A single candle burns in the high priestess’s chamber, sending shadows slithering across the wall with every flicker of the flame. Incense burns in a small dish beside her bed, a strange spicy scent—sharp like a shrewd glance from ancient eyes, sharp like the edge of a blade. Aside from the candle, the incense, and a small table to hold them both, her bed is the only object in the circular tower. The high priestess prefers nothing to distract her from her visions.
“Elia.” Her wrinkled voice, as tattered as the flags that fly above our ruined city, calls to me.
I pad across the room to her bedside. The sounds of my feet, of my breath, feel like an intrusion into the stillness of this room. “High Priestess,” I answer, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Your mind is clouded. Doubts obscure your clarity of purpose. You come seeking confirmation of what you already know to be true.” The words hiss out of her like wind passing through the husks of burned trees. “Ask your question.”
It’s no use pretending I only came to bring her nightly sleeping tea. I set the cup down beside the bed. “What have you seen of the war?”
She has not left this room in three years, yet she sees more of the world than I do. I have never left the walls of the temple. I know the world as my prisoner does, through narrow windows and glints of sunlight. The people of the city bring us whatever we require, but I am forbidden to speak to anyone outside the temple until my training is complete. I accept their offerings of food in silence, noting their protruding ribs and drawn faces, closing my lips on my questions. But the high priestess’s mind ranges where she wills. She sees every battle, every bitter defeat, every inch of land the humans wrest from us. Only the human encampments are barred from her, blocked from her sight by the humans’ foreign magic.
A disapproving sigh. “You did not come to hear our latest losses. One cannot serve the Goddess with a dishonest heart—you know this. Speak the truth, girl.”
“Can we defeat the humans without calling on… on Her?” Not my goddess, the goddess I was given to the temple to serve. The other, the one whose name I am forbidden to speak. I should not even know of Her existence, would not if the human armies had not left me the only one capable of performing this duty.
“Those thoughts serve no purpose. In one more night, She will awaken, and the war will end.”
“But if we didn’t do this… if instead we studied human magic, and learned to use their weapons…” I swallow. “Would we have a chance?”
Another sigh, like the creaking of a hinge. “No.”
My breath catches at her answer. But it is nothing other than what I expected. Nothing I didn’t already know.
I push the cup a little closer. “I brought your tea.”
“Thank you, Elia.” She closes a trembling hand around the cup. Liquid sloshes over the side as she lifts it to her mouth. “You have served well, these past three years. And tomorrow night, you will perform your duty with no uncertainty in your heart. I have no doubt of this.” But her voice holds a warning. She is not showing me a future she has seen. She is telling me what must be. What I must do.
I keep my voice from wavering as I answer. “I will do as She requires.”
The cup shakes in the high priestess’s grip. She lifts it to take another sip, but hesitates. “The war is not the only thing I see.”
My heart drops to the floor. I wait, eyes down, hands clasped behind my back—the proper posture for accepting a reprimand. I already know what she will say.
“You are too familiar with the prisoner. You speak to him as if he were Lura’e, as if he were a friend. You look at him in ways forbidden to you. These clouds in your heart are his doing.”
I find my voice. “Tomorrow night, it won’t matter.”
Her eyes pierce through mine. “See that you remember that.”
I answer with a silent nod.
Satisfied, she drains the cup. She sets it down on the bedside table before lying back on her pillows. “Leave me,” she orders, her eyes already drifting shut. “You have the evening devotions to perform.”
I nod again. But I don’t leave.
The tea, as always, works quickly. It takes mere seconds for her body to relax, mere minutes for her breathing to deepen. But I wait longer than I need to, long enough to be sure. Only when a soft snore issues from her bed do I move.
Softly, my hands trembling as much as hers did a moment ago, I reach for her. My hands brush the parchment-rough skin of her neck until they close around the slender chain she wears. Not daring to breathe, I lift it over her head, smoothing her cloud-white hair back into place as the chain and the object it holds come free.
The key, warm from lying against her chest, sears my hand like an ember. Like a threat.
I don’t let go.
With the key to the temple gate clutched in my hand, I leave the tower as quietly as I entered.
I have never stepped outside the temple gate. Nor have I ever mourned my lack of freedom. My place is here.
To leave would be to betray my goddess. To leave with the human would be to betray my people.
I cannot allow myself to think of what I might do.