23. A Graceless Collapse of Tangled Limbs #2
The occupancy? No, definitely the number of executions successfully completed. Not very practical, though. After today, they’d have to cross that out and engrave a ‘146’ next to it.
We were taken through a back door. Lit by dozens of ornate braziers on top of pedestals scattered around the room, the main chamber was an enormous rotunda with a circular aperture at its peak.
The murmurs of the gathering assembly echoed off the high-domed ceiling.
We waited just inside an archway next to the altarpiece that stretched up the north wall.
In front of the altarpiece on the main platform that bordered the edges of the circular room was a gold statue of the phoenix.
And to its right, the empty thrones, and on our side of the stage…
the pyre. I couldn’t help but appreciate the architectural symmetry.
Perhaps they’d position our charred remains just so, to maintain the aesthetic.
“What are you smiling at?” Griffon asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I glanced up at him. “Just admiring the interior design choices. Very dramatic. Very final.”
His mouth twitched despite everything, even the guards who still held swords at our backs. “Only you would critique the décor of your own execution.”
“If I'm going to burn,” I said, keeping my voice light even as sweat dampened my brow. “I might as well have opinions about it.”
He reached forward and took my cuffed hands in his. “Come here.”
I leaned forward and rested my cheek against his chest. That tangy scent, which was uniquely Griffon, would have calmed me if not for his heart slamming against his ribs so hard it felt like I had just placed my head on a drum.
“You joke as if this is nothing,” he said softly. “It’s not. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
He rested his cheek against the top of my head.
“You’ve never been small, Wren.” His voice dropped, steadier now. “Not once.”
My breath hitched.
“Listen to me.” He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. “You walk out there like that fire answers to you. No fear. No weakness. Not for them.”
His grip tightened around my hands.
“You’re stronger than they are. Stronger than all of this.”
I straightened, just a fraction, and nodded.
And then real percussion filled the air. A line of men stood shoulder to shoulder across the front of the stage platform, hammering a steady beat into the drums attached to their chests. The onlookers quieted.
Behind the drummers, on the cylindrical base of the phoenix statue, was a round gold seal as wide as I was tall. On it was the symbol of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and I could only assume, their biggest holiday.
On the platform behind the statue, the altar rose from the floor in a single block of silky, muted black basalt.
The glowing altarpiece stretched up the wall behind it, carved entirely from rutillins carnelian.
In the shifting light, the intricately carved, deep red-orange tongues of fire licked toward the domed ceiling.
The stone seemed to burn from within as though actual flame had been solidified mid-climb.
Movement just off the stage drew my eyes back to the drummers.
Without ceasing their ground-shaking beat, they split, one half going around the left side of the gathering, the other to the right.
They passed by the king’s advisors and his harem gathered near the thrones.
I could pinpoint Salma in the cluster of ivory-toned silk from across the room.
Once the drummers halted along the side walls and turned to face the people, King Faisal and Mali stepped onto the platform from the archway on the opposite side of the platform.
Dressed in a long, shimmering gold robe, with a mantle draped over his shoulders and a tall, wrapped turban glinting in the light, the king led Mali by the hand.
Mali moved in a sweeping gold gown whose train flowed behind her like liquid metal.
Her wide sleeves and disc-like crown caught the light, giving the impression of flickering fire as she walked.
As soon as they positioned themselves in front of their thrones, the first of the sun’s rays crept over the horizon, and a beam of light lit up the oculus, the hole at the very peak of the dome.
The assembly cheered and stomped their feet along with the drums. The beat vibrated in every one of my bones.
Everything went silent as the king raised his arms.
“My beloved people,” King Faisal's voice rang out through the temple.
“Standing together in this sacred dawn, we have endured the Night of Darkness. We fasted. We waited. Held vigil through the longest shadow, and yet—” He gestured toward that dreaded beam of light high on the far west side of the dome. “We were not forsaken.”
In a ripple of voices, the onlookers murmured in agreement.
Something niggled at my thoughts. Though I was sure it was just my desperate mind latching on to those useless details that gave me an odd sense of comfort.
