Chapter Nine Inana
Chapter Nine
Inana
“It was a day for celebration when the villagers of Dunway learned we would soon receive a Holy Brazier,” I say. “While everyone else anticipated protection from the Shades, I celebrated for a different reason. For the day we received our brazier, my fiancé would come home.”
Calvin’s eyes drop to my hands, perhaps seeking a wedding band.
He won’t find one. Not even the ghost of an indent from a ring now lost graces my finger, for our engagement never culminated in an exchange of rings.
Ours was a secret affair, one my love insisted on keeping to ourselves until he finished military service at the capital.
“Four years he’d been gone,” I say. “Four years in service to King Kaelum and hardly a word between us. I’d received a few letters during the first year, but they grew more sporadic after that.
I held tight to the promises he’d made, reminding myself he was doing this for us.
You see, he wanted to make a name for himself before we made our engagement public.
That isn’t to say I was always full of faith.
Sometimes, in my loneliest hours, I wondered if he was ashamed of me.
Perhaps he’d been ashamed of me all along, and that was why he wanted to make a name for himself first, so that no one would dare question his choice of bride. ”
“Why do you think he was ashamed of you?” Harlow asks, her prior teasing gone.
“I was the village seamstress, an already dubious occupation for its ties to art. But as you know, so long as artisans stick to time-honored patterns and keep from straying into creativity, we don’t attract Shades.
” I don’t mention how stifled I felt by this.
It was tedious sewing the same patterns day in and day out, in the same bland shades.
Only the Sacred Cities see a vast array of fashion and architecture, which I didn’t know until I first set foot in Nalheim.
Outside those silver walls, we live in simple dwellings identical to those that were built hundreds of years ago.
Creative work, even the most innocuous kind, is done only during daylight hours, under strict regulations.
“Seamstress,” Calvin says with a grimace. “Might as well have been a witch as far as your neighbors were concerned, eh?”
He’s exaggerating, but he’s not exactly wrong.
Magic falls under the same umbrella as art, but it’s perhaps even more taboo.
While astrotheurgy was commonplace before One Hundred Days of Darkness, it’s now forbidden to everyone except the highest-ranking Sinless and the church.
Not much is made public about magic, but I’ve gleaned that it once was used in harmony with the gods.
Practitioners would invoke divine energies by drawing astrotheurgical diagrams, ritual circles intricately adorned with elemental shapes and the gods’ planetary symbols.
After One Hundred Days of Darkness, magic in unholy hands was named a sin.
As a child, I craved a peek at a diagram, desperate to know what one looked like. Two years ago, I saw one. The day my story takes place.
“My village saw me as a witch, indeed,” I say.
“I lived alone, separate from my parents even though I was unmarried. I worked in what was considered a tainted field. But when we received the news that Dunway was deemed devout enough to be rewarded with a Holy Brazier, I was certain my neighbors would see I was just as pious as the rest of them, just as deserving of the good fortune King Kaelum had chosen to bestow upon us. Four years of missing my beloved were finally coming to an end, in the most spectacular way. Our newly appointed duke would escort home our men who’d left for the military.
My fiancé would return at last and we’d have nothing standing in the way of our love. ”
I drop my gaze to the crackling flames roaring in the firepit. My voice takes on a bitter edge as I explain the next part.
“I was on my way to the celebratory procession to welcome our new duke when the guards ambushed me. They were unfamiliar men, their uniforms too fine for common citizens. They marched me through town, away from the main road where the procession would be held, and toward our run-down jail. I called out to my neighbors, fellow villagers I’d known my whole life, but they refused to look my way.
I was locked in a cell, my wrists tied with rope and affixed to the wall behind me.
The guards shut me in without a word of explanation.
Hours passed, and not even my parents came to look for me.
I lost track of time. The sun was still bright when—finally—my fiancé came. ”
Calvin and Harlow watch me with eager expressions. Even Bard lifts his head to assess me through the straggly black-and-silver strands that hang over his forehead.
For once I’m not lost in the joy of enchanting my audience.
