21. The Fire You Fed
The Fire You Fed
Icannot contain my excitement as we head to the temple.
It is not far from our new home, though you’ve gone through pains to keep it a secret even from the devoted.
It’s humble compared to our previous one, relying on the mundane to blend in.
The other faction will not find us and soil our home, and the devoted will not stomp all over our sacred ground.
This is how I know I am worthy at last in your eyes. Our home remains just ours, secret and safe. It belongs to only us, just as I only belong to you, and you to me.
The worshippers may think they have a piece of you, but it is crumbs. Let them claw over each other to feast on them. Let them be starved by the fact that it is only, truly, you and I.
It is a privilege to allow them to worship you.
I know what I will see when the doors to the temple open. They will beg for mercy, ask for guidance, rebuke their self-assuredness at how ready they were for the gift. They will realize the error of their ways.
And also how weak they truly are.
You began to teach me early in my life, far younger than they are now. Now they realize that I am not nothing or unimpressive.
I do not even need to show them. It is a lesson best learned in blood.
Will they crawl on hands and knees to us? Will they have tried to resist the call of the sun to practice into the morning, to try to outpace each other?
As if a few hours can help a gift that takes years to learn. Will they have succumbed to their exhaustion and instead eaten the humans? Was Theon alive enough to hear it all, the sound of his beloved humans screaming for freedom?
I try to keep a steady pace, even as my feet want to move faster.
“Shall we feed first?” you ask.
“Together?” I ask.
“Yes,” you say. This is the only thing that could draw me from the temple, the promise of time alone with you. We’ve not hunted together in so long, but we fall into it immediately.
We move through the streets of Alexandria, following the flow of humans through markets and plays. I’ve forgotten what joy exists outside the temple, what new experiences have arisen in the years. It is so much time for a human, but a blink for you and me.
We inquire over goods from merchants, smelling their spices and thumbing through their wares.
I may not eat like the humans, but I love the smells of their food all the same.
I do not recall what it feels like to eat as I once did.
I only recall the first time I tasted your blood, and every time after that, and the euphoria I never felt when sipping wine or eating bread.
“This,” you say, picking a necklace from a merchant. The chain is long, adorned with red gems that seem muted and dull until the moonlight catches them.
“That?” the merchant asks, wrinkling his nose. “That style is no longer in fashion. Surely the lady would like something more modern.”
“It’s perfect,” I say, taking the chain from you. It’s light and cool in my hands. When I turn the gems to the moon, they twinkle, the exact color of your eyes.
Of my eyes.
You take the chain back and place it over my head, letting it fall against my skin. Every place it touches sears with the warmth of you, your love and affection.
I am forgiven at last.
I am wholly yours once more.
“Psiche mou, it is flawless.”
Perhaps we pay the merchant, perhaps we compel him to give it to us. I don’t remember. All I remember is the weight of your love against my chest and the promise of the hunt to come.
We find our prey—some solo traveler in a tavern who follows us willingly to the temple. We slip into the first room and feast on him, sharing the blood that runs down our chins. You lick his blood from my breasts, biting into me, tasting me.
We try to be quiet, lest the rest of the temple hear us and interrupt. But I cannot keep my voice silent as you dive between my legs, bringing me to climax as I suck the last mouthfuls of blood before he dies.
We lie on the floor of the temple, covered in blood and pleasure, until the quietness that comes post feeding wears off.
The temple is oddly silent—I expected to hear the cries of the humans, or the monotonous droll of the acolytes while they try to coerce them to silence.
Instead, I hear nothing.
You sit upright as I do, your head tilted, ears straining.
We stand slowly and dress. There is no point in trying to remain quiet—if anyone remains in the temple, they’ve heard us.
It doesn’t take us long to find the reason for the silence.
The roof to the altar room has collapsed, letting the moonlight shine through its opening. There isn’t a corner safe from its rays, open to the air as it is. The rocks have crushed the humans, their bodies broken in the rubble.
We cross the threshold into the room and something crunches under my feet.
Ashes.
All around the altar, dusted amongst the rubble, are the ashen remains of the acolytes.
You kneel and take some in your hand, letting it fall between your fingers.
When your gaze meets mine, I know the truth of it.
Your gaze is flat, knowing. You are hiding your hurt from me, to shield me from it even as you confirm what I already know.
We circle the room, cataloguing the belongings that remain.
Essemteu’s sandals and clothing.
Zahra’s hair pin, landed atop her dress.
Dione’s dress and the earrings she always wore.
Menodotus’s broach and clothing.
I move through the temple to the cell where Theon was kept. The chains hang slack, a pile of ash where he once remained restrained.
“Was he so close to starving?” you ask me.
“I do not know,” I reply.
You linger over the ashes of the fallen, your gaze surveying each and every one of them. I wait for your command on what to do next. Did the ceiling collapse from age, or was it something else?
I want to climb on the roof and look it over. I want to smell the ground for the scent of another—human or like us. I want to study the edges of the hole from above, to see what made it fail.
To see if it was intentional.
I am about to voice this to you when you speak.
“I think it is time we leave Alexandria,” you say.
Leave? And go where?
“Who did this?” I ask.
“Time, I suppose. The elements,” you say, your shoulder rising in the barest of shrugs.
“An accident?” I ask. “An accident that the roof should collapse on the very day all the acolytes remained in the temple? That Theon would die the same morning?” My voice rises in pitch and tone. I am hysterical. I want to curse the sky, the ground, and I want you to do it with me.
But you stand so still, the blaze gone out of your eyes.
Resigned, even.
Why are you not angry? This was your temple. This was a devotional to you, a love letter I could never pen myself. At last, others saw you for what you were—beautiful, intelligent, flawless. Ancient, yes, but that was the bait needed for them to see the rest of you.
And now they are gone, and before you finished your punishment.
What an easy way out. Instead of dealing with the consequences of their betrayal, they get to die. In their sleep, of all things! Why else would they have turned to ash like that?
It’s unfair. They were due for much more suffering, and you for many more decades of devotion.
I had wanted them to fail loudly. To kneel. To beg you and, through you, beg me. I wanted them to know I was first—not by birth, but by devotion.
Now there was no proof. Only ash. Only silence. They had escaped knowing that they were beneath me.
Your head snaps toward me, your red eyes blazing. “Do not bring your failures into this. Theon was supposed to live so you might practice.”
I flinch, because you are right. I ignored the signs of his imminent end, thinking he’d just given up in soul. It wasn’t just his soul, but his body that failed.
“The other faction,” I say. “It must have been them.”
You’ve already turned for the exit, leaving the temple.
You do not linger any longer. You don’t collect their belongings, you don’t say anything over their ashes.
You just leave.
I hesitate a moment longer to gaze over the walls of the temple I built. The tapestries that will moth and decay, revealing the ancient words underneath them. The sand and dust and rain that will come in through the open roof, claiming the temple for nature.
Or perhaps the other faction will take it and dance on the ashes of their old friends.
You are out the door, and I do not dare stay much longer.
I cast one last glance at the temple and accept the fact I will never know the truth.