* * *
There is no moon as I lead the prisoner into the darkness of the empty courtyard. No light illuminates the blackened carcasses of the trees that surround the temple; no shadows fall from their skeletal branches. Even the stars have disappeared tonight. The sky is an empty pit, with only one light to break the endless black.
Newly opened, still cloudy with sleep, the Eye nonetheless stills my breath. A pale orb, already brighter than any star, stares down on me with cold awareness. It blazes with the blue-white glow of the coldest days of winter or the hottest part of a flame. A trail of white fire follows in its wake.
The Sleeping Goddess has awakened.
Sasha mumbles as he trips over his feet. His eyes focus on nothing. The herbs I slipped into his food have done their job; his legs move, but he is no more aware than a sleepwalker. While I lead his body, his mind is lost in dreams.
I hope his dreams are pleasant ones.
I guide him up the steps of the circular platform that stands in the center of the courtyard. The platform is carved from dark wood, older than the temple itself and stronger than any stone. On an ordinary night, every inch glows with a silver light that emanates from the intricate symbols carved along its surface.
Tonight the light is gone.
Sasha sways on his feet. Gently, one hand cradling the back of his head, I lower him to the ground. He lies back without protest. His lips move silently, forming meaningless words.
Forming a name. Elia.
I look away.
The Eye’s cold light falls on my upturned face as I push myself to my feet. I try not to squirm under Her icy regard, so different from the summer warmth of my dream. A hush of anticipation falls over the courtyard—no owls call out through the night, no insects chirp, even the wind no longer dares to whisper. The world has gone still as it waits for me to speak the first words of the incantation.
I clear my throat.
And I begin.
The courtyard should be ringed with priestesses adding their voices to my own. Instead I stand alone under the burning white gaze of the Sleeping Goddess. The chant that should be heavy with power sounds like the mewling of a frightened kitten. My tongue stumbles over the alien words the high priestess taught me.
But it won’t matter, in the end. She listens not to speech, but to blood. And I will give Her blood.
Sasha stirs. He groans. “Elia…”
My voice falters. Quickly, before I can lose Her attention, I pick up the thread of the chant again.
Sasha takes in the scene around him. His gaze returns to me, drops to the knife I clutch in white-knuckled fingers. “What are you…” The naked betrayal in his eyes tells me he already knows the answer to his unfinished question.
The chant comes to an end. The last halting word hangs in the air as the Eye sheds the dimness of sleep and shines down on us with baleful brilliance.
I see Sasha try to stand, try to run, as I kneel beside him. I watch his eyes fill with despair as his heavy limbs refuse to obey. Straining with the effort, he lifts one shaking arm in a futile attempt to shield himself against me.
“Elia.” My name sighs from his lips with all the love and anguish of a hopeless prayer.
“I love you,” I whisper.
And I slice the blade down.
It bites into flesh. A streak of red splits the palm of his hand.
He gasps—at the pain, at the realization that he is still alive. His wide eyes meet mine.
I raise the knife a second time, the edge still dark with his blood, and draw it across my own palm. I hiss as the skin separates, as the blood pools to the surface.
“Rhysara!” I scream the forbidden name into the night.
The air thickens. My hair crackles as it lifts out from my face. Above us, the Eye glares down. For a moment, I see myself as She sees me—small, pitiful, unworthy of speaking Her name. I want to cringe away, to cower, to run until I find a corner dark enough to shield me from Her notice.
But I stand strong.
I clasp my palm to Sasha’s. I raise our hands to the sky, to the Eye above us; our mingled blood flows past our wrists, down our upstretched arms.
“Our blood is one.” His hand against mine gives me strength. My voice, no longer hesitant, rings out into the night. “Our people are one. As life and death spring from the same root, so too do humans and Lura’e. If the humans bleed, the Lura’e will bleed. If a human takes the life of a Lura’e, or a hundred, the human will fall alongside them.”
Pain branches through me like a lightning strike. My blood is on fire; the Goddess fills my veins. Blood is Her language, and She speaks through mine, every silent syllable a rush of agony. Beside me, Sasha’s scream tears the sky in two.
And then it ends.
I find myself bent double, breathing ragged, teeth clenched. Tears I don’t remember crying run down my face.
Sasha’s hand is still clutched in mine.
He stares down at our hands, at the blood that drips from the place where my skin meets his. His face is pale, his eyes as round as the Eye above.
For the first time, I wonder whether he will hate me for the choice I have made on his behalf. The choice I have made for his kind as well as my own.
