Chapter Twenty-One Adela
I follow Dad and Kian through the rain-slicked fields, numb. My legs move, but only because they’re supposed to. Kian holds my hand—warm, steady, tethering—but I can barely feel it. I don’t look at the grass underfoot or the dark outline of trees and brush or the moody, post-storm sky. I can’t.
Because if I let in the details of the surrounding world, I’ll let in the feelings of what just happened in the forest. And then I will be crushed.
We crest the hill.
On the other side, amidst the small mounds of jackalope warrens and puddles of rainwater, a group of people stand huddled together in the fading silver stormlight. Keepers and order members have voices raised—tense, frantic.
I shake my head, trying to push past my haze to figure out what is happening.
Or rather, what is missing. Because where there should be a building that holds both my past and my future, there is nothing.
The matching hut is gone. And not just the hut, but everything inside it.
Even if I could hear the skulls while paired to the phoenix, it would be silent.
The skulls are gone. Nothing but wet ash sits before me.
Memories wash through me, threatening to drown me.
Bartholomew’s insistent voice, the old wood smell of the workbenches, the skulls arranged on the shelves with care.
And then Bartholomew’s house, a smoking pile of rubble, and his body, torn apart by the dragons he loved so dearly, in the middle of it.
And Etana’s body, currently lying in the forest, burnt and cut.
I wail, a raw, unintentional sound torn from my chest.
Heads turn. Faces sharpen in alarm.
Jasmyn points. “Her skull is off!”
I reach up. My fingers find bare skin where the phoenix skull has been for days. I have a brief moment where I wish she were back. Protecting me from their gazes.
Kian’s hand tightens around mine. “I have it,” he murmurs.
I want to rip it from him. I want him to have left it behind in the forest. I want it to have been in the hut when it burned.
I want to throw it in the river with the last kelpie left in the world.
I want a hundred impossible things at once.
Grief surges and only some of it is mine.
The phoenix is crying out through me, and I’m unable to untangle her sorrow from my own.
Dad strides ahead, pushing through the stunned crowd toward the elders. “What happened here?” he demands.
Redonna’s face is streaked with tears. John looks ready to break something with his bare hands.
“The storm,” Petra says, calm as ever. “Lightning struck the fountain. Took out a wing of the great hall. We assume it hit here as well.”
My voice is hoarse when I find it. All I’ve heard is lightning hit the great hall. “Cecelia? The library?”
“Safe. It hit the wing with the novitiates’ guest rooms, but no one was present. Most were eating dinner.” Petra takes in Kian, covered in mud and grime. “No one was harmed.”
A tiny flicker of relief, barely enough to spark.
“Ordinary lightning didn’t do this,” John says. “Or there would still be skulls.”
Right, of course.
The skulls should be amongst the smoking remains, untouched by fire, protected by their own magic. But of course, it wasn’t ordinary lightning. It wasn’t an ordinary storm. Grief tore open the sky. Rage and sorrow with wings.
“Lathai caused the storm,” I say.
“Would lightning from a magical creature’s storm be enough?” Sister Roberta asks.
Petra cocks her head. “I suppose it could be a possibility. But we’ve always understood that only dragon fire could destroy the skulls.”
“Perhaps it’s broader than that and you’ve lost your history,” High Priestess Sarai offers.
“Unfortunately, that is a real possibility. I believe we’ve lost much more than we’ve retained.
But isn’t that true of all histories? That is a question for tomorrow, after we’ve rested and the sun comes up to illuminate what we can learn from the ashes, if anything.
” Petra turns her attention toward me. Her gaze scans my face, the gore on my clothes, the unworn phoenix skull in Kian’s hands. “In the meantime, what happened here?”
Dad looks at me.
It should be my story to tell. I am the one who brought this storm down on us all. But the words turn to gravel in my throat. I shake my head. I can’t.
So Dad tells them.
I watch it unfold in their faces: shock, sorrow, fury. But the worst is the heartbreak. The pity. They do not know all the details—Dad intentionally left a lot out. But they know the worst of it. Etana is dead, at my hand.
Petra steps forward and enfolds me in her arms. Like Cecelia, she is not an affectionate woman. Her hugs are rare and reverent, like prayer. I cling to her, soaked and shaking, grateful for the silence, for the lack of questions.
In the moment. I know they’ll come later. They always do.
