me to an open area. She slides her hands under my robe’s neckline, removing it from my shoulders. It collapses in a heap at my ankles, and I shiver in my plain white linen shirt and matching pants.
Her voice envelopes me. “How do you come before your soul’s match?”
“Bare of wealth or warmth,” I intone.
I hear the faint clink of glass against glass, smell oil and herbs, then hear the slick slide of her palms rubbing together. I reach my hands out, and she rubs hers on mine.
“How do you come before your soul’s match?”
“With empty hands, prepared to toil for goodness.”
I hear her open a jar and smell the sharp tang of pine. She moves close, and I bend my head so her fingertips can push beneath the mask’s edge and rub ointment into my temples.
“How do you come before your soul’s match?” she asks for the third and final time.
“Clearheaded, with eyes that search for truth and a tongue that speaks of both justice and mercy.”
“Then kneel and prepare yourself.”
I pause then, suddenly nervous. I know my next step, and my broader path, but I hadn’t thought through exactly how I would feel just before I’m bonded with the bones of some creature.
Or what happens if I’m not matched.
Adela takes my hands and helps me kneel.
I lift my face, and she removes the mask.
The inside of the matching hut is both everything I expected and surprising.
It’s small and practical. Workbenches line one wall, dried and drying herbs hang from the ceiling.
The wall toward the forest is made entirely of windows, which let in the silvery moonlight.
And then the fourth wall is skulls. Dozens of skulls. I should be taking it all in, noting it all for my later plans, but mostly I can’t stop staring at Adela.
Her hair is pale blond with a few copper strands shining in the tapers’ light, tied back in braids ten times as elaborate as mine.
The little skin I can see of her hands and around the edges of her golden mask is ivory and freckled.
The mask doesn’t fit her well. Perhaps it belonged to her recently deceased mentor.
Adela’s body is lush, curved, thick. My hands clench involuntarily, wanting to touch her abundant softness again, to grip those curves and pull her close to me.
Standing above me, Adela traces a finger along my jaw before giving herself a little shake. I smirk. Apparently, I am not the only one affected.
She sets the aspen mask I just wore gently on a workbench with a pile of others and gestures to the wall behind her. “Look to your future, Kian. What does it hold?”
Bile rises in my throat at the juxtaposition of her warm beauty before a wall of death, of loss, of twisted magics. One of those will become part of me. Forever.
I force myself to look pleased, eager. While I cannot see her face, I must remember mine is on full display.
I want to ask her how to choose, but then my eyes skim the skulls of long-dead jackalopes, unicorns, gryphons, and even another dragon.
I did not realize there was another. But it doesn’t matter.
I never had a choice at all.
At the top of the shelves, half-hidden beneath a cloth, is a beak. It calls to me. Not in words or thoughts, but with a deep, aching need.
I stand and move toward it, but I can’t reach the shelf. I look around for a stool or chair to stand on, and my eyes meet Adela’s. Instantly, I know something is wrong.
She’s standing perfectly still, frozen, except for her long fingers, which are twisting, untwisting, twisting together. She sees me staring and gives a small shake of her head. I swear she whispers, “Not that one.” But I’m not certain with her mask covering her mouth.
“Is there a problem?” I ask.
She startles, as if just noticing me, though she’s been looking right at me. She says ominously, “Not with them.”
I laugh, but she does not join me. She shakes her head, and her ill-fitting mask continues shaking for a moment after she’s stopped moving.
I look at the shelf and skull that sits waiting beneath the cloth.
The wall is macabre, a shrine of death. Whatever’s under there must be awful and precious if they’ve covered it.
I move close, reaching up, and she reaches out as if to stop me.
I pause, step away, then pretend to trip over my discarded robe still bunched up in the middle of the floor.
If it worked in the forest, it can work here.
I catch myself hard on the shelves beside her.
Adela cries out, twisting away to straighten a wobbling jackalope, looking away just long enough that my hand can snake out and capture a corner of the cloth. I jerk it, and it slides to the floor.
She turns at the sound of fabric hitting the floor.
“No.” Her objection is a whimper of pain, but there is pleasure laced through the word as well. Or perhaps longing. She says again, “No.”
I want to turn, to explore what I can see of her face, but I cannot stop myself from staring at the shelf and what the cloth has revealed.
There, on the top shelf, are two perfectly identical skulls. From the way the beaks curve to the breadth of the brow bones to the shape of the empty eye sockets, they are an exact replica of each other. I would assume they were made from a mold.
Except they are not molded of plaster. They’re bone, and both glowing from within, emitting a golden light.
There is no sound, no movement, no anything besides a feeling deep inside me. Like a fish who has swallowed the hook, I have been caught. I have no choice in my destination. I am being called. I have been chosen.
I know, somehow, that these two skulls are phoenixes, and one is mine. He is the creature I was in the vision, and he will not stop pulling at me until I accept him.
