He folds his arms into the belled sleeves of the robe and bows his head. “She speaks with the Gods. When she awakens—”
Osira juts upward, back arched and limbs splayed. A maniacal laugh rumbles in her throat. “Keres.” The voice does not belong to her. It’s coarse and too enormous for her body, reaching into every corner of the temple. Chilling but crackling like fire. She sits up slowly, body drifting over the edges of the altar. Her hand rises, pointing as her empty eyes scan the room and fall on me. “There you are.”
Again, she collapses. Dorian flings himself to the foot of the altar, catching her as she topples off. Her own voice returns to her body, creaky and exhausted. “Cesarus.” Dorian lays her down near the wolf’s paws and allows the hound to comfort her as she regains control of her body and mind.
“Osira,” I try. She simply lies there silently, until she begins to cry. Dorian presses a silver goblet to her hand, but she swats it away. It clangs against the stone floor, spilling liquid that looks like wine.
“What did you see?” Dorian pushes her.
“I don’t understand it!” She growls.
“I will help you,” He purrs. “Tell me what you saw.”
She considers and then says, “A white hart. A black wolf. In the forest, the black wolf hunted the white hart. Then the river. Then nothing.”
“Which river?” I interrupt.
“The River Liri,” She says.
“You saw nothing else?” Dorian goads. “You didn’t see Keres again?”
“You said my name,” I add.
She shakes her head and more hair falls out, sticking to the veil. She’s crying harder, curling up into a ball like she’s terrified.
“I didn’t see you,” Her shoulders jostle and her voice shatters.
“You pointed right at me and said, ‘there you are,’ Osi.” Dorian turns abruptly to me and shakes his head as if I shouldn’t give her a nickname.
“No. I felt… Death. I don’t know,” She bleats. “Someone will die. I can’t understand the vision. I feel it. Someone is going to die. I don’t need eyes to see. A God is coming.”
“She must rest.” Dorian shields her from me, picking her up and carrying her into an adjoining room with a small bed. Once she’s tucked in with Cesarus beside her, he comes back to me.
“When she rises send—”
He stops me.
“Visions and dreams assault the child; she is overwhelmed with revelations. She must learn to interpret on her own. She sees things she does not understand; speaks names she does not know, draws faces she’s never seen with her own eyes, and wrestles with divinations of the future. She is being used by the entire Pantheon of Gods.” He pauses, pressing his lips together again. “As I told your cousin the Queen, we cannot hasten her Unveiling. She must struggle for a few more days until she can identify each God by their unique voice, interpret what they reveal to her and translate their divine tongue.”
“Hasten it? Queen Hero has sought to speed up this… process? What is the Unveiling exactly?”
“The Queen has recommended I shave the child’s head. She believes it will bring about answers. As opposed to waiting for her hair to fall.”
“Is that when she will understand what the Gods show her? When she loses all her hair?”
“Perhaps.” He licks his dry lips. “She is being purged of mortal knowledge. Reborn.”
“If not then, when?” I need answers! A God is coming? Someone is going to die?”
“When the Gods will it.” He frowns.
I take a seat in one of the few pews still standing and shake off my nerves. Dorian sits beside me. I stare at the tree.
“In three days’ time, the ritual will end. And if Osira does not lose all her hair, if she does not realize all of what’s being given to her… Queen Hero has ordered for her head to be shaved in the marketplace. Or for her to be killed.”
19. THE WIFE
“I won’t allow Queen Hero to harm her,” I assure Dorian.
He sighs. “It’s kind of you to care. Unless you only care for the answers Osira holds.”
“No, not only for that. She’s lost one life to live another in service to the Gods. I can understand that. All my life, I’ve been asking questions Osira will start to voice as she gets older.”
He faces me and this close I can see the outline of his features through the veil. “Osira told me a God claimed you, but as with all of her revelations she could not tell me which. She heard Him when she channeled you.”
“I have been meaning to ask about that. What is the channeling exactly?”