He picks up the knife from where I let it fall. Before I can think to stop him, he jerks the blade forward; a neat slice opens in the center of my free hand.
He drops the knife, its hilt stained with his blood, to reveal a matching wound along his own palm.
I spoke in blood, and She answered.
I have betrayed my goddess.
I have betrayed my people.
I have ended this war.
Sasha studies the wound as if expecting it to disappear. When he turns to me, his eyes are full of wonder. “What is this?” I search his tone for condemnation, and find none.
“My people’s survival,” I answer. “And yours.”
I can no longer feel the wintry stare of the Sleeping Goddess against my skin. The Eye’s pale light is only light, no different from that of any star. I have no way of knowing whether I have angered or pleased Her. Perhaps She no longer sees me at all, now that the ritual is complete.
But it makes no difference.
I am finished here.
I drop Sasha’s hand as I rise to my feet. “The humans need to be told. And the Lura’e. Before one side attacks the other and destroys themselves in the process.” I pause, willing my voice not to catch. “The humans would trust a fellow human more than they would trust me. And I could use the guidance of someone who knows the world outside these walls.” Despite my efforts, my voice slips away from me. I finish in a whisper. “And I would… appreciate your company.”
I will not look at him. I will not torture myself with the look in his eyes as he refuses. Why would he do anything but refuse, when accepting my offer means aiding the Lura’e?
Wanting what you can’t have will never bring you anything but pain.
His voice is barely louder than my own. “What you said back then. Did you mean it?”
“When?”
“You know when. When you—when I thought you were about to—“ He raises his blood-caked palm in reminder.
But I don’t need him to remind me.
I remember what I said. The three words I whispered, my final gift to him before my betrayal.
I love you.
These feelings are forbidden to a servant of the Goddess. But I no longer belong to Her. I severed myself from Her with the same knife stroke that bound Lura’e and humans together.
“Yes.” I still don’t look at him. “I meant it.”
He reaches for my hand. His fingers, still wet with my blood and his, close over mine.
“Then I suppose we’re stuck with each other.” From the corner of my eye, I watch a smile spread across his face. A real smile, unshadowed by captivity, as unlike his previous attempts at levity as the sun is to the moon. “I can’t leave you to face the human army without my help, now
can I?”
At last, I turn to face him.
He does not glow with agonizing brilliance. His touch does not burn like molten metal against my flesh. But his eyes warm something deep inside me, something that spreads until it extends out past my skin, until I feel as if I must be shining as brightly as the Goddess Herself.
For the first time in three years, I feel the beginnings of a smile tug at the corners of my lips.
“We have a long road ahead of us.” With a grunt of effort, he pushes himself to his feet. He gives my hand a gentle tug as he begins to walk on legs that have already lost most of their unsteadiness. “We had better get started.”
I look past him to the steps that lead down from the platform. To the temple, every stone as familiar to me as my own heartbeat even in this darkness.
To the far end of the courtyard, and the gate that waits there.
I have never stepped beyond the walls of the temple. Since the earliest days of my life, the temple has been my home, my family, my purpose.
But I have a new purpose now.
Sasha casts a glance over his shoulder. Watching me. A hint of worry creases his brow.
I step forward to stand beside him.
In silence, we cross the courtyard together.
When we reach the gate, we stop. The twisted metal stretches to the sky like a hundred interwoven branches. Buried in the center of the tangle, a tiny keyhole winks.
I curl my fingers around the lock, as if my will could force it open. The gate remains shut.
I could go before the high priestess in supplication and try to persuade her of the importance of my mission. I could go before her in defiance and rip the key from her neck. I could attempt to climb the wall, balancing on Sasha’s shoulders, pulling myself upward stone by stone.
But I do none of these things.
I close my eyes. My forehead rests against the cool metal.
“Antara, Bright Mother, who lights my way in the darkness…”
My voice stumbles as a thought enters my mind.
I will never say these words again.
“Let me do what I must do,” I finish. “Let me go.”
I push. On silent hinges, the gate glides open.
I can see nothing of the world that stretches before me. Only darkness.
I step out into the night.
The human walks beside me.
About Zoe Cannon
Zoe Cannon writes about the things that fascinate her: outsiders, societies no sane person would want to live in, questions with no easy answers, and the inner workings of the mind. If she couldn't be a writer, she would probably be a psychologist, a penniless philosopher, or a hermit in a cave somewhere.
While she'll read anything that isn't nailed down, she considers herself a YA reader and writer at heart. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and a giant teddy bear of a dog, and spends entirely too much time on the internet.
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