Chapter Twenty-Four Kian
I can’t sleep. The scent of Adela’s pleasure has seeped into my skin and is stealing my slumber, and yet, my body is not capable of any more release. Especially by my own hand, when it still feels the echo of hers wrapped around me.
I get up, leaving Adela in bed.
There’s no use tossing and turning, torturing myself with memories of the best sex of my life when there’s nothing to do about it. I might as well make myself useful.
It’s been ages since I’ve snuck through the halls of the temple to the offices where the high priestess and her assistants work during the day, but my feet know the way.
It was a frequent path I trod when I was young and still directionless in my revenge for my parents.
Now that I’m older and have accomplished the linchpin action of my grand plans, I find nothing terribly different. I am still waiting for new inspiration.
And for the fallout of the missing skulls. I thought it would be a much more drastic event with panic and chaos.
But other than the novitiates who are a couple of years behind us, no one seems terribly upset.
Maybe because the full priestesses and priests already wear masks, and the lack of new skulls will only make their power more valuable?
That would be typical of the egotistical worldview of most order members.
The quiet indifference from Sarai is the strangest. Sure, there ought to be some appeasement from the successful matches Adela made just before reawakening the phoenix, but I suspect there is something more, something I’m not seeing.
I’ll keep an eye out for more insight there as I look for intelligence to protect Aunt Ujvala’s next run to the valley.
My bare feet make no sound on the solid marble floors, and I make my way quickly. In front of Sarai’s thick wooden door, carved with the various symbols of the Huntress, I pause. I check the crack beneath the door for any telltale glow of light, and when I see none, I knock softly.
The first time I opened the door to find High Priestess Sarai inside working startled us both, and I received an hour-long scolding for not respecting her privacy and entering without knocking. I was only seventeen. I haven’t made the same mistake again.
When I see nothing but dark shadow around the edge of the door, I carefully turn the knob to the right, avoiding the squeak that always happens if I turn it left.
Another hard-earned lesson when I once opened the door incorrectly and found her asleep at her desk in the middle of the night, drooling on a pile of papers.
That time I was twenty, and it earned me light lashes since it was a repeat offense.
Thankfully both times she assumed it was eagerness to speak with her and not the more sinister truth—that I was there to steal her secrets.
This time, the office is empty. I slip inside and hurry over to the hidden panel in the wall, gently prying it open. The moment I glance inside, I know it’s my lucky day. There is a pile of letters. I would consider it a gift from the goddess if I believed in such things.
I go through the letters, most of which are nothing.
Boring notes about trade or the status of supplies for some upcoming ceremony they have planned.
It’s odd that that one is tucked away, but maybe it got tangled with the others.
There’s an interesting one about a meeting between the three high priestesses to go over what they plan to do about the missing skulls—as if they have many options.
But the only one that’s super pertinent is one between the high priestess and the leader of the keeper elders. It’s written with a bold hand on a thick, nubby paper that composed many of Cecelia’s books in the valley library.
High Priestess—
We are glad to welcome your dragon-wearer and the ashes of the Pupil priest and his jackalope skull in a few days’ time. He will be received with kindness and care.
As to your request, while we acknowledge your frustration with Adela being unable to access her power as quickly as you’d like, the solutions you propose as incentive are not ones we can—or will—ever sanction.
I understand our refusal to provide Ulric aid in his quest to find and capture the unicorn-pegasus hybrid will certainly result in the total withdrawal of financial support from all the orders.
There, I would ask you to remember your sacred duties to maintain balance and share abundance.
Your promises, after all, are not to us, but to the great goddess of us all.
Our sacred duty is to the care and keeping of creatures through their natural lives, from any and all threats. Including yours.
Creatures can never be caged.
—Petra
Cryptic. I wonder what the solution is that Sarai had proposed that would require Ulric to capture the foal, and to what end?
It sounds like she wants to remove her from the valley, but that’d be impossible.
Whatever the reason, it was obviously something that pissed Petra off.
The keeper elder is blunt, but that was outright aggressive.
I wish I had seen Sarai’s face when she read it.
I dig through Sarai’s drawer and find paper and charcoal, quickly transferring the letter so I can share it with Aunt Ujvala. She needs to know that Ulric is traveling to and from the valley so no one runs into him on their way.
“Where do you go?” Adela asks the next evening when we’re lying in bed together in her rooms. It’s so sparse, without the years of built-up decoration that the rest of us have.
I freeze, but keep my voice light. “Go?”
“Mm-hmm.” Her voice is low with satiation and sleepiness. “You’re always heading somewhere. Into the city. Somewhere strange in the temple. Last night I saw you heading back to your rooms, barefoot, long past two.”
