Chapter Twenty-Five Adela
Our week finds its rhythm. Mornings are prayers and breakfast and then a day of work. I continue to work with the dead, where I feel safest. After dinner is magic practice in the courtyard, where I do not.
I continue to be too terrified of my power to even try to utilize it.
I know I need to push through. I need to embrace my destruction.
Huntress priestesses are not cowards. But I stand in the temple’s private courtyard, with the bright-blue sky above me and the black-marble facade looming overhead, and I cannot act.
All I can think about is what might happen if Kian and I have a simultaneous vision and a pulse goes through the city, or if I drain the life force out of one of the Huntress’s chosen.
It’s bad enough that I have Etana’s dead eyes haunting my nightmares.
Around the edges of the courtyard are small balconies for order members to sit outside and relax or watch any demonstrations that might be occurring below.
High Priestess Sarai watches from one, a slight smile on her lips.
She ought to be thrilled. The novitiates are all coming into their powers nicely. All except me.
“Kian, let’s begin with the grass.” Sister Roberta gestures to a large, manicured garden at the edge of the outdoor space. It is lovely, already lush and green despite the cool early spring temperatures.
I wish the grass in the valley were half so healthy.
Along the edges of the grass are small flowering trees whose petals float by in the slight breeze, along with their sweet fragrance.
Nothing is dead within the garden that I see. But Kian knows what she wants. With a slight nod, the grass lengthens and becomes an even deeper shade of green.
“Excellent. Now there.” She points to a tree that is just barely budded. Spring leaves unfurl. Then small apple blossoms. She presses. “More.”
He concentrates, and full apples begin to form. His success makes me feel even more like a failure. What I wouldn’t give for such beneficial, productive power.
Kian turns and sees me watching closely. He smiles, wide and genuine. Not his typical protective smirk. “Gonna try that fearsome magic today?” he quips. “Destroy some shit?”
My eyes well at the barb, though I know he means nothing by it. Still, the last time I saw that smiling mouth, it was between my thighs, and I’d rather it there again, teasing me to climax rather than teasing me to tears.
He notices my wobbles and steps closer immediately, pressing his forehead to mine. I close my eyes and inhale. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but he smells of late-summer grass and apples. “Okay, Goddess?”
I nod, but before I can reply, a vision takes me.
We fly out to the gryphon hills. There, adolescent gryphons, still with tufts of downy baby feathers, are being launched into the world.
A bold one spots us and flings itself forward, trying to catch up.
We slow and fly lazy circles with the little darling as it roars its joy into the bright-blue sky.
Below, younger ones gambol along the edge, tripping over tails and too-large feet, clumsy in their play.
In a nest, a mother gryphon is struggling with birth. She smells of blood and death. Her ninth gryphlette is stuck inside her. It is too many babies for one birth. Her body is too exhausted to push again.
When the two souls extinguish, we leave the pride to mourn their own. We’ll return to restore them to the earth in three days’ time.
We begin our rounds of the valley.
Out from the tree line, a figure all in black, wearing the bones of an ancestor, emerges.
Danger.
I come back to the courtyard in Kian’s arms. He didn’t share the vision, and his face is lined with worry. Before he can ask if I’m alright, the high priestess sweeps into the courtyard, clapping.
“Excellent work, all,” she says. “Well done. Now go and enjoy some well-earned rest.”
All the novitiates turn to go, including me and Kian. She stops the two of us.
She walks over to the grass and reaches down to brush a hand over the top of it. “The rebirth portion of your pairing is obviously functioning quite well.” She stands back up and smiles sadly at me. “What is wrong with the destruction half?”
I can’t tell her I’m too scared, so I say nothing at all.
“It’s okay to struggle, but we need to find a path forward,” she prompts.
“It’s only been a week,” Kian says, his tone edging a little too close to insubordinate. I want to tell him to shush. “She’ll find her feet.”
“I have no doubt that she will,” High Priestess Sarai says patiently. “Because I will help her. Now come, Adela. I thought you might like to work on this with me directly, a bit outside of town, where you won’t have to worry so much about… accidents.”
My eyes well at the understanding and grace. She sees me, and will accommodate me so that I can explore my magic without pushing at all of my fears. “That would be lovely.”
Kian joins us as we turn to go, but High Priestess Sarai holds up a hand to him. “Not you.”
“But we’re a pair,” Kian insists. “Destruction. Rebirth.”
I appreciate his eagerness to support me, but the more people who are with us, the more likely I am to hurt someone accidentally. I put a hand on his arm and shake my head. “I’ll be back before you know it. Just gonna go destroy some shit.” I wink, trying for jovial.
His eyes search my face carefully, and then he smiles in a way that feels forced. But he squeezes my hand and lets me go without saying another word.
I join High Priestess Sarai in her carriage, a large black behemoth of a vehicle with a golden symbol of the Huntress on the door, pulled by four horses as black as Lathai.
We roll through the city, which is a much better way to experience it than the way I first arrived, trudging through it, damp and exhausted.
Insborough is nothing like I imagined. It’s loud and full of color and movement. There is beauty, of a sort. The charming way one narrow, ruby-painted building meets its neighbor, which is a deep plum, which meets its neighbor, a bright teal green.
But it stinks. The stench is so much worse than any pasture or barn I’ve ever been in.
Even in the carriage it seeps through. From my time as the matcher, choosing scents for skulls, I automatically try to categorize the smells.
Waste. Decay. Disease. Death. All mixed together with the sweat of animals and the body odors of so, so many unwashed people.
The valley is not the idyllic paradise that outsiders expect—caring for creatures is work; it is often messy and violent and just plain hard.
But it is not this… rotten chaos. I wonder, were they given the choice, how many would stay in Insborough instead of moving to the countryside or some of the smaller villages on the outskirts of the city.
