Chapter 58
“NO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The Zamariens whipped around and found me pressed into the wall.
“Well, well. Another one to have a little fun with,” Tharic said, his eyes gleaming. “Stars only know how long I’ve waited for the chance to break you.”
Tharic started floating towards me, rolling up the sleeves of his robe. I was about to fyuse when a star gate surfaced, and dragged me through, leaving the Zamariens gaping on the other end.
I was jerked across the starry passage and spat out into my bedchamber. I shot to my feet, running to the door. I yanked on the handle. It was sealed shut.
No.
I slammed myself against the door again and again, eyes blurry from sobbing. The stupid door wouldn’t budge. I fyused and began raining starfire bolts on the hinges. The door was sealed shut. I threw the satchel across my chamber, screaming at the top of my lungs.
I yelled and yelled, carelessly throwing my body into the door. When it refused to budge, I aimed for the glass walls that led to the balcony and the cloudy exterior of the wingtower.
I rushed the glass, prepared to shatter the entire thing. My shoulder collided with the glass and the bone snapped. The glass didn’t have a single crack. My shoulder throbbed as I was thrown back by an unseen force into the bedchamber and smacked into the floor.
My baby sister had been taken. She’d been tortured. She’d been ripped apart like some animal. By the rotting Zamariens.
NO.
Rage consumed me. I was getting out of here, no matter what it took. I charged for the glass again. The glass didn’t break, but a part of my shoulder blade did.
I tried again and again and again, until I could visibly watch the seven suns set in the distance. Still, no matter how unfruitful I was, I kept trying to break the glass. Then I’d try the door. Then I’d try the glass again.
Nothing worked.
I screamed, yelling at the top of my lungs as I wailed with anguish for my baby sister. I was isolated. Alone. Broken. My hearts had been shattered and I no longer knew what to do. All I could feel was pain. Sorrow. Hopelessness.
Defeated, I stomped over to my washroom, back in my Seraphim skin, curled into a ball in the basin, crying my eyes out as the filth of the dungeons washed away.
With a wave of my hand, I made sure the satchel was tucked away somewhere it wouldn’t be found in one the nooks behind the platform my bedcloud was perched on.
I had to figure out a way to get Evanae out. She was still so young. She wasn’t a youngling, but she was still developing into an adult angel. She had so much life ahead of her yet to live. This was never supposed to be something she experienced.
Sobbing, I dressed myself. My body was clean, but my soul was forever tainted. I didn’t hear when the knock came at my door. When the voice warned of a summons. Lost in my despair, I was completely taken off guard when a star gate came for me and spat me out in the presence of the Farasee Council.
This time, Seventh Choir wasn’t present.
It was just me.
I looked around to see if the monstrous Zamariens had also been summoned, but they weren’t here.
I cast about, finding the Iris there again, watching me curiously through their unseeing eyes.
I wondered how much more they noticed because of their blindness.
Farasee Asarah sat in the middle like earlier, surrounded by Farasees I didn’t know besides Presbitari Davithius and Farasee Esau.
The two males I knew watched me. Both looked cataclysmically sad. I couldn’t imagine the reason for their sorrow, especially Esau, but it sure as Hèls couldn’t be worse than mine.
“Disciple Safah,” Farasee Asarah said, addressing me without any pleasantries.
I could no longer look at her and see my Granmanmi. That female was long gone. If she ever existed at all.
Did she know the temple was in custody of Evanae? Did she know her own Granfifi was in the dungeons being brutally tortured and tormented?
I said nothing, glaring at Asarah with a feral rage I was struggling to keep leashed. My eyes burned from hours of crying. I was starving. My body ached. And I wanted to claw out the throats of every Farasee in this place. What had Quazar called it? A Hèls-infested temple.
Stars, if only he knew how right he was.
Then again.
He’d been in the custody of the Scourgers in those dungeons, too.
Rot.
I developed a splitting headache as I blinked at the Farasee who carried my blood but was no family to me. She noticed the shift in my expression. My posture.
She flinched. For the first time in my entire life, I saw panic, and something too close to fear, dance across her hardened eyes. She blinked, watching me for a moment, before speaking again.
“Granfifi—”
“You are no Granmanmi of mine, Farasee Asarah,” I seethed,my chest rising and falling like a rabid animal.
The Farasees snapped back as if they’d all been slapped. All of them except for Davithius and Esau. Why did I have a prickling feeling that those two knew why I was in such a rage? Knew why I wanted to set this temple on fire with all the angels in it outside of Seventh Choir?
“Spit out what you want and I’ll be on my way,” I snarled.
Asarah’s eyes widened. She slid her gaze to a Farasee who was perched at the end. He looked back at her. I didn’t understand everything they shared in that quiet exchange, but I understood enough. Something hadn’t gone according to plan. Asarah cleared her throat.
“Earlier, you were sent on a final trial. One of testing loyalty. One to find a traitor that was working diligently against the temple. Here you stand before me.” A pause. “Alone.”
“I found no traitor,” I said, my voice bland. “Are we done here?”
Her nostrils flared.
“I find that highly unlikely. You’re my Granfifi. You’re as intelligent as they come. I don’t believe for a moment you found no one. Reveal the traitor, and this Council will come to an end. You will go back to your daily duties as a Disciple.”
“There was no burning traitor,” I snapped, my shrill voice bouncing off the walls of the chamber. Suddenly everything was too ivory. Too golden. Too perfect.
Lies. It was a beautiful palace of lies.
