Chapter XXXI
XXXI
By a thousand lights in a thousand skies
By a thousand hands, a thousand eyes,
Our way is laid out, our end a prize
For faith, for love, a star gladly dies.
—A LYRIEN SORIAS’ HYMN
In the heart of the Invers’ stolen mountain, Fia watched as a girl got to her feet. Black hair falling to her waist. A delicate, birdlike stature. The midnight-blue and silver-bordered kirtle of a Lyrien soria.
She was perfect. She was everything Fia had been looking for. And Fia lost her certainty that what was happening was taking place in the waking world, rather than in a dream.
“My name is Lynette,” the girl said with a radiant smile. The light of faith shone from her, illuminating the stone chamber as surely as the lamp on its stand. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Fia cast about herself in bewilderment. “Waiting for how long?”
Lynette’s smile grew brighter. “Quite a while now.”
Drawing in a trembling breath, Fia shook her head. “Why?”
But she already knew why. There could only be one reason, one need this child had come to fill.
Lynette stepped forward and took both of Fia’s hands in her own.
“Because in the spring, Lyria sent me a bloodborne dream. I prepared to do what was required for weeks, and traveled here with two companions. They never knew my calling, and lost patience with it a few days ago. They said I’d waited too long, or that I’d failed to understand the dream.
But I knew you’d come. There are people faithful to the Beloved Three who’ve brought me food and water, by paths only a few still know. ”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Fia said, pulling her hands away. “Why are you waiting for me?”
Lynette’s face grew solemn. “I think you know.”
Fia set to pacing, anxiety and slow dread churning in her stomach. “You look like a child. How old are you, girl?”
“Fifteen. Does it matter?”
“Fifteen. Raea’s light.” Fia pressed a palm to her forehead. “Did Serafine have a part in you coming here? She had some role in Ariana doing so, and it’s been the ruin of my queen. I don’t think much of a Matria who cares so little for the lives and happiness of her daughters.”
Lynette stood quietly, and when Fia glanced at her, met her gaze with absolute calm.
“My Matria didn’t know I was leaving until I’d already gone.
It was part of the dream, you see—that I could share my true intention in coming with no one but you.
I know what you need, Fia, and I’m here to be what you require. ”
The half sob that escaped Fia was agony and helplessness bound up together.
“I can’t ask that,” she said. “You’re only here because I am selfish. Because I can’t bear the thought of giving Ariana Inver up.”
“Why can’t you let her go?” Lynette asked, and speaking to her felt like confessing to Lyria herself—the gentlest and strictest of goddesses.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Fia said in despair.
“Because she has always seemed perfect in her faith to me. Because she’s given more for peace already than anyone should ever have been asked to.
Because… because I loved her before I knew yet that love was something I could feel.
When I left my old life behind, it wasn’t only because I wanted better, but because I wanted to be better.
And I never knew that was possible until I met Ari.
She was—she is—Lyria to me. She is peace itself embodied, pure and lovely and under siege.
I could no more stop striving for her than I could turn aside from Raea’s service. ”
“Then I will be a true martyr,” Lynette said, her heartbreakingly sweet smile returning.
This time, when she took Fia’s hands, Fia did not pull way.
Instead, she pressed Lynette’s delicate fingers to her lips.
“If our faith requires a martyr to die for peace, and Ariana is peace to you, that is enough for me. I know, as I know the sun will rise and the moon will pull the tides and the stars will guide us all, that when I die for this cause, I’ll be taken into Lyria’s brilliant heart and become a star myself. ”
Fia’s breath caught.
“How can you be sure?” she asked, desperate longing making her voice unsteady.
“I saw it,” Lynette said triumphantly. “I saw it in my dream. And I want that ending more than anything. If Lyria is willing to give it to me, how can you take it away? It can’t be wrong to do this for me—not if Lyria has called for it.”
Fia wavered. The girl was so certain, so luminous in her belief. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“I want this,” Lynette insisted. “And Ariana does not deserve to die.”
Laying hold of that, Fia shook her head. “No. But neither do you.”
For the first time, Lynette’s light dimmed.
“Of course not. But in this world, not all can survive. You and Ari can—you’ve proven it already.
