Chapter Twenty-Eight Adela
I immediately run face-first into Kian. He grabs my shoulders to keep me from flailing backward and pulls me close, giving me an easy kiss on the forehead.
I mumble a hello and try to step out of his gentle grip, focused on my task. I need to talk to the high priestess.
He lets me go but leans against the wall at a sharp angle, blocking me. I know if I step over his legs, he’ll move in front of me. “Where are you off to so fast?”
I hold up the paintings and sort of wave them around.
I sidestep, and he moves with me, just like I knew he would, an infuriating hallway dance.
I speak quickly, panic building within me, threatening to overflow.
“Cecelia sent some research. I think I can still match the skulls, and I need to speak to High Priestess Sarai. Maybe I can go home and double-check. Etana—” The panic bubbles over and steals my words.
I squeeze out, “Maybe I can have my old life back.”
He goes very still, and this time when I move, he allows me to go past him, but he joins me. “I’m coming along.”
“Excellent.” He can come with me all the way to the valley as far as I’m concerned.
The high priestess is leaving her rooms as we arrive. “Oh, Adela, how perfect,” she says warmly. “I was just coming to fetch you. We’re going to work on developing your magic again today. Follow me.”
She does not wait for any sort of response but walks down the hall, her typical black robes and veil billowing out behind her. “I suppose you ought to come, too,” she says to Kian over her shoulder.
I hesitate, unsettled for reasons I can’t pinpoint. I quickly fold up the journal pages and art and tuck them in a pocket.
Kian notices. He turns me to face him. He leans in, pressing the forehead of his phoenix skull against my own. Softly he says, “Whatever she asks you to do today, you do not have to agree. You don’t have to prove yourself. Especially not to her.”
“She’s the high priestess of the Huntress.” And as long as I’m a novitiate, she’s in control of my future. Maybe that will change if I can go back to being matcher, or some sort of hybrid between the two. Until then, of course I have to prove myself to her. But it’s more than that.
“I want to try,” I admit.
Kian is independent, strong-willed, bold. He fulfills his obligations, but ultimately doesn’t care what others think of him.
I do.
I follow after her. When the carriage arrives, we climb in. High Priestess Sarai sits on one bench, we sit across from her. I tuck my feet back as far as they will go so she has plenty of room. Kian’s thigh presses against me, a comforting weight against my own.
The feeling that something is off stays with me.
I want to tell the high priestess about the art, but I can’t.
Not yet. Not until I can determine what’s causing this writhing unease low in my gut.
I scan the carriage and the priestess, trying to pinpoint what upsets me.
And then I see it. She’s added more gems to her unicorn skull.
Disappointment flares. It’s one thing to have gardens that we don’t have access to and expensive art and objects sitting dusty and unused in the corners of the temples, but the valley and the orders are supposed to be balanced and cooperative.
My people are struggling, and the high priestess has added more opals and diamonds to her unicorn skull.
As if sensing my flash of anger, Kian presses his leg harder into me. It grounds me.
Maybe I just don’t understand the ways of the holy city yet.
Perhaps there’s an expectation of the high priestess, for her to look a certain way, to display her power and the Huntress’s favor with gems and grandeur.
She wouldn’t be able to effectively lead if citizens and priestesses thought her weak.
Or perhaps the gems were gifts, offerings to her for her noble work, serving the Huntress.
I don’t know, and I shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
“Where are we headed?” Kian asks, watching the city roll by slowly.
“A place where Adela doesn’t have to be afraid,” High Priestess Sarai replies tersely.
If he notices her frostiness, he acts unperturbed, fidgeting with the curtains of the carriage, his robe, his nails, his skull.
“No safe place exists,” I say. “Not when it comes to my magic.”
“We will do what we must so you can push past that belief.” High Priestess Sarai sits forward and takes my hands in hers. She squeezes tightly, rubbing her thumb across my knuckles just like my mom used to do when I was little and she wanted to reassure me. Just like Kian does. “And soon.”
With her iciness toward Kian lingering in her tone, the promise sounds a bit like a threat.
Our trip through the city is slow. Eventually I find my courage and pull out the art that Cecelia sent.
She studies the paintings closely, tracing a finger over the central figures. “How did you get these?”
I open my mouth to reply, but I stumble. Ulric asked me not to tell and I agreed. I can’t go against my word, but neither can I lie to the high priestess. I look to Kian, panicked.
