Chapter Thirty-Four Adela
We hold each other, chest to chest, legs tangled up together, foreheads touching.
“I love you.” Kian whispers against my mouth. His voice is strong and unafraid. “I trust you.”
I barely hold back my sobs when I say, “I love you, too.”
After we get redressed, we can hear the merriment of a feast winding down, and sure enough, within a few moments, we are fetched. I pick up the phoenix and follow meekly. They take us upstairs, and I kiss Kian for the last time before I’m led to my own rooms by the Spinner priest.
There, Cecelia waits for me. She’s changed, and I take it Sarai’s assigned her the role of my assistant, since she’s wearing her sister’s silver and lilac robes and she has her hair up in the three, three-strand braids. She’s shaking, but trying to be brave.
“A bath has been drawn,” she says.
I refuse it. I don’t want to wash Kian’s scent from me. And besides, I’m not going to dress up for them. I don’t need their pomp and ceremony. I am not a gleeful participant in Sarai’s false matching ceremony.
Not that Cecelia is. She sets the things aside, and I hear her sniffle slightly. “I hate this,” she whispers. “It’s all so wrong.”
Her eyes flick to the Spinner priest in the corner of the room.
His back is to us, but no doubt he’s listening.
She wants to say more, to ask more. She likely has a million questions about why I’m doing this, why I would ever even consider this.
I feel the weight of Cecelia’s unspoken words settle like a stone on my chest.
“It is,” I say, and I hope she hears my own unspoken truths: All of this is wrong—the way the temple leaders have abused their power, the hoarding of the skulls, the insistence on hurting people I love to get me to fulfill their whims. And for what? Nothing they don’t already have.
Waves of helplessness, grief, rage, and fear flow through me, one after another. I push them all away. I can luxuriate in my feelings later, after I have done what needs to be done.
Until then, I cannot break.
“They had me find supplies in their pantries,” she whispers and shows me to the small table in front of the fire where oils, ointments, salve, and herbs sit. “They didn’t have much of quality, but I did my best.”
I look over her collection. It’s not bad, for how quickly she’s thrown it together. “No comfrey, I see.”
“Thank the goddess,” she says with a genuine shiver.
“Time to go,” the Spinner priest says and we collect the oils and ointments. I may not be willing to wear the raiment of the matcher, but this part of the ceremony I will gladly do to soothe these tortured skulls.
We descend back down to the crypt and the skulls that await us.
We move to the altar, where Sarai has made a stack for her matching ceremony.
I carry the phoenix skull, and set her down carefully beside the others.
I do not need her for the work of the matcher.
The skulls she’s chosen consist of three dragons, a couple of kelpies, a single gytrash, and a unicorn.
The dragons in particular are old and rare, and I am surprised that she would risk them since we don’t know exactly how these pairings will go.
Perhaps she doesn’t care.
After all, the crypt is full of backups.
Above us, the orders prepare their novitiates while we prepare the bones. I show Cecelia how to test the skulls for viability. We need to know which ones will be able to be matched and which ones won’t.
Checking skulls does not come naturally to Cecelia, but that’s no surprise.
Still, she helps.
One of the dragons is gone. We both check it.
I even put my cheek against it, like I did with the phoenix.
There is no response. I silently thank the creature on behalf of the goddess.
It has done excellent work in its lifetime, and then suffered hanging in the dark long beyond. I gently set it aside.
Once we know that the others are present—though some incredibly faint—we begin the next step of the process.
I polish the bones, rubbing small swipes of scented oils and soothing ointments into the pale, craggy surfaces of the creatures’ skulls. Their insistent whispered wants echo through my head. I welcome their sad, mourning voices and echo them.
I am sorry, my friends, for what I am about to ask of you, I say to them in my mind. So sorry.
Cecelia and I finish setting up for the ceremony. A nave of the crypt will be our matching hut; the wider, open space is where order members will wait and chant, as if they’re my community of keepers in the fields of jackalope warrens.
When there is nothing else left to do, I take my phoenix skull and place it on my face. She’s been quiet through this all. Whatever she feels, she is not sharing with me.
Cecelia and I ascend to the sanctuary. Their feasting complete, the three orders mingle—navy, red, and black—everyone in their finest robes. They are half-drunk on mead, and excited by the impending ceremony.
