Chapter XXXII #2
Ariana’s guard had taken her to a place at the edge of the sanctuary brightness, where they were well apart from the gathered celebrants and half hidden by shadows.
“There they are,” the golden-haired guard said, as if he offered Ariana a kindness. “Did you know that’s who’s taking the throne?”
She glanced upward to the stone stair that plunged into the sanctuary from the castle above. Limned in firelight, the Priest and Fia stood at the top of the stair, with Justus in Fia’s arms. Ariana knew she should be glad. That she should feel, somehow, that her sacrifice had been worth the effort.
Instead, the world spun around her at the sight of her child. She’d killed his rightful father, and he would grow up parentless once she was gone.
The guard caught her when she slumped, propping her up and murmuring something comforting. Ariana could not focus on the words, not with her vision fading in and out and her limbs beginning to tremble. All she could see was Orden.
Orden in a Corrinian hospital tent, smiling down at her on her knees.
Orden in the Inver audience hall, raising her to her feet and pronouncing her his queen.
Orden on their wedding night, Orden every day after, Orden when she’d sat across from him and poured him a glass of summer wine laced with poison, so cleverly devised by the people of her own faith that it would harm no one but him.
The crowd cheered, though Ariana was unsure why. Drums and viols and organettos rang out, and a billow of choking incense rose.
“Just a little longer,” the golden-haired guard murmured. “Soon none of this will matter anymore. Soon you’ll be all right.”
She would not. She would be severed from Lyria eternally, cast into the bitter dark to wander in despair. But this was, perhaps, the last kindness she would receive, and so Ariana reached out and clung to the guard’s strong hand.
Ahead of them, on the altar rise, the Priest was approaching Tyrus’s shrine.
Around the altar of the god of war, a prodigious mound of wood had been laid, dry as bones.
A single pathway gave access to the altar from its rear, and the Priest handed Justus to Fia before stepping forward to take his place before the god of war.
“It is tradition,” the Priest said, his voice ringing back from the walls and the cavern ceiling, “for an Inver succession to be ushered in by blood. Yet my half brother, Orden Inver, rightful king of Honoria, who won his throne at the edge of a blade, was killed bloodlessly and cravenly, by a foe who could not so much as claim and hold the crown for a day following his death.”
Ariana shuddered at the words. She did not know if he meant them—if it was a ploy to secure the goodwill of the Invers who’d had little love for their gentle queen, or if she’d truly lost the Priest’s regard. Angry murmurs rippled through the crowd as they sounded their agreement.
“In the absence of another worthy successor, I stepped forward.” The Priest infused his words with disdain, and Ariana had never known this version of him.
He was imperious, scathing, regal as Orden had ever been.
“I shed the necessary blood. I dealt out judgment by the rite of conquest to Lucian Inver, who colluded with heretics and foreign powers to undermine the sovereignty of our nation. And I will punish Orden’s ingrate queen, who flouted the practices of this court when she put down her king like an ailing animal, with no power or plan to seize the throne.
I will make an offering of her to Tyrus, to legitimize the reign of my brother’s son and my own regency—let Justus be king, as I will never have sons of my own and he is the true descendant of our dread forefathers.
As for me, I will bear the responsibility and the power of both Priest and regent. ”
The mood was lightening, buoyed up by the Priest’s pride and scorn.
When he gestured to the golden-haired guard and Ariana was led out from where she’d been hidden, the crowd erupted into jeers and hisses.
As she moved through them, they hurled curses and spat and attempted to batter her with their fists, but the guards flanking her held firm.
Tears tracked down Ariana’s face, a reflex of the body, for she felt beyond any fear or grief now.
There was only guilt, merciless and all-consuming.
She was taken to the top of the rise, and to Tyrus’s altar, where the guard gave her over to the Priest. He pushed her roughly forward and up, until she lay face down, splayed out across the altar of Tyrus and the pyre that surrounded it.
When the Priest seized the offertory knife without so much as chaining Ariana’s hands, the crowd grew louder, cheering and shouting insults—the sight of someone helpless, unrestrained yet in their power, turned them into a mindless, seething mass.
The Priest raised his arms, brandishing his offertory knife.
Briefly, he stood motionless above Ariana, and then in an instant, every light in the cavern was doused.
Just as he’d ordered at Justus’s naming, the sanctuary plunged into absolute darkness.
Ariana lay and waited, at the utter end of herself.
There was only this. The dark, the guilt, the coming knife.