“I can explain it only one way.” He settles into his seat. “Osira is in a time of transition. As the Gods have pulled the veil of blindness over her physical eyes, they are unveiling the spiritual world to her. I understand her distress, but I cannot relate to it. I have no connection to the realms beyond and can only offer her guidance from my experience with the Oracles before her. Unfortunately, this is no vast knowledge. I am as blind to her new world as she is now to ours.” He clears his throat.
“However, you have some knowledge of value as the mortal counterpart to a God. Being an Oracle means she can see what the Gods reveal, with spiritual eyes wide-open. Being an instrument of the divine means you can see only what your God allows you to when your eyes are closed. In dreams. That is why the servants are called Blind Ones and the Oracles are the Unveiled.”
“I have read of this, yes.”
“When Osira reached out with her new sight, she saw you and… you became tethered to one another. Your tie to each other is kismetic.”
“Like, fated?”
“It would appear so.” He smiles mildly. “She established a bridge between you that exists only in the eternal God-land. You can cross it. That is the channeling.”
“When she crossed this bridge that night… I became her.” I try to make sense. “I couldn’t see. I felt fire and heard the Gods. I felt Cesarus in my presence. It’s why I wasn’t frightened of him today. I knew him.”
“And Osira was in you. She felt cold, if I remember correctly. She woke me in the night, telling me.” He strokes his chin. “She said she felt a pain in her shoulder… and water in her lungs.”
I swallow back my words. She sensed the injury King Arias gave me… and my past.
“You are both in for quite a gauntlet run, that’s for sure,” he sighs.
“Why me?” I ask. “Why did Osira channel me? How did she even know to look for me in the God-land?”
“On this matter, I have about as much understanding as you do. Why does it happen? How? These are all questions with answers the Gods only need know. Perhaps, Osira may one day need you or the power of your God.” He turns to me and folds his hands.
I turn away. We should pray Osira never needs my God’s power.
“I am the servant of Mrithyn, God of Death.”
At the mention of His name, the candle flames explode and sputter. Dorian and I instinctively lean into each other at the flash of white-hot light. I shield my eyes with my hands but try to find the reason for it. Dorian moves from my side and stands.
“Can it be?” He asks. His hooded figure is shrouded in a fiery glow that strains my eyes.
“What was that?” I stand beside him. Shadows move atop the tree. Dorian pushes back his veil, revealing dark brown eyes. We blink in the searing light.
“What’s happening to the tree?” I ask. The light either dims or our eyes adjust, but we both gasp. I move toward the tree and can make out the shapes of tiny pale leaves and red flower buds bursting into life along the branches. I look back to him, smiling before I realize he’s fallen to his knees.
“Dorian?”
He sits up, sobbing with a quivering smile on his face. “I knew you would come.”
He grips my hands in his. “This temple has long been unmarked, unclaimed, and unfrequented by any of the Gods’ servants for centuries. My order was sure it was a deity’s temple, belonging to a God at
one time in the past. None knew who we served for generations; whose blessed name would be worshiped in this hall. Instead it’s long been the holy house of the Oracles and we their faithful priests. But I knew one day, the servant of this temple’s Hallow-Mother or Father would return and awaken it!”
“The Temple of Mrithyn. I never thought to look for it.” I say.
“Yes,” he stands and wipes his eyes. “The Temple of Mrithyn. As you probably know, each of the Gods has what our people refer to as ‘Transcendants’. Objects, scripts, even places of divine nature and origin. Not every God has a temple; some have only books or other sacred tokens. Ever heard of the Chalice of Enithura? The Lamp of Adreana? Surely, you know of the Scythe of Mrithyn. Do you possess it?” He asks.
“Apparently, there is a great deal I do not know. Especially not where His Scythe is. I never cared to,” I shrug. “Those things are legends buried in the annals of history… or simply mythological.”
