Chapter Ten Adela
I can’t remove her,” I admit.
For a brief moment, it is so quiet that I can hear Etana’s breath echoing in the painted, domed ceiling of the great hall, and then the room erupts. Keepers, priestesses, and novitiates step forward, talking and yelling. I stand frozen with a unicorn pressed against me like a dog seeking comfort.
Or perhaps I am pressed against her.
How stupid I am to have followed the call back to the matching hut. To have raised my face to the phoenix and allowed her to capture me. To have ever put my cheek against her bone in the first place.
I do not want this.
I wonder if any of the novitiates ever felt this way.
If they ever wanted to escape the fate of wearing the skull of a dead creature for the rest of their life.
But of course not. The goal of being in an order to begin with is the opportunity to pair with a creature, to obtain magic, and, with it, power, influence, the ability to help their communities.
But I am not a novitiate; I am the matcher. The order and people of Insborough are not my community; the valley is.
I plead with the phoenix again. Let me go. You are not meant for me.
If anything, she grips harder.
A bubble of hysterical laughter escapes me, and I reach across Etana’s swayed back, burying my fingers into the coarseness of her hairs.
The touch solidifies me somehow. I try to look past everyone at the walls of the great hall, covered in familiar tapestries and sculptures, paintings and sketches and carvings.
There is even an ancient, hand-hewn boat hanging from a corner of the ceiling.
The stories and records of a millennia of keepers.
Cecelia and I used to spend hours here as kids, staring at the pieces, finding our favorite little scenes and arguing about which stories were true and which were legend. Not that it matters. Truth exists in both history and fiction.
If one of our artists portrays this moment, there will be no need to embellish the impulsive matcher who accidentally paired herself with a phoenix. The barest of facts will be scintillating all on their own.
People rush us, surrounding me and Etana, peppering me with accusations.
“What is the meaning of this? What have you done?”
“Is that a phoenix? It looks just like his.”
“What were you thinking, girl?”
“Of all of the stupid—” someone begins, a raw, building violence in their voice. I don’t turn to see if it’s someone I know, or someone from the order.
I turn my face into Etana’s side, nauseous. This is not who I’m meant to be. A matcher should be revered by the order and respected by their fellow keepers. I am a disgrace.
Dad finally maneuvers through the others and reaches me.
The moment he touches my arm, the chaos of the room softens.
He pulls me away from Etana, turning me toward him and takes my jaw in his hands, moving my head this way and that, assessing.
He grimaces when he finds my self-inflicted wounds, the places where I’ve tried and failed to remove the skull.
My lower lip wobbles uncontrollably. “I messed up.”
“Looks like it.” His thick, calloused fingers are gentle as they trace the edges of the skull. He pulls on it so, so carefully, his healer hands both strong and tender.
The skull doesn’t budge.
High Priestess Sarai steps forward. She wears her typical flowing black gown and a sheer black floor-length veil over her bejeweled unicorn skull.
Etana lowers her head, taking a threatening stance against the priestess. I place a gentling hand on her back, but she does not relax. She stomps the marble floor, hard enough that I feel the reverberation through my own feet.
The high priestess stops but does not cower or retreat. She ought to be more afraid, but she probably has never seen someone impaled by an overprotective unicorn.
Dad watches Etana carefully.
He has.
If only I could climb back on Etana and we could both run away. But she brought me here to seek everyone’s help—or perhaps to face their judgment. Creatures’ motives are their own.
“I’m glad you’ve joined us.” The high priestess steps forward again and loops her arm through mine. Etana allows it, but watches closely.
High Priestess Sarai leads me to the large meeting table and now-empty chairs. She sits and pulls me down beside her. “We were just discussing timelines for Brother Thad’s funeral and completing the matching ceremony, and we could use your input.”
“The-the matching ceremony?” I stammer. Surely she can see the phoenix skull on my face. How I’ve failed. “I can’t complete further matches.”
She tilts her head, a kind smile on her face, and reaches for my hand.
“Can’t you?” She squeezes my hand like Mom used to, as if to give me courage.
“I think it’s worth trying. Especially since the high priestesses of the Pupil, the Spinner, and I have recently been discussing our contributions to the valley.