“Carrier pigeon,” he answers for me.
High Priestess Sarai is so engrossed in the paintings that she ignores his flippant, and very obviously false, reply. The valley does not utilize carrier pigeons, or keep any sorts of birds. The creatures would eat them in a heartbeat.
“This, little bird, is very interesting.” She rolls the paintings up and tucks them away in her own robes. I want to ask for them back, but we roll to a stop before I gather my courage. “We’ll set these aside so we can focus on your magic, hm?”
My hands practically aching with the loss of the paintings, I see past her that we’re in the same field with the same crooked building we practiced magic on before. Only this time we are not alone.
There’s a large cage with a young horse inside and a man in a novitiate robe beside it far across the field. I squint to see better what is going on. A flash of alarm flows through me from the phoenix, and I notice Kian startle beside me. He’s felt it, too.
Then a sound like a high-pitched whistle echoes through the air.
That is not a horse. I fling off my phoenix skull, tossing it into the grass, and lift my robe’s hems to my thighs. I bolt across the field, running as fast as I can. That is Etana’s baby.
I get to the cage and throw myself onto my knees before it, trying to reach through the bars to her.
She is crying out, throwing herself against the cage, trying to get free.
There’s not enough room for her to expand her wings, and her feathers get caught in the bars, bending.
One rips out entirely and drifts to the grass beneath.
What is she doing outside the valley? And caged?
Creatures are not caged. Not ever. I have to get her out.
I pull at the door, but it’s locked. I pull harder, rattling the bars.
She cries out again. I’m scaring her. She’s skinny and her coat and feathers are dull.
From being captured, or had Lathai not been able to care for her properly?
I turn to the high priestess, who is watching from near the carriage. Too far to ask her why she would do this to a defenseless creature. Or to me.
Even though inside my heart, mind, and soul I am exploding, I turn back to the foal and force my voice to sound untroubled. I am the sun, quiet and warming.
“I know you don’t know me, sweet girl,” I say to her. She won’t understand my words, but they help me find my center. “I knew your mama. We were born at the same time, under the same shooting star.”
She stops trying to fly. I continue, voice even, hand outstretched. “Keepers aren’t supposed to have favorites. But she was mine.”
She stops stomping. She sticks her little nose closer, sniffing at me.
“I loved her so, so much, little one. And she loved me, too. She saved me. She fought a dragon to protect me. I wish she’d been selfish and run.
But she didn’t. Enkidus hurt her.” The sorrow that has lingered in me since the first golden shockwave that I sent through the valley engulfs me.
For the foal, I suppress a sob. “I killed her. I did not want to. But I did.”
Kian kneels beside me. He traces a finger along my cheek, at the indent the phoenix skull always leaves. “You showed her mercy.”
The foal nuzzles her velvety nose into my hand, as if to comfort herself. It consoles me, too. Once I have stopped being overwhelmed with panic and grief, I have room for other feelings. Like rage.
I turn to the figure standing beside the cage, livid. I expect to see some unknown monster. Or maybe Linden.
It’s Ulric.
But no. Not Ulric. He’s kind and gentle. He brought art out of the valley for me, which I’m fairly certain he was not supposed to do. He welcomed me to the temple. He’s my friend.
“What is this?” My voice is rasping, my anger bleeding through my words.
His shoulders are hunched, and the knot of his jaw pulses as he clenches and unclenches his teeth. He will not meet my eyes. As if he’s ashamed. He watches High Priestess Sarai closely, unresponsive.
I turn to her, confused. Surely the high priestess wouldn’t do this monstrous thing. She cares about the creatures, about me.
I stand up and walk toward her. Kian joins me. I see his hand flex as if he wants to hold my hand, but he lets me stand before her on my own. I sound bolder than I feel when I say, “Did you do this?”
“I did.” Her voice has an edge in it I haven’t heard since the night I matched. She holds my phoenix skull out to me. “It isn’t something I like. I don’t want this little creature caged. I don’t want her harmed. Listen to her cries. Only a monster would enjoy that.”
“Then why?” I hate how whiney I sound, how desperate for reassurance.
“The problem is, Adela, you can only seem to access your magic when you’re upset. And so I do what I have to in order to encourage you.” She holds out the phoenix skull again. “Take down the building.”
I don’t move.