Chapter 43 #2
She and Maddy followed the flow of bodies into the cold night, their boots crunching through snow. Sniffles and low murmurs filled the air, but Anna was more distracted by the miasma of sadness around her, tasting of metal and smelling of freshly turned soil.
It did little to dispel the pain of the knife in her heart though.
She was nauseated from the agony and wondered whether she should have ventured so far from the Tree when she felt her strength sapping from her muscles by the second, exhausted from the emotional torture.
Echoes of the headache she’d suffered over the past weeks bounced between her temples.
She wasn’t sure she could handle this sort of pain much longer. Why hadn’t she been more diligent about learning the emotion cage? That should have taken priority over coercion.
Emotion like this, prolonged and undiluted, could kill her. She was certain of it.
Swallowing it all down, she slowed as the crowds surrounded the three pyres. Peering through the gaps in bodies, Anna found Kywyn in the middle. Her wrecked heart lurched. He looked as if he was merely sleeping, though no emotion radiated from his body.
Maddy gasped. “Bless the Mother,” she whispered.
Anna fought the urge to cry. “I didn’t want to believe it.” She hadn’t known Kywyn well, but he’d always been kind.
Council Leader Nish stood on a small dais near the pyres. Beside him, a somber Sean stared at the pyre of his father. David stood next to him, but Anna refused to look that way.
Several minutes passed while the crush of people thickened in the trees. When the stragglers had finally arrived, Nish raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “Bless you all for lending your presence while we return the Light of these souls to the Great Mother.”
“Blessed be the Mother,” several around her chanted.
“Please join us in silence,” Nish said and stepped forward. A dryad woman handed him a torch, and he set the flame to the base of each pyre.
Anna hated this part. The slow growth of the flames, the sweet scent of burned wood, the smoke that climbed into the sky to obscure the stars.
Grief swelled around her, smothered her, and she sucked in a ragged breath of cold air.
Tears spilled of their own accord, and then she was weeping, controlled by the emotions of all those around her.
Maddy set an arm around her shoulders, but it wasn’t enough. Anna clung to her, sobbing into her shoulders, being cut apart by the sadness and her own interminable heartbreak.
“I need to get out of here,” she whispered into her friend’s ear.
“Can you hang in there for a little longer?” Maddy asked, and for good reason.
It would be disrespectful to leave so soon.
“Why don’t you go into one of the temples?
” She gestured toward the nearest one—a hexagonal stone structure with an arched doorway of stained glass in pinks and yellows.
The mossy roof rose to a sharp point, adorned with six matching dormers, their windows in the same colored glass.
After kissing Maddy’s temple, Anna subtly moved that way.
The temple stood at the top of a wide stairway, and crystals lighted the path upward.
She took the stairs slowly, as if she only meant to convene with the Great Mother and not to escape the thousands of pinpricks of emotion around her.
The door opened silently, and she slipped into the empty temple, closing it behind her.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the grief muted, leaving her with only her own pain.
She sank onto the circular bench in the middle of the room, her gaze caught on the glowing blue crystal right in the center, the tangible sign of the Mother.
Vines crawled up every wall, same as they did in the Tree, and Luster glimmered in flashes that disappeared as she glanced their way.
A sense of balance, of peace stole over her senses.
Anna’s attention was drawn into the light of the Mother’s crystal.
She could almost see the energy flowing from the earth in a primitive pulse, through the crystal, then into the air.
An invisible network sparkled in and out of her awareness, linked by the points of Luster.
The network connected Anna to her surroundings, and she could see the energy flowing through it all, like a force was guiding and defending the surrounding life.
A protective power seeking perpetual harmony.
“Mother,” she found herself whispering, “help me.”
The pulse in the air flared a tad brighter, then dimmed again.
“Did you give me this magic for a reason? It’s killing me.”
The air pulsed again, and she felt cocooned in the Light, sheltered. For a small moment, the pain in her heart receded.
“How do I control this?” she asked, looking up to the interconnected pricks of Luster. “How do I make the pain stop?”
Silence answered.
“I just want to forget.” Anna sat in the Mother’s aura, a child in need of comfort, wishing to reverse time so she could keep herself from handing her heart to a man who’d only planned to stab a jagged knife into it.
She lost track of how long she sat there. Time devolved into a meaningless construct. She was still praying when the door opened and a man walked in. Her perception of the energy network around her vanished.
The man paused when he saw her, his brows rising in a show of surprise, though his emotions lacked any flare of astonishment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you like privacy?”
Anna stood. “No. There’s room enough for two to pray.”
He smiled and glanced at the crystal behind her.
His brown locks were dusted in snow, and he had that deva light that flashed at every edge.
His eyes were dark and soulful, a kindness within them that didn’t match his angry emotional mosaic.
He approached the crystal slowly. “It’s quite sad, is it not? The loss of our Sovereign?”
“Kywyn was a good man,” Anna said, turning back toward the crystal as well. “We’ll all feel his loss.”
The man hummed. “At least we have the Savior to take his place.”
“Yes. Sean will do well.”
“You know him?” the man asked, close behind her now. He asked as if he had no clue, but everyone knew she trained with the Ashanta.
She turned to look at him, but he still gazed at the crystal as if mesmerized. “We share a Blademaster. We’re friends.”
He let out a breath. “Ah. And you believe he will do well?”
“I do. He is a natural leader.”
A small silence stretched while Anna lost herself in the depths of the crystal once more, its smooth glowing surfaces pulsing quicker than before.
She felt a tug on her instincts, almost like a warning.
“A natural leader,” the man repeated.
“Yes, I believe he is.”
He hummed. “Some could say the same about you,” he said in a low voice before adding, “Princess.”
Anna’s heart jolted. Before she could turn, then man grabbed her by the hair, wrenching her head back and ringing an arm around her upper body to restrain her.
A burst of terror exploded from her emotional core, deadening everything else.
“Though it’s said you’ll be leading on the wrong side,” the man said into her ear.
She tried to fight back, but weeks of illness had weakened her and he’d caught her so off guard. Escaping his grasp proved futile. She stomped on his foot but landed on boots thick enough that he probably barely felt it.
He released her hair. “This is for the Savior,” he said, and bright electric pain lanced through her stomach—once, twice.
She looked down in time to see him withdraw a dagger coated in her blood, its hilt studded with glittering red jewels.
She gasped at the pain, at the debilitating fear spiking through her overwrought emotions.
His abrupt release had her falling to her knees, clasping at her abdomen. Her hands met something warm and wet.
Blood pulsed from one of the wounds in time with her rapid heartbeat, and she knew without examining it any closer that he’d hit something vital. People didn’t survive bleeding like this.
This is it, she thought. I’m going to die here cocooned by the Mother.
“Long live Caden Sidera,” the man said.
His footsteps treaded away, and then the door clicked, and she was alone. Anna pressed her hand to the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but there was already so much blood staining her hands, her clothes, the floor.
She pushed herself to her feet, crying out at the sparks of pain it caused. Two steps and a swoop of dizziness caused her to stagger. She fetched up against one of the benches, disoriented.
Her vision turned gray.
“Please,” she whispered, trying to stand again.
Anna’s foot slipped on her own blood, and she landed hard on one knee. She forced herself to stand despite the dark spots in her vision, but once she was upright, her body succumbed to the blood loss and her world went dark.