There’s a sliver of delight in my heart, but the shadows of my past are too thick to allow it to grow.
Telling my story like this, baring the truth, is so different from the tale I spun at the Wretched Lair.
It isn’t a bittersweet story of heartache and hope. Only rage. Regret. Hatred.
I continue. “When my beloved entered my cell, I wept with joy. He’d come to save me and he’d wrap me in his arms before my next breath.
Yet breathe I did, and never did I feel those arms come around me.
I forced my tears to abate so I could clear my eyes.
Perhaps I’d merely hallucinated his presence, seen what I wanted to see.
But there he was, the same man who’d left me with a passionate kiss and a promise of a dazzling future together four years prior.
He was dressed in a fine suit of white and gold.
His military uniform, I assumed. So why didn’t he close the distance between us?
Why did he merely stand there with a gold bowl in his gloved hands and such a cold look on his face? Why didn’t he reach for me?”
My throat tightens at the memory. The way terror crept upon me as I studied him with new eyes.
He set down the wide, shallow bowl, and I realized what it was.
Saw the astrotheurgical diagram etched inside it.
It was even more beautiful and more intricate than I ever could have imagined, and I couldn’t feel an ounce of joy about that.
“He didn’t reach for me,” I say, a harsh tremble in my voice, “because he hadn’t come to rescue me. He came to…”
I swallow hard, partly to steady my voice but also to take a moment to select my words carefully.
Some truths, like the cost of lighting the Holy Braziers, are considered treason to confess.
Everyone knows Sinless of all ranks consume human blood, but what they don’t know is what sets the dukes and royals apart from the Sinless gentry.
It’s more than the fact that the former can perform solar astrotheurgy; it’s how they gain access to that magic.
“The man I once loved no longer cast a shadow,” I say, “and his canines were as sharp as knives. I was chosen as a sacrifice for our new duke.”
Harlow’s eyes widen in realization. “Your fiancé was turned Sinless?”
“Your new duke…was Henry Berkham.” Calvin says the name under his breath.
I stiffen, rage bristling up my spine. So he knows of the Duke of Dunway.
I haven’t heard a damn thing about my hometown since I escaped, and I’ve had no desire to.
I doubt I could contain my revulsion at hearing how well my former fiancé is doing.
But there’s another reason I’ve avoided all news about my village…
The only way Henry could have formalized his appointment as Duke of Dunway is if he succeeded in taking a sacrifice. I thwarted his first attempt in my escape. My survival means someone else died in my stead.
I can’t afford to feel guilty about that.
“You were chosen as his blood source?” Harlow says.
“Worse.” I rub my scar, recalling my horror as he unsheathed a silver blade.
He still hadn’t said a word to me, hadn’t responded to my tears, my pleas for an explanation.
“He pressed a dagger to my sternum and spoke to me for the first time in four years, his voice soft and cold, yet strangled by the slightest tremble. ‘Don’t move, and this will all be over soon.’ Like a fool, I obeyed, thinking this had to be some misunderstanding.
Maybe he had to do this. To feed. Maybe he was in a frenzy for blood and couldn’t bear to drink from anyone but his beloved.
” I scoff. “It’s funny the excuses we’ll make for a lover, even as they’re hurting us.
“I held as still as I could as he pressed the tip of the knife into my skin. I cried out and his hands began to shake. The knife slipped from his gloved hands, and his composure fell with it. Cursing, he tore off his gloves and gathered the knife more firmly. That’s when I saw the gold band on his ring finger.
“ ‘Henry,’ I said. ‘Why are you wearing a wedding ring?’
“He met my eyes then, and there was no love in them, only annoyance.
It sparked my own, burning into hatred as everything became clear.
Henry must have impressed the king greatly during his military service, for he was not only turned Sinless but gifted a fucking wife.
I, his secret former lover, was chosen as a sacrifice to keep his shame in the past.
“I said as much, shouting the truth at the top of my lungs. He covered my mouth so the guards outside the jail couldn’t hear and brought his face close to mine.