I don’t want to give them an excuse to follow through on their threats of reducing donations. ”
There is some grumbling amongst the elders, though this is nothing new.
The orders are constantly insinuating that they will withdraw their financial supports if the magic and matches don’t improve soon.
But I always thought it was the Order of the Huntress who wanted to reduce their funds.
High Priestess Sarai implies otherwise, which is comforting.
John points at me. “The rest of us shouldn’t have to suffer for her failures.” I barely hold back, sticking my tongue out like a child. He’s rude, but unfortunately, also right.
“Failures?” A small voice pops up. The crowd parts, and I see Cecelia. She must be taking notes for the elders again. Her ears are bright red with embarrassment. She hates confrontation. “She made unprecedented matches at the first ceremony she led. A dragon. A phoenix. Gytrash.”
“What use will two-thirds of a gytrash trio be to them?” John scoffs, and I hear the unmatched novitiate of the gytrash triad mumble in agreement.
Petra steps forward. Her back is straight, her lined face thoughtful, and her tone as gentle but firm as always. Just like Dad’s. “We will find out what the gytrash can do when we prepare Brother Thad for rest. In the meantime, blame does not get us to solutions.”
Still red-eared, Cecelia clears her throat.
Despite her unease, her words are steady.
“I’d like to check the records more—the art, journals, the older books.
I started looking into the pulses we felt, but hadn’t gotten far.
I’ll also try to find information on phoenix skulls.
Maybe there’s some sort of ceremony or magic that could—”
John interrupts. “Undo this mess?”
Petra gives John a look that silences him, then takes the notes from Cecelia. “Thank you. We can manage the rest here if you’d like to get to work immediately.” As Cecelia hurries out of the room, Petra asks the rest of us, “Any other suggestions?”
“Burn it off,” says the male novitiate whose partners wear the gytrash. He’s not mumbling now. His voice is ice. “We have a dragon-wielder again.”
The room grows heavy with silence. All I can think of is Bartholomew, the ashes of his home, his body. There was so little left of him. Are they all actually considering this for me and by an untrained novitiate? There’s no way I’d survive.
Dad wraps his thick arms around me, pulling me close as if to shield me. I lean my head forward, to rest it on his shoulder as I’ve done since I was teenager. Only my head doesn’t fit where it should.
When I lean forward, the beak of the phoenix skull connects with his bare neck.
He flinches, and I see a line of blood form.
I’ve cut him. After a brief hesitation, he pulls me in again, positioning my head, but the damage is done.
For the first time in my entire life, my father has flinched away from me. I have harmed him. I am unsafe.
Now I do crumple. I sink onto the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees and burying my masked face between them. Etana stands over me, but she is not enough to block out the sound, the anger, the disappointment of everyone.
And through it all, the phoenix shoves feelings through me. I cannot tune her out. I cannot tune any of them out. I am sinking, drowning in the noise, in the pain. And then there is another figure above me.
“Stop this!” He demands it with enough confidence that the others hush. “No one is trusting Ulric to control a newly dead dragon’s magic with such precision. He would likely destroy the skull and the matcher in one go. And then where would you be? You’d have no matcher and no phoenix.”
I look up, unsurprised to find Kian beside me. I wish I could see his beautiful face. But of course he is wearing his phoenix skull, the mirror image to mine. Members of the order who have been paired to creature skulls wear them in public forever. Even after death.
A pang of disappointment ripples through me, but it’s not as if I’m entitled to miss his face. He was a brief fling, a distraction, and ultimately, the impulse that got me here.
“You wear a phoenix, so we would have one. What do we need with two?” snaps the man without the gytrash. His resentment is palpable. “Besides, we don’t even know what good the phoenix is. So what loss is that?”
“The phoenixes are a matched set,” Kian replies, softly. “The visions have been clear.”
Everyone falls utterly silent. I can hear Etana’s soft breaths. Even the phoenix’s feelings stop bombarding me. I could kiss him.
No. Kissing him is dangerous. Kissing him is what got me in this mess from the start.
“There is no rush to unpair Adela,” High Priestess Sarai says.
“We will move forward with our plans for Brother Thad and completing the matching. If she cannot perform her duties, then we will worry about unpairing—” Her red lips twist into a smile that sends chills down me. “Or not. And she’ll join the order.”