“What—” I begin, but Adela hushes me. Moving as if resigned to a fate worse than death, she fetches a stool to climb up on, lifting the skull that calls to me. She cradles him to herself as she steps down, grimacing, as if touching it is unpleasant.
She gestures for me to kneel again, then pauses, exploring my face, then neck and shoulders. Her eyes trace down my chest, and it is as if her gaze is a finger I can feel trailing down my body.
My body responds, of course. I’m human, and she’s beautiful, but whether she appreciates or even notices the effect she has me, I don’t know, because she turns back to the glowing phoenix on the shelf. She seems to compare the two, and I wonder what she sees or hears or feels that I cannot.
Whatever it is, she shakes it off, and begins to fit the skull to my face. The moment the bone touches my skin, my body shudders in pleasure, flush with energy. Even the wounds on my back stop aching.
I can’t enjoy the rush. The main ritual is over; I’ve been matched with a creature from the storybooks. But something is most definitely wrong with Adela. I want to reach for her, gather her up, and care for her. The feeling is not lust, and somehow it seems not to be entirely my own.
I clench my fists.
Based on our training for the night, she ought to be speaking, finishing the ritual.
The prayers from her fellow keepers can still be heard beyond the thick walls of the building, but she’s gone completely silent.
Her brow is furrowed, but I don’t know if its annoyance or pain or something else entirely.
I cannot see her jaw beneath the solid facade of her mask’s lower half, but I suspect her teeth are clenched tight.
Is that why she doesn’t speak? Or perhaps because she cannot catch her breath, which is beginning to sound wheezy and a bit beleaguered.
Her hands tremble as she pads the interior of the skull so it will fit me comfortably and then adjusts leather bands around and beneath my braid.
The bone is cool where it connects with my cheekbones and forehead, but I suspect it continues to interact somehow with her touch.
I notice after she removes her bare, shaking hands that she wipes them on her skirts and shivers, despite the warmth of the building.
Suddenly, mid-ministration, she steps away and bends in half as if to catch her breath, as the chants outside grow louder.
I move to stand and help her but freeze when a vision of a quick-moving forest below me overtakes me.
I twist my long, feathered neck and spiral toward the sun, flapping my expansive wings as I climb higher and higher in the midday sky.
Back in reality, I lurch forward, dizzy. I collapse onto my hands and knees, trying not to be sick.
“What just happened?” I ask.
“Another vision. They’re rare, but a good indication of a strong bond. It seems that you’ve just made a powerful match.” Her voice comes out strained, her words squeezed between clenched teeth. She is definitely in pain of some sort.
Again, I want to go to her, and this time I don’t stop myself. I stand and move toward her. As I do, I look out the windows, just in time to see my sixteen-year-old cousin Ivo step out of the forest.
Shit.
I’m supposed to meet Aunt Ujvala and whoever she’s brought with her after the ceremony so I can provide details about the matching hut and my plans for how to burn it.
Plans that no longer work with Thad dead.
And details I haven’t even taken a moment to notice, I’ve been so caught up with the matcher.
What in the name of the great goddess is he doing out in the open?
Thankfully the matching hut must be between them and the rest of the keepers—there’s no cry of alarm or pause in the fevered pitch of the chanting. But if she turns even slightly, Adela will see him easily. As if my very thought inspired her to do so, she begins to turn.
I reach toward her, pulling her close.
Her eyes widen as I press my body into hers. If she didn’t notice her effect on me earlier, she has now. She wiggles slightly against me, pressing her body into mine, and I groan at the contact. Whatever discomfort she experienced earlier seems to have eased.
The skull likes this, which is slightly disturbing, but since I also like this, I don’t examine the feeling too closely. She wraps her arms around my neck, pressing into me.
I bend to kiss her neck, angling my head so I don’t mark her skin with the beak of the phoenix.
The noise she makes, a low, hungry moan, transforms this from a pleasant way to distract her into something dangerous. Last night was supposed to be a one-time thing. An itch I hadn’t scratched in too long. A fling with no long-term effects. But now the taste of her is in my mouth, and I want more.
I can’t get to her like I want to, so I remove the skull, setting him on a workbench behind her. I can still feel the phoenix. His joy at my kissing Adela, and at being matched to me. No visions, I think at him, unsure if he will hear me, or if I even have any influence.
“Don’t—” she begins, but I press her back into the bench, putting my hand between her and the hard edge. My tongue and lips insistent, pressing.
She tilts her head for me, and I kiss up her neck. It isn’t enough. I want her. All of her. Her jaw and her mouth, and to see her face. In one quick move, without a thought for consequences, I remove her ill-fitting mask.
Yes! I hear in my head at the exact same moment she cries out, “No!”
It’s too late. I have a mere moment to enjoy her beauty—her full mouth with a slight scar in one corner, wide cheekbones, and a tiny upturned nose studded with a small blue stone before a scream pierces the air.
A second later, the world flashes gold, then goes dark.