I search for Kian, expecting him to be part of the procession. When I cannot find him, I close my eyes and see if that old pull is still present. I haven’t felt it much since leaving the valley, though I also haven’t spent much time away from his presence.
They have already moved him back to the crypt.
“Ready?” I ask Cecelia, and wonder how much of this next process she knows.
Probably all of it, both from her research and having watched it countless times through her life. That’s not the same, of course, as leading it yourself.
She’s trembling slightly, but she nods. We begin to walk.
Behind us, the orders take up the keeper chants.
The familiar words I have grown up amongst echo around the black-marble sanctuary and grate at my ears.
I hate those words, that rhythm, in their mouths.
It is not made for them. It is for my people, and mine only.
I climb down into the crypt, every step reluctant.
The voices of the skulls grow enormous. They are a riot of sound, of wanting. They want release. They want life. They are confused and hurting and hopeful. I let their wants wash through me. I take them inside me. I become them.
Soon, I will give them what they want. As soon as I possibly can.
We enter the crypt, and there he is, waiting. Kian. My love.
He’s kneeling in the center, his bare chest exposed, expanding with each breath.
The sight of him is almost painful. He’s so beautiful in this moment, so impossibly alive.
His hair is tousled and loose, disheveled from our time together.
He looks at me with his dark, unfathomable eyes and winks, teasing even at the end.
The wink is what breaks me. I promised myself I’d be strong, unflinching, unbreakable. But how can I be when he looks at me like that? Like he still sees me, appreciates me, forgives me.
I move before I know what I’m doing, flinging myself down in front of him. Touching his face and his neck, pushing hair out of his eyes. Tracing his collarbone as if I’m afraid he’ll just disappear if he doesn’t have my touch to anchor him.
And then I kiss him. Again and again. On his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, his neck. And of course, his lips. Each kiss is a promise, a plea, a protest. In the impending dark, remember me. Remember us.
“Stand up, Goddess.” His smile stabs at something deep inside me.
I squeeze his hands. “I’m sorry I ruined your plans for vengeance.”
“You really did.” He smirks, and I want to kiss that perfect, hiding smile. Again. So I do. When I am done, he says, “Loving you is so much sweeter than any vengeance.”
Sarai clears her throat, rolling her eyes with impatience. As if I should hurry to kill the love of my life.
Still, I stand.
“You are magnificent and I trust you,” Kian says, quiet enough that I’m certain only I can hear him.
At first I want to shake my head and argue.
I am impulsive. I react out of anger and fear and spite, but when I consider, I realize that’s not always true.
Cecelia, Dad, Kian—all have told me to trust myself.
To believe in myself. I act quickly, even rashly sometimes, but it’s not all impulse.
It’s not always damning. In fact, it’s most often exactly in line with my values.
Perhaps, then, it’s not impulse. It’s intuition. I am good at seeing the world quickly, taking it all in and then deciding immediately what I want to do and how. That’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s something to embrace.
They’re alright. I need to trust myself. And the phoenix. She’s the one who showed me the path forward. But does she understand the complexity of the situation? And even if she does, can I trust myself not to completely destroy everything in my attempts to save it?
“Let’s move along now,” Sarai says, obviously annoyed at the time I’m taking.
I let her annoyance rush over me. I feel the buildup of pressure, expanding rapidly within me.
My emotions are so close to the surface, they’re easy to pull from.
When there is so much pressure that I worry I might burst, I release it.
The magic that pulses through the crypt is a physical presence, golden and swirling. And mine to control.
Skulls fall down from the walls surrounding us. The candles on the altar snuff out. Order members step back.
I do not pause. I do not cry. I do not even move.
I kill Kian.
One moment he is there, eyes wide and awe-filled. He is not scared. He looks… impressed, proud of me. The next moment, he is gone.
Not his body. That is there, a heap on the hard-packed dirt floor. But the beauty of it, the animation of him, is gone.
I love him.
Loved him.
And I have killed him. Something like a sob wrenches from me, but it is not sorrow. It is anger. Pure, luminous rage. Everything in me is aflame. Even my eyes are molten. I could blink and burn down the world.
“Well done, my little bird.” Sarai steps forward. “Now let’s add that phoenix skull of his to our ceremony, shall we?”