‘Yes, I’m ashamed of you,’ he said. ‘I’m ashamed I ever loved a sinner like you.
But your sacrifice will save Dunway. This has to happen.
I must…’ He stuttered then, gagging on his own words.
‘I must consume a human heart. It’s the only way I can light the brazier.
The only way I can keep it lit. And the first sacrifice must be you.
You’re the reason Shades claw at doors at night. You’re the sinner who draws them here.’
“ ‘With my sewing?’ I said against his hand.
“ ‘With your storytelling.’
“My heart fell to my feet at those words. My body shook from the betrayal of it all. ‘Those stories were for you,’ I said. ‘Only you.’ ”
I close my lips, keeping his next words to the confines of my memory. Don’t lie to me. I saw you. I saw you talking to them. Whispering tales to things that moved in the dark. You were never afraid of them. You were always a sinner.
I shudder now, the same way I shuddered then.
I hadn’t known he’d seen me speaking stories to Shades.
Never to dangerous ones, and never at night.
Only a few times did I dare utter tales to the helpless monsters I’d found trapped in pools of shadow.
I can’t even say why I did it, only that I couldn’t help it.
I was overcome with the same urge I felt when I spoke my first story as a girl, that same hunger for validation.
I wanted to see if my stories were truly wicked, if art was really a sin.
So why not test it on Shades who couldn’t come after me even if they wanted?
During the day, they were relegated to slivers of shadow.
By evening, the villagers and I would be safely indoors surrounded by lantern light.
Harlow tsks, shaking her head, but her lips are curled in a devious grin. “Wicked woman. I take it your argument did you no favors.”
“No favors, indeed. If anything, it only steeled his resolve. He pressed me hard against the wall. He was so much stronger than he’d been before Absolution, and he pinned me in place despite my struggle and proceeded to open my chest. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I started telling a story.”
Harlow barks a laugh. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“It startled him enough to halt his efforts, and he clamped a hand over my mouth once more. So instead of speaking, I hummed. I sang against his palm and watched his temples pulse. They say Absolution strips a person of the seven human sins, but there was wrath in his eyes then, and I used it as fuel to distract him. He was so busy muttering prayers to counteract my sins that he didn’t notice the sewing needle in my hand. ”
Calvin arches a brow. “A sewing needle? You just…happened to have one?”
“I always had spare needles. Not intentionally, but I often tucked them into my clothing when I got distracted in the middle of my tasks, and I’d forget where I put them until they poked out from my hems hours or days later.
This time, though, I remembered. I had two in my cuff.
The first I used to pick at the rope until I freed one of my wrists.
The second I used to slash open his neck. ”
“Is that how you escaped?” Calvin asks.
I open my mouth to confirm his intuition, but my mind stutters.
I blink a few times, brief snatches of memory flashing behind my eyes.
My recollection of what came after has always been hazy.
With blood loss paired with the trauma of my experience, it’s no surprise my mind has stifled some of my memories.
Still, I owe my companions an end to my story, so I focus on what remains clear.
I envision slashing Henry’s neck with the tip of my needle and put words to the vague images in my mind. “Blood welled for only a second before the wound sealed before my eyes. His teeth pulled back from his lips, and then…”
I blink hard, willing my memories to clear. “Pain, sharp and piercing. And blood. So much blood. I slashed him again…
“More blood.
“And…
“And shadows writhing in the corner of my cell…
“Blood soaking my dress, dripping to the floor, my head dizzy. Then there was…screaming. Shouting—”
“Inana.” Dominic’s voice shatters my thoughts, cleaving through my jagged, patchwork memories with a tone of warning.
I snap my mouth shut and lift my gaze. Only then do I realize I’ve been staring at my hands, both of which are trembling.
Harlow, Bard, and Calvin watch me with unblinking eyes.
But as Dominic comes up beside me, jaw tight, gaze fixed on the trees surrounding the clearing, their expressions turn to terror.
I follow Dominic’s line of sight.
All around us are Shades.