Chapter VII #5
At a nod from Afon, the Caervallin ambassador stalked forward. Gileta’s retinue pulled back, and Song Royale’s empress swept over to Ariana as well.
Once again, the queen sank to her knees, this time before the Imperatrice and the ambassador. Beyond them, she could see a shadow cross Orden’s face at the sight of her kneeling for others. But she could not afford to falter, or to doubt the course she’d chosen.
“Imperatrice Gileta,” Ariana said, taking both the empress’s hands in her own. “You honor us with your presence.”
“Little Ari,” Gileta said, and it gladdened Ariana to hear affection in her voice. Lyria only knew she’d worked hard enough over the years to soften the indomitable Imperatrice. “It is Song Royale’s honor to witness the arrival of your son.”
Ariana looked to the Caervallin diplomat, encompassing the formidable woman in the circle of goodwill that extended between herself and Gileta.
“Ambassador Gwylen. It is our pleasure to have you with us, and to welcome your master as well.”
The Caervallin ambassador shifted restlessly, but when Ariana turned away from Gileta and held out her hands again, the woman took them. Ariana smiled, but even as she did so, pain echoed within her and she bled, and bled.
“Let us have peace, and no more talk of blood sacrifices,” Ariana said with a bow of her dark head, heart hammering within her chest. She could not help but glance at Orden, who was still watching her with a faint frown.
For seven years she’d never chanced his disapproval.
She’d never once invoked the goddesses she formerly served. But today was a day for risks taken.
“Blood is Silith’s element,” Afon rasped from where he still stood by the southern windows.
Ariana had known he would not give in. “If Honoria’s queen refuses to intercede and sate Silith with her prayers, I insist that the moon be honored in the way of my people.
To that end, I’ve brought something special for the goddess—the very last of my Honorian prisoners of war. ”
Ariana saw Orden set his jaw and grow livid.
Caervallion had sent assurances that all Honoria’s people had perished or been returned years ago.
She did not recognize the emaciated figure in shackles who was suddenly marched through a doorway by guards in Caervallin dress, but it was clear that Orden did.
His gaze on the prisoner flared so hot, Ariana was afraid she would burn.
Before her king could speak, Ariana clasped one of Gileta’s hands without letting go of Gwylen, joining herself to both the Caervallin ambassador and Song Royale’s Imperatrice.
Gileta’s expression was nearly as grim as Orden’s at the sight of the prisoner, and the news that Caervallion had broken faith in that regard.
“The Beloved Three shine on the hour of our meeting,” Ariana said.
“May Silith bless us, lending her strength to our joint purposes and her light to all we undertake together in the days to come. Let her guide us to peace without violence in its begetting, as there has been no violence in obtaining the blood I offer.”
Discontented murmurs rose up around the women at the audience hall’s center, coming from Gileta’s retinue, from Orden’s courtiers and guards, from the Arbiter and Arbitress and their attendants.
Orden’s face was a storm cloud, but for once, for this moment, Ariana was not concerned with him.
She did not need his approval, but a way to both honor Afon’s request and put Caervallion in its place.
When Ariana spoke, it was in a clear voice that rang through the hall. “The moon requires blood for a sacrifice, and I have provided it.”
Letting go of both the Imperatrice and Caervallion’s ambassador, Ariana rose.
The muttering across the audience hall intensified. For where the queen had knelt, there spread a pool of crimson, and the hem of her pale blue gown was soaked red. Gileta’s lips parted, the light of grudging admiration shining in her eyes. Gwylen let out a short, sharp sound.
To the Invers, unmarked by the goddesses and uninitiated in their true ways, the sight of Ariana bleeding would be only shameful.
To the daughters of the moon, it was something else entirely.
A most sacred offering—blood spilled not through injury or death but in the course of giving life.
It put a seal upon Ariana’s wish for peace and her invocation of their goddess, rendering her words high and holy, and all the more so because Silith had not rightly been offered blood in this place since it last served as her shrine.
The queen, the Imperatrice, and the Caervallin ambassador were bound together now—yoked one to the other in all their aims and ends.
For any of them to sever that bond or serve as a willful stumbling block to another would be a slight to Silith herself.
And of the Beloved Three, Silith was most vengeful, and least ready to forgive.
Ariana met Afon’s eyes.
“As your prisoner was withheld wrongfully from Honoria, and as I have bled on his behalf, I claim his life for my own,” she said.
“I do not plead, for there is no law that would withhold him from me. By the precepts of the Hand, you ought to have returned him to us years ago. By Silith’s rites, he is mine.
Neither your neighbors nor the goddess you claim will view you kindly if you deny me this. ”