I looked at the ray of light again. Then the oculus.
And then the light again. Wait. As the sun rose, the beam of light would creep down the ceiling.
The rotunda was an enormous hemicyclium sundial.
The beam of sunlight coming through the oculus would shine on different parts of the room throughout the day but also throughout our orbit of the sun.
“Our ancestors feared that one day the Daystar might not return,” he continued.
“That the darkness would consume all light, all warmth, all life.” He looked up toward the dawn’s light.
“But Helios, in his mercy and might, has never abandoned his children. Each dawn is his promise renewed. Each sunrise, his covenant written across the sky.”
He lowered his arms, his voice softening but losing none of its intensity. “Today we celebrate not merely the sun's return, but our own resilience. We are the children of the Phoenix, who rise again and again from the ashes of despair.”
The king's gaze swept across his sea of ivory and gold-adorned citizens. “Let the Festival of Light begin.”
The assembly erupted in cheers. After a moment, the king raised his hands once more, calling for silence. The jubilation died down to an expectant hush.
His face grew serious. “But before we celebrate,” he continued with a harder edge, “we must first purge the darkness that has lingered among us. Five years ago, a shadow fell across our kingdom. And in that darkness, King Asad’s life was taken, struck down by a foreign blade in the sanctuary of his own palace. ”
The people murmured, the noise rippling throughout the room with anger and grief.
“Today, as the sun reclaims the sky, so too shall justice reclaim our kingdom. The assassin who stole my brother's life and his accomplice will finally face the Phoenix's judgment.”
He gestured toward the opposite end of the front platform, where two posts stood waiting in the unlit pyre.
“Let their ashes mark the end of our mourning and the beginning of our renewal. Bring forth the condemned.”
The command echoed through the temple.
The guards gripped our shoulders and pulled us away from each other.
Nudging us forward with the tips of their blades, we emerged from the shadowy archway into the dancing light of the temple.
Like a tide of anticipation, the crowd’s buzzing swelled around us.
My pulse hammered in my throat. I could feel their eyes boring into us as they marched us toward the pyre.
Hungry. Curious. Vengeful. But no mercy to be found.
In the sea of hostility, Griffon’s shoulder brushed mine. It was only the fleeting caress of his linen sleeve against the skin of my arm, but it felt as though it were enough to keep my entire body from folding in on itself.
His breath was steady; his gait was relaxed. But I knew him well enough now to recognize the tension in the set of his jaw. The twitch of his fingers. The way he stared ahead, but was somehow taking in the entire room. He was calculating. Always calculating.
But like the location of the headpiece, this was an equation we would not solve.
The pyre loomed before us, constructed of a hollow metal bowl and two rough-hewn posts blackened from past fires. They stood amidst resin-soaked logs and a sea of kindling and dried herbs. The sharp, bitter scent of cedar and sage clung to the air. My stomach twisted.
A soldier with a face like carved granite glared at Griffon and gestured toward the post on the right. “You. Against it.”
Griffon didn’t move. Darting from one variable to the next, he took in the man’s stance, the distance between braziers, the sheer number of guards around us with their curved swords pointed in our direction. I could almost see the battle unfolding in his mind.
“Griffon,” I murmured.
The green fire in his eyes snapped to mine, taking in the last remaining variable. Me.
The noise from the assembly faded, and for a heartbeat, we just stood there. The odds were already against him, but with me tied to the outcome, it was a battle he had no chance of winning.
Finally, he exhaled sharply through his nose and stepped toward his post.
I was directed toward the opposite. The soldier there couldn’t have been any older than me. With hands that trembled slightly, he grabbed my arm. His fingers dug into my skin, not cruelly, but with the desperate grip of someone who didn’t want to be here either.
“Turn around,” he ordered.
I obeyed, pressing my back against the post. The wood was warm from the nearby braziers, but the grain was rough, snagging the silky fabric of my kaftan. With quick, shallow breaths, the soldier fumbled with the ropes. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“First time?” I asked quietly.
His hands stilled for just a moment. “Shut up.”
“You don’t have to do this.”