Alarm erupts, but her voice is light and inquisitive, not judgmental or suspicious. I do my best to meet her energy and hurriedly try to find something that will intrigue her that’s close enough to the truth that it’ll hold up, but far enough away that she won’t guess what I’ve actually been up to.
“I… explore.”
Her face lights up. “The temple?” She sits up, the blankets falling down to her waist and revealing her perfect body. I reach out and skim my fingertips across her belly, unable to answer properly.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Show me your favorite spot.”
I start to point to a freckle high on the inside of her thigh, but she just playfully bats me away.
She climbs over me awkwardly and throws on some clothes.
When I don’t immediately move, she hands me mine as well.
I groan. I should have said I find places to nap and her bed is the best one, but I suspect that wouldn’t have changed anything.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” she teases. “Get up and show me your secrets.”
If only I could.
Taking her to the spot I think she will love the most, I lead her to a set of spiral stone stairs that spin away from us in both directions, up and down. Up will lead to the highest, largest bell tower in the city. I start up the stairs, and she begins to follow, practically bouncing on her toes.
Then she pauses and takes a few back. She peers down the twisting stone stairs, her head tilted sideways as if listening. She points. “What’s that way?”
“Not up.”
She gives me a soft smack on the shoulder, and I answer her earnestly, “Legend has it there are tunnels beneath us, connecting the three temples.”
“Legend?”
“Well, there’s a locked door at the bottom. But no one who’s talking knows where it leads.” And I’ve never found my way through, despite excellent lock-picking skills. I’m half-convinced it’s sealed or the mechanism for getting through is blocked by magic, sort of like the path into the valley.
“If the legend is true, that’d be easy enough to tell with a simple visit to the other temples. Do they also have the same mysterious stairway and locked doors?”
She is too clever by half.
Because they absolutely do—matching locked doors, in fact—but I am not about to tell her that I’ve gone poking around the other temples. As far as she knows, I’m an irreverent, but mostly obedient, matched novitiate on my way to full priesthood.
The phoenix sends a spike of amusement through me.
I ignore it and start up the stairs again, gently pulling her along with me. “You want to explore, beauty? Let’s explore more than locked doors that probably just lead to a bunch of half-rotten vegetables or expired wine. I think you will like going up.”
Up to the sky. Up to the stars.
She hops up a couple of steps until we’re eye to eye, and she gives me a sweet kiss on the cheek.
I squeeze her hand and lead. We climb and climb.
The higher we get, the colder the air. Eventually we come to the top.
The bell tower is open of course, so the city can hear the tolling of the giant brass bell at noon, on holidays, for order members’ funeral rites, and a whole host of other things.
Thankfully it’s currently still, just hanging in the eaves of the tower.
Adela gives the thick woven rope an experimental tug and the whole thing swings slightly.
She grins, and I’m convinced that she’s going to fully go for it, ringing the bell madly.
If she does, we’ll have to run all the way back down the stairs before we’re caught and reprimanded.
Or outright punished. Thankfully, she stifles the impulse.
Not that I wouldn’t enjoy her doing a bit of mischief, but I don’t want to risk her beautiful back being marred by Sarai’s overeager lash.
I twist her around, away from the bell and toward what I actually want her to see.
Her breath catches as she looks out over the city, the uneven rooftops a mosaic of irregular shadows in the moonlight, small glimmers of warm-yellow lantern lights peeking out from windows and in the streetlamps.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” I agree, though I’m not talking about the city. All I can focus on are her eyes twinkling in the starlight, bright enough to rival the valley’s nighttime sky.
There is a small ledge on the outside of the belfry. We sit on it, and she leans against me, tucking her head between my shoulder and jaw. I give her a small kiss and sink into the moment.
“This is perfect,” she whispers, her breath a gentle caress across my collarbone.
I take her hand and agree. It very nearly is.
The only thing stopping it from being entirely perfect is me and my deception.
Because if she knew who I was and what I had done, she would hate me, surely.
She wouldn’t see my intentions to make room in the world for good.
She’d just see an angry man, seeking vengeance for the parents who died twenty-one years ago.
And who’s to say that I’m not? After all, my grand plan isn’t going great so far. Nothing has changed.
I take her hand. Her feet are swinging like she’s a kid, joyful and carefree—unafraid of the ledge or the future.
If only I were unafraid of the future, of her reaction.
She’s chaotic and impulsive, but she’s also creative.
She has great instincts. Maybe if I just told her the truth she’d see my heart and not only accept me but eagerly participate in my schemes.
Maybe she would come alongside me to make Insborough a better place.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone in this.
Or maybe she would hate me forever.
That final maybe is what prevents me from speaking. I do not want her to hate me. I want her to know me. I want her to love me.
As I love her.