And then I realize, they have a choice. Of course they do.
Only keepers are forced to stay in the community where they’re born.
Everyone here wants to be here.
We arrive at a bend in the river that surrounds three-quarters of the city at an almost-empty lot. In the midst of the dried brown grass remains one lone rectangular building, listing sharply to the right.
We climb out of the carriage make our way toward it.
It’s a tall building, about three stories, and was once lovely with a gabled roof, wrap-around porch, and intricate trim. The two windows that remain intact are thick, wavy glass. It looks like a stiff breeze could knock it over.
When we are nearly on the building’s narrow porch, Sarai gestures up to it. “Tear that down.” The opals and diamonds on her unicorn skull twinkle in the late-evening sunlight.
“ ‘Tear it down?’ ” I repeat. But how? I have only taken a life, and that was done reflexively.
But I do not want to fail her. I turn and face the building, and with no idea how to actively, intentionally access my magic.
I simply will it to fall down. Nothing happens.
I try again, imagining the building collapsing in front of us.
I reach for the phoenix for assistance, but she is strangely unresponsive, and I don’t blame her. My fear is too big. While the risks don’t feel as dire as they did in the middle of the temple courtyard inside the city, there are still people here to hurt.
I’m not able to manage moving even a nail out of place.
We try again and again, with the high priestess encouraging me, but nothing she suggests unlocks my block. Still, I try. Over and over and over again. Eventually, we lose all the light. The high priestess’s servants come near with lanterns and lead us back to the carriage.
When we’re settled, the high priestess reaches forward and places a single finger at the tip of the phoenix skull’s beak.
She lifts it up, sticking my chin into the air.
I’m careful to move with her at the slightest pressure, not wanting to slice her with the sharp beak.
She moves it up and down, then side to side, as if examining it.
“I had hoped my little surprise would be a celebration of our destructive achievements, but alas. It was a disappointing evening for us both.” She removes her hand, and I drop my chin back to its natural angle. “I suppose it’s just a gift.”
“Thank you for your generosity and grace,” I reply, confused.
She simply smiles at me. It’s as warm as always, but shame floods me. Her time is precious—as the leader of the Huntress order, she has a hundred other more important things to do—and yet she spent hours trying to help me. Only for me to fail her.
We ride in difficult silence, each bump and rattle of the carriage adding to my worry that she’s frustrated and discontent with my lack of performance.
When we finally pull up to the temple, I hurry out. But she stops me with her words, and kindness. “You will figure out the destruction half of the phoenix magic, I’m certain of it. You will not disappoint me.”
If her encouragements were a fire, I’d lean close to warm my hands. Her benevolence makes her seem more like she’d be a Spinner priestess. The Huntress values cunning and strength and attracts followers who embody the same.
High Priestess Sarai closes the carriage door from the inside, and it rolls away.
I turn to go into the temple and find Sister Ihi is waiting for me with her unadorned mask and quiet demeanor.
Another that I wouldn’t expect to serve the Huntress.
I’m starting to wonder if maybe my view of the orders is too narrow.
As a keeper, I have mostly only ever known novitiates.
“Good evening, Adela,” Sister Ihi says. “With me.”
She walks quickly, her black robes sweeping out behind her as we move through an unfamiliar hall. The priestesses and priests of the Huntress seem to be trained to move dramatically, and I wonder who teaches that lesson.
We stop in front of a door. She opens it to a large, well-appointed set of rooms. This floor is covered with overlapping rugs, and art hangs on every patterned wall. In the center of it sits a large bed with fluffy blankets and giant pillows. “What is this? Where are we?”
“Your new rooms,” she says. “High Priestess Sarai arranged it.”
“But—” I stumble for the right words. This is nicer than the rooms we have set aside for the high priestesses themselves in the valley.
The room is huge and well appointed, so much grander than my previous space, with its bare walls and wooden floor.
I want to enjoy it, but I don’t understand how I could possibly deserve this. “I can’t.”
Sister Ihi gives me a look that makes me want to hide behind the long, thick curtains that frame the floor-to-ceiling windows, it’s so thick with pity. “Your things have already been moved.”
A door farther inside the room opens, and Kian steps out of a washroom. I see a glimpse of a tub large enough to fit both of us. But I barely take that in. Kian is bare-chested, wrapped only in a towel. He raises his arms and spins, showing off the room. “Welcome home, Goddess.”
My eyes widen. “We’re living together?”
Sister Ihi gives us each a key, then mumbles something about letting us have some time to get acquainted with the room and sweeps away. Kian closes the door and leans against the frame, his smile wide but frozen.
Oh. He’s not happy. He’s hiding. He enjoys privacy and isolation, and this shared space threatens both. A spike of fear that he doesn’t want this, doesn’t want me, flushes through me, but I push it away.
I am about to run down the hall after Sister Ihi and beg for my old rooms back when he steps toward me and wraps me in a giant hug.
I love the feel of his still-damp skin under my hands and how it tamps down the fear and insecurity that still lingers from my awful magic session with High Priestess Sarai.
Surely, I’m simply projecting. Kian’s need for privacy doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to share these rooms with me.
We can navigate this new reality together.
He squeezes me tight and picks me up. I’m laughing when he tosses me, sending overstuffed pillows and the goose-down blankets flying.
He climbs up onto the bed. I love the way his arms bracket me, his tattooed biceps and forearms taut with the effort of holding himself over me.
I am safe within his strength, and at his mercy.
I kiss his wrist, then nip at him a bit, loving the noise he makes deep in his throat.
“I want you.”
I do not have to be told twice. I turn, meeting his mouth, kissing him deeply. This, at least, I can do with no hesitation.