The moon is already bright in the sky, and I have not yet begun the evening devotions.
I swallow my grief as I approach the altar. My bare feet absorb the coolness of the smooth stone; they follow the dark rivers that snake across the floor, the bloodstains I haven’t managed to scrub clean in three years of trying.
Here in this chamber, my thoughts should be on nothing but the Goddess. But sometimes, when I look at the floor, the unnatural silence fills with the echoes of their screams.
This is what I will avenge, when I take his life.
With shaking hands, I light the first candle. “Antara, Bright Mother…”
Sasha’s face swims before my eyes.
“…who lights our way in the darkness…”
My hand hovers over the third candle.
I have performed these devotions a thousand times before. But tonight the words fly out of my memory, leaving me silent and empty. Tonight my head is filled with the ghost-screams of my sisters, and with the quiver in Sasha’s voice as he spoke those three forbidden words for the first time.
The Goddess’s face slips from my mind. The flames flicker and die, leaving me in shadow.
I fall to my knees before the altar. Hot tears pool atop the faded smears of blood.
“Find me another way,” I whisper. “Antara, Bright Mother, who lights my way in the darkness… find me another way.”