They must be. I look at the tree. Did I really awaken it? Are Osira and I really fated, connected? I think back to Nadia and the masks. Faeries, Nymphs, and other fantasies are child’s play. As I told Nadia. This also seems too fanciful, but Gods and devils do exist. Perhaps these Transcendants do too. I’ve read about them but never hoped or believed them to be true.
“I believe,” Dorian says. He presses his lips into a thin line again and I bet they’ll permanently deflate if he keeps it up.
I turn from his scrutiny back to the tree.
“This tree makes no sense. Mrithyn is the God of Death. Not Life. How does that explain its revival?”
“The God of Death owes no one an explanation.” His tone drops but then his face softens. “You spoke his name. Many times, I have muttered the names of every God in the Pantheon amid these walls. Never once did it cause a light to burn brighter or the tree to flower. You brought life to the Temple of Death.”
“That still makes no sense. I bear the Death Spirit. My… Hallow-Father or whatever you called him— is Death. As in, I’m Desolation’s Daughter. I’m a reaper, not a sower. The tree woke up for another reason.” I walk right up to it and pluck a leaf off its branches.
“Don’t!” Dorian snaps.
The leaf melts into blood in my hand and drips onto the stone floor.
We exchange looks.
“Don’t do that again.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
“Look!” He points to the roots of the tree. I follow his gaze. The soil from which the tree is growing is drying up. Unnaturally fast. The tree pales even more and the leaves shrivel.
“Water!” I flurry my hands. Before I know it, he’s gone. He comes running back with a pitcher, trips over something, and water splashes over the brim. He pushes it into my hands, and I drop to my knees to douse the cracking, paling soil. It soaks it up and then dries again.
“More!”
“I have no more. The well is too far. It will die!” He weeps. “Why did you pluck the leaf?”
I watch the soil grow drier and drier, searching for a reason. “Give me your knife.”
“What do—”
“Your knife!” I snap.
Dorian unsheathes the knife from his belt, and I think of the one Silas wore on our wedding day. A blade meant for sacrifices.
I wrap my hand around the blade and quickly drag it across my palm, slashing open my left hand. Blood oozes out. I squeeze my hand, spreading the blood to my fingers and digging my nails in to make it bleed more. The pain earns a grunt from me as I do the same to my right hand until blood covers both.
I focus my magic and steal a move from Ivaia’s repertoire: My magic calls to the water in my blood and draws it out. I can control it. It runs down my fingertips into the soil.
Dorian gasps behind me when the water falls to the soil. The tree drinks it in but does not dry again. Instead, the soil too turns to water, and the dirt dissolves as the water bubbles with magic. I stop giving my power and clasp my hands together to assuage the bleeding. I stand beside Dorian and he wraps my hands up in his robe, applying pressure to my wounds. We watch in awe as the tree grows taller from a pool of my own blood and water. The leaves turn a more passionate shade of red than before and swell until they pulsate like tiny hearts. I can hear them beating in sync with my own heart.
“Perhaps you do not yet fully understand what it means to be who you are.” Dorian says as we stare. “But I have always believed this place to dwell among the Transcendants. This tree is centuries old.” He laughs and then cries again, squeezing my hands even harder. I wince.
“The Coroner has come unto her own, and her own will devote themselves to her.” He bows deeply at the waist, lifting my bloodied hands to his brow. “Oh, blessed Mrithyn has raised up a servant for the Children of the Sunderlands when they needed His grace most.”
Now he’s just rambling, I’m sure. What’s so gracious about giving a bleeding land a sentinel of Death? Someone to tuck the souls into the earth and kiss them an eternal good night? Then again… I look at the tree, alive from my own blood.
He fetches bandages and binds my hands. “Come again tomorrow. I will speak with Osira when she awakens. We will await you. I fear you have still much to learn about who you are— what you must do. I will educate you in the doctrine of Mrithyn and of all the Gods. I know them by heart! I’ve been preparing my entire life for this moment. For you.”
Not knowing what else to say, I agree to come again tomorrow. Reluctantly, I tear myself from the splendor of the white and red tree. This black temple dressed in stars. An inkling of hope alights within me that being the Coroner might amount to something beautiful, not only grim.