High Priestess Sarai steps from the back of the crowd, the hem of her black bedgown soaked and covered in mud, her unicorn skull crooked on her head as if she put it on in a rush. The veil she always wears is gone. What I can see of her face is pale in the lantern light.
She studies me for a long breath, then speaks. “The bond?” Her gaze shifts to the phoenix skull in Kian’s hands.
“Still there,” I admit, wishing I could lie and stay behind in the valley.
“Come,” she says, and turns away from the matching hut’s remains and toward the great hall. “Let’s talk.”
I don’t want to. Talking will lead to decision-making, and decisions will lead to me leaving the valley, as there is nothing left for me here but ash and pain.
Kian shifts beside me, instinctively protective. But Dad is faster, stepping in front of me like a shield. My constant guardian.
But I don’t need protection from the high priestess.
She is the Huntress’s voice. And I need the goddess now—need her to speak to me, through her priestess, through anything at all. To tell me why the goddess chose me to bring death. To tell me how to survive it, how to bring good into this world with it.
“I will come with you.” I step out from behind Dad and Kian.
Dad places a hand on my cheek. “Adela, come home. Rest.”
I lean into it. For a breath, I let myself believe in the possibility of it.
But his hand is sticky with blood and placenta. And there is a deep certainty within me that home is no longer an option.
Not now. Maybe not ever again.
I drag my tired, dirty, bloody body to the great hall, following behind High Priestess Sarai like one of our newborn lambs.
Kian walks beside me, carrying my phoenix skull. I can still feel her—can still feel them both—but I push away whatever emotions the phoenix sends my way and ignore the feeling that desperately makes me want to curl up in Kian’s arms.
Every few steps he reaches for me, but I cannot reach back. It would feel too good.
I do not deserve comfort or warmth. I’ve caused so many deaths in a single week, but until now, they were all indirect. Repercussions of naive actions. But today I crossed a line I will never be able to come back from. Etana.
I killed Etana.
I reached for her with my magic, and it responded.
And with that magic, I ended her life. And that of her unborn foal.
It’s only because of Kian that the little one is alive.
I walk past the paintings and tapestries and sculptures of my people, past the library.
I say a prayer of thanksgiving to the great goddess for sparing this at least. I can smell the smoke from the other wing and grieve the destroyed art and history that hung on its walls. We’ve lost so much.
We walk through high priestess’s door. On the other side of it, she eyes Kian. “Are you staying?”
“Yes.”
I sigh. “I don’t need a guardian, Kian.”
“Perhaps I do,” he replies, with his familiar smirk. “If no one is watching out for me, I think I could cause all sorts of havoc. Destroy entire systems and societies.”
I ignore his quip. I have no energy for them. I barely have the energy to collapse into the overstuffed chair she gestured to. If the high priestess isn’t going to argue with him, I’m not. Kian scoots a wooden chair just beside me. Close enough to touch me if he needs to, though he doesn’t.
I’ve been in this room before, of course, but never while a high priestess is in residence.
It smells of cinnamon and rose and is lavishly decorated.
Thick rugs line the floors, and heavy draperies are pulled back from the windows.
Lathai’s storm is almost entirely over, and I can see a few glittering stars in the now deep-blue night.
“Tea first, some salves for those wounds, then we’ll talk.” The high priestess swings a kettle to warm over the coals in her fireplace and throws a log on top. The fire roars. I close my eyes, soaking up the warmth and the quiet.
I hear the sounds of the water boiling, of her steeping the tea and preparing a tray.
She brings it over and pours. She hands me a cup that is wide-mouthed and delicate.
I despair for a moment that I will not be able to drink from it without breaking it with the phoenix’s beak.
And then I realize I’m not wearing the phoenix skull.
Right.
I hold the porcelain cup up to my nose. I rest the rim of it on my chin. I inhale deeply. The steam is fragrant, smelling of turmeric and ginger, and eases the sharp pains on my face.
She pours tea for herself and Kian. Kian removes his skull to drink, setting it on a small side table with my own, but I watch the high priestess carefully as she maneuvers around her unicorn skull.
I will have to learn how to imitate her movements, no doubt.
When we have drunk the tea and eaten the small snacks of spiced black walnuts and sugared apricots, she stands up again and goes to her washroom. She comes out with a small tin of salve and steps close to me.
She holds it out, her finger hovering above it. “May I?”