You’re strong enough and courageous enough to live through the very worst. But I am…
I’m wounded on the inside, in a way neither of you have ever been.
When the war in Corrin happened, I was only a child. ”
“You’re still a child,” Fia cut in.
“No,” Lynette said tonelessly. “I’m not.
I ceased to be a child that summer. It wasn’t only soldiers from Honoria and Caervallion who suffered—I watched my family put to the sword by men who were no better than wild beasts.
I was subjected to things at their hands that I will not ever speak of.
And I cannot. Find peace. Any longer. I’ve tried—Matria Serafine allowed me to make a fidelity oath despite my age, and for five years I have been a perfect soria.
It should have been a refuge. Instead, I have spent every day in agony.
This is my last chance for the peace I want so badly, Fia.
I know the Beloved Three hold only love for those who die by their own hands, but I don’t think I will rest easy if it comes to that.
I want to die in service, since I cannot live in it.
I want a martyr’s death. I’m asking you to give it to me. ”
“I don’t know what to do,” Fia said, and the words came out small and broken, clouded with tears. It felt as if the entire mountain was pressing down upon her—she could not withstand the weight any longer, and dropped to her knees.
The little soria knelt, too, and something twisted within Fia as lamplight gleamed off a blade in the girl’s hand.
“I know,” Lynette said. Her sorrow was gone, replaced by that perfect conviction. “And it’s all right. If I’m to be a star, let me start now by serving as your guide.”
The hilt of the knife was in Fia’s hand, which Lynette drew to the soft, pale curve of her own neck. The world blurred mercifully as Fia’s eyes filled with tears—a gift of salt water from the goddess of the moon.
“I will never forgive myself,” Fia whispered. “I will never forget this. I will live in this moment forever.”
“But you’ll live,” Lynette said. “And I cannot.”
All Fia could recall afterward was the feeling of Lynette’s hand lightly cupping her own.
The tug of the knife as lamplight refracted on a veil of tears, turning all the world to stars.
Lynette’s grasp falling away as warm blood flowed down the front of her kirtle.
It was not only the knife that brought her blood, but Fia’s touch.
She gave this to the soria as a parting gift—that Lynette would not die despairing, or afraid, or even resolved.
Lynette died with the transcendent bliss of the blooded touch drawing life from her through the wound in her throat.
The little soria left the world in silence, with no last words, no regret or change of heart, no ecstatic testament that she had reached her goal and was joining her beloved goddess.
She bore her pleasure as she had borne her pain—stoically, crumpling to the ground and lying still, her wide eyes going dim as the unmistakable pall of death settled over her.
It seemed to Fia that she had never done anything but tend the dead and dying.
From the moment she’d entered the world, still tethered by the birthing cord to a twin who’d been smothered before she could draw a single breath, Fia had been marked for sorrow and for hardship.
She’d fought against it, striving with everything in her for life, yet here she was, kneeling at the side of a soria who couldn’t bear to live.
Slowly, Fia got to her feet. Slowly, she wrapped Lynette in a blanket rather than a shroud. And the girl truly did weigh no more than a child, when Fia settled her into the handcart with infinite care.
“Where do I go from here?” Fia asked the encroaching dark, her words faint and joyless.
In answer, Silith’s long-dead sorias began to sing—a funeral hymn, to guide a fallen star and a lost daughter of the sun through their midnight realm.
Fia left Lynette on the narrow bed in the Priest’s cell, laid out with her hands placed over her heart as if in prayer.
She left her dressing gown and sheepskin slippers there as well, and did not take a lamp when she left, because she wanted the cold, and for once, wanted the dark.
Following the road of wire to the altar rise, Fia found two ruddy lights flickering atop it—basins of offertory flame, scattered with loose incense, glowed on the altars of the hearth goddess and Mortis.
The Priest himself sat at the base of the rise, back in his plain religious garb and cast into flickering shadows by the uneven light from the altars. He had his head in his hands and straightened at the sound of Fia’s approaching steps.
“What are you doing down here?” the Priest asked. “I came down before dawn and gave orders that no one’s to come into the sanctuary until afternoon. Glora’s in an uproar over having had so little time to prepare for the coronation tonight, but I needed the quiet.”