I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to go to my sister. I wanted to get the Hèls out of this temple. I wanted to go home.
“You will mind your tone—”
“I will rotting mind nothing, Granmanmi.” I hissed. “Tell me. Did you know?”
Hers eyes flashed darkly, as she tilted her head. The question had caught her off guard.
“Did I know what, my youngling?”
“I am not your youngling. I belong to Quazar Valoryen. To Amaryss and Cassandrel Anathelle. To Incense Order, First Dominion, Seventh Choir. Never will I belong to you.”
The Farasees gasped. All except Esau and Davithius. Esau watched me curiously as he processed my statement. Davithius’s lips curled into a small, triumphant smile.
Asarah slammed her hands on the handles of her throne, pushing to a stand.
“That’s enough.”
“Funny,” I said, feeling starfire flood my palms. “I’m just getting started.”
“You still haven’t learned your rotting lesson,” she snarled, starlight swirling around her. I knew she was pissed. Never in my life had she ever had a slip of vulgar language. I relished it. If she was going to push me, I was going to push back. And hard.
“Where are you?” The baritone voice slid down our bond, tendrils of shadow slipping into my mind, catching me off guard. Love and life stirred in my hearts as I felt a piece of myself returning at the sound of his voice.
“Can’t talk right now. Pretty sure I’m about to have my wings plucked.”
“Where are you?” he snarled.
Something had angered him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Where. Are. You? I can’t sense where you are. These rotting Farasees…Safah, where in the Hèls are you?”
“What did you find in the villa, Safah?”
My attention snapped to Farasee Asarah. How had she known…
Wait. If she knew about the villa, then she had to know about the dungeon.
My eyes narrowed to slits.
“Did you send them?” I asked her instead.
She flinched. “What in the stars are you referring to, child?”
“Did. You. Send. Them?”
“Send who?” she snapped, losing the reins on her self-control.
“Our entire villa has been destroyed,” I screamed at her.
My rage flared, exploding around the chamber, while also flooding the bond.
“I’m coming to find you.”
Good luck.
“Did you send them, Farasee Asarah?” I looked her in the eyes.
Dared her to say anything but the truth.
“Are you the reason our family home has been destroyed? Every chamber, every portrait, every tapestry, the entire villa, in ruins and on fire. Did you send your little demons to rip our home apart, you miserable wench?”
One moment, she was perched in front of her throne. The next she was in front of me. I was already spinning before I registered that she’d slapped me. Hard. I flew across the chamber, my head slamming into the wall.
“I’m going to teach you the lesson Cassandrel failed to.”
I coughed up blood.
“Why don’t you just pluck my feathers and forfeit my Ascension, Granmanmi?”
Before I could roll out of the way, she was on top of me, slapping me over and over with her wings, cutting me twice with her talons. I moaned, reaching for Quazar down the bond without realizing it.
“This temple will burn,” he growled. “What do I always tell you, Starling? Do not yield!”
His voice wavered, as if he was mid-flight.
Farasee Asarah snatched me by my throat and yanked me up to my feet.
She shook me with a ferocity that made my head knock.
I grumbled, growing lightheaded as she spun and launched me across the chamber with a strength that shouldn’t be possible for a female her age.
I collided into the stone pillars, tumbling to the floor.
“Farasee Asarah!” Presbitari Davithius barked. “This is out of order! We don’t care about your personal, familial feelings. You will not thrash around my Disciple like she’s some wild animal. Another hand laid on her, and I will have you tried before the Empràr. I will ruin you myself.”
I opened my eyes, my vision crossing. I found Asarah hovering stone still on the other side of the chamber.
Her face was colored with fury. She looked at me with disgust. Like she’d disown me.
Hèls if I cared. I was never claiming her again.
I wondered if Ezekiel, Hosea, or even Jael had ever seen this side of her.
And why in the stars they didn’t warn me if they had.
“I’ve had enough,” Asarah said, gathering herself.
She straightened her shoulders. And just like that, she was back to the Farasee that was feared across the empyrean. I was beginning to understand why.
She snapped her fingers.
At the center of the chamber, Evanae surfaced, tumbling to the marbled floor on her hands and knees.
“EVANAE!” I screamed.
With lightning speed I rushed for her, wrapping myself around her. My sweet little sister was soaked with blood and smelled of dried urine and something foul. I remembered the joy in the eyes of the Zamariens. My jaw hung as I turned hateful eyes to Asarah.
“You put your own Granfifi in the hands of Zamariens?” I whispered, my shock pulsing through my body. “You turned over your youngest Granfifi for bloodied sport?”
I couldn’t believe my own words. I couldn’t believe the truth I was seeing. The blind rage I was feeling.
“No,” she answered simply. “I turned the little brat over to teach you a lesson. You didn’t think your little stunt at Titombwe would go unpunished?”
I froze, my hands coddling Evanae’s head, holding her to my slow beating chest.
“The little ashrat has been working with the Fallenspawn to try and undermine this temple. A boldness she picked up from you no doubt. I will never stand for such a thing. And since you won’t listen to reason, when I am through with her, I know you will think twice about forcing my hand ever again. ”
“What in the stars do you mean, ‘when you get through with her’?” I asked.
“Simple. The trial was the easiest one given to you so far, and you still failed. No matter. You will remain a Disciple. We have need of you. The Anathelle females must remain in the temple. Well, you will. This one will never.”
Then Farasee Asarah snatched Evanae up by the neck with a tendril of hardened starlight, yanked her across the chamber, and shoved two talons through her spine.