Apparently, Nadia the bunny-servant has a twin. Equal in beauty but with vicious yellow eyes instead of alluring sapphires. She met me in the corridor and led me back to my room, chattering beyond my attention span.
“Did you hear me, Princess?” She asks, unfathomably annoyed. I shake my head. My thoughts are still in the temple.
“No, sorry. What was your name again?”
“Moriya. I said you have a male caller.” She taps a foot.
“What?” I blink at her citron eyes.
“Gods be damned, woman,” She shoves open my bedroom door, “There’s a male in your bed!”
I peek into the room. She’s right. He’s in my bed. Brown curls loosed and wild around his beaming face; coal eyes inflamed with pleasure as they meet mine.
“Darius!” I push past Moriya and slam the door behind me.
She calls through the door, “Queen Hero will expect you for dinner!”
“Thanks!” I lean against the door and stare at him for a moment. I blink. There’s no way he’s here. In that bed. As if the bed couldn’t look any more tempting. He’s half-naked.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. I smell jasmine and vanilla. “Did you take a bath?” The idea of his hulking body in that tub, covered in bubbles, lures a laugh out of me. His golden skin shimmers with oil and every muscle of his core tightens as he sits up and stretches languidly.
“Aren’t you thrilled to see me, killer?”
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“What, you thought it’d be hard?” He smirks. “It didn’t take long for me to pick up on where you’d gone. I had to wait to leave camp and follow you. The only real challenge was getting that damned rabbit to tell me where your room was.” His deep timbre sends shivers up the back of my legs and to my neck.
My eyes widen and a smile breaks out of one corner of my mouth. “Well, it’s… nice to see you.” I gesture to his shirtless body awkwardly. He smiles and rises from the bed slowly. He closes the distance between us in three long strides.
“I imagine you had to use your charm to get her to obey you,” I say, trying to steady my voice.
Standing a whole head above me, he looks down his strong, perfect nose. His hands come to my shoulders and then to my throat.
“Charm is for pretty lads. I like to use my hands to get a beau
tiful girl to obey me.”
I push out of his arms and stalk further into the room, keeping my back to him to hide my heated face.
“And did you? Use your hands, I mean. Do you think she’s beautiful?”
“Come now, killer. Don’t be like all the other girls. Quick to get jealous and petty. She is beautiful.” He laughs under his breath. “But I didn’t come here for a foreign beauty.”
“Why did you come here?”
“You know why, delicious girl.”
I hear his footsteps coming closer again. I glance towards the washing room and see the tub is still full of steaming hot water and frothy foam. That’s how my blood feels when he’s near. Candles are lit on the table beside the tub too. “Enjoying yourself, were you?” His heat warms me from behind.
“Really, Darius. If you thought you could just show up and—”
He spins me around and catches my face in his hands. He searches my eyes and then kisses me. Lust enraptures me. I burn like a candle, heat lighting up my face like a red flame, and melting down my body into my core. His tongue slips into my mouth, striking a match and then another to add to the flames. I try to push out of his grip, but he doesn’t allow me to. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me into him, intensifying the kiss. Everything is hard: his chest, his abs, his… everything. He lets go of me and leaves me breathless for a second.
I close my eyes.
“Penance.” I speak the name as if it were a forbidden incantation.
He pushes me back, taking his warmth away from me.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
I look down at the gap between us before stepping closer and meeting his eyes.
“Liriene said that was your name. Penance, son of Darius. Isn’t that why Silas calls you ‘Nance? Did I hit a nerve?”
He growls, displeased with either her or me. “My name is Darius.” He turns back towards the bed, raking his hand through his curls.
“Then who is Penance?”
“Also I.”
“What shall I call you then?” I ask.
He flares his eyes at me again, an inferno of lust sparking into them. He moves, hungry to touch me. “Yours.”
The Sunderlands Page 21
