L’?r? noticed that Máywá was no longer afraid. Helooked at her like he knew her well enough to know when her threats were empty, and it unnerved her.
‘Alawani told me how you feel about the call and how you tried to stop him,’ Máywá said. ‘You can’t save him or anyone from the call of the gods. We’ve all accepted our fate. If he leaves, they’ll kill him. You know that. If he stays, he stands a chance to be a priest of the Order, to be a vessel for our gods. How can you deny him such honour?’
‘I’m not leaving this temple without Alawani. So help us find him or feel the burn of my blade!’ L’?r? slid the knife slowly across his neck, showing him that her threat was real.
Now he looked afraid again. ‘Please. It’s too dangerous – you should leave. My maiden will know I’m missing. They check on us every light bead,’ Máywá choked.
Kyà pulled her hands off Máywá. ‘Stop. We’re wasting time. He’s right: we have to leave now. We tried our best, L’?r?. I don’t want to die at the hands of the priests!’
L’?r? ignored him and leaned in closer to Máywá, standing on the tip of her toes to reach his height. She wasn’t giving up. ‘If you don’t show us the way, I’ll kill you. I’ve got nothing to lose. So, what’s it going to be?’ She wanted him to know just how desperate she was and what that meant for him.
Máywá didn’t struggle or fight. He just stared at her, searching her eyes with a long calculating look. After a few moments he said, ‘I’ll take you to the prince.’
He led L’?r? and Kyà out of Alawani’s room, up the stairs and back to the hole in the wall of the dining hall that led to the tunnels beneath the tower. They crawled out the same way they’d come in. Máywá led the way to the ruins behind the temple. The only way L’?r? knew to describe what she was seeing was as if someone had split the building in half, raised it to the sky and crashed it into itself. Aroundthe ruins were giant blocks of what were once beautifully decorated stones spread in all directions, some covered in creeping thorns, others piled in a way that suggested that the slightest breeze would send them crashing to the ground.
There wasn’t a soul in sight. Despite that, L’?r? moved quietly through the cracked blocks, stopping every time something crunched beneath her feet. The unique smell of chalky dust and ewé-efinrin – the local scent leaves – filled the air. L’?r? had read about the temple that housed the old gods in her history books. They said that one day the earth trembled, thundered and fractured, leaving cracks in the ground. The chaos brought down the mighty temple. But now, seeing the evidence before her eyes, the sculpted archways stained by mould, the blast marks on the weather-worn stone pillars, and the deformed statues all told a different story. It looked like there had been a war. But that wasn’t possible. There had never been a war in all of Oru’s history. Not since long before the day of the First Sun.
Máywá and Kyà went off in opposite directions around the corners of the fallen temple, quietly calling for Alawani. L’?r? had been too stunned to speak, entranced by the destruction before her, wondering how anyone had survived such carnage. Finally, she inhaled and spoke Alawani’s name. As her voice filled the night air, the temple bells rang in a loud clash, sending shock waves through her body. The long, deep sound of metal hitting metal vibrated the ground she stood upon. The temple was awake, and this had officially become a suicide mission.
L’?r? could no longer count how many times tonight her heart had stopped in her chest. Her fingers raced to her neck, searching for her pendant, and she only remembered that she had tucked it away when her fingers roamed over bare, sore skin. In the distance, she could see someone runningtowards her. At first, she thought it was Kyà or Máywá. But then Kyà was next to her – he followed L’?r?’s line of sight and saw the figure too. Impatient, he awakened his agbára, and a beam of light shone from his palm. The darkness gave way, and there in the distance was the man she’d defied everyone and everything for. Like a shadow running out of darkness and towards her light, he appeared in full view. Alawani. He stopped and even with the hundreds of yards between them, she could feel his gaze on her like a fire that set her skin ablaze. He moved. Quickly. Jumping over broken walls, bending under cracked arches, and running towards them.
Alawani stopped in his tracks when he got to them. His eyes were fixed on L’?r? and hers on him. He had lost weight since she last saw him. He had dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his once brilliantly bright eyes were bloodshot as though he hadn’t slept at all, his cheekbones sunken. He looked dehydrated, sucked dry – like he was withering away. How could this happen in just two days?
Lost in his gaze, she hadn’t considered what she’d do or say when she saw the boy who’d turned her life upside down. The boy she’d bled for, the one she’d bound herself to in a sacred oath that was now a shadow of himself. The boy who’d taken her fragile heart and, intentionally or not, shattered it into a thousand pieces. She wanted to take one of the sharp edges of her broken heart and cut him with it. She wanted to hug and kiss him. Most of all, she wanted him to be alive. And he was. So she took one step towards him, then another, and another.
The temple bells’ deafening sound matched the beat of her own trembling heart. Once she was close enough to see his eyebrows raised in shock and feel the warm air coming out of his mouth in short bursts, she raised her hand toslap him. Then paused. Instead, she moved her hand to cup his face. He hadn’t even tried to stop her. She hoped that meant he knew how much he deserved her wrath. Still, she couldn’t figure out what to say, and obviously, neither could he because he simply stood staring at her, his brows tilted up in a pathetic appeal.
‘We don’t have time for this. We have to go,’ Kyà said, his voice edged with tension.
L’?r? stepped back from Alawani but couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Alawani’s mouth hung open, unable to form words, stunned by her presence in the temple. Ignoring Kyà’s urging, he finally said to L’?r?, ‘You can’t be here.’ His gaze fixed on her.
Máywá cut in, ‘Okay, okay, we need to move now!’
‘I can’t believe you did this,’ Alawani said. ‘We talked about this.’ The ringing of bells sank into silence, replaced by the sound of shouts.
L’?r? pulled the bandage off her palm and revealed the healing scab where she had cut her palm. ‘Yes, we did. And still, you left!’
Kyà grabbed L’?r?’s arm, ‘I’m leaving with or without you. Those bells didn’t stop ringing because they changed their mind.’
L’?r? allowed him to pull her towards the main temple building. Máywá ran fastest, his long legs allowing him to lead the way, and Alawani trailed behind.
L’?r? fell back to run next to Alawani. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked as they ran through the side of the building, sticking close to the walls.
Alawani nodded, forcing air into his lungs with every step. When she’d first seen him moments ago, she thought it was confusion or surprise she’d read in his features. But now she realized he was terrified.
Máywá stopped in his tracks when they reached an old wooden door on the side of the building. ‘I’m taking this way back to the tower.’
‘No, you need to stick with us,’ L’?r? said.
‘I’m not going with you,’ Máywá said calmly. ‘This is my destiny. Long before the gods called, I knew this was my fate. I am Àlùfáà. And everyone knew – my family, my people, my friends. I’m not turning my back on my gods. I don’t want to find out what will happen if I dare do such a thing.’
L’?r? couldn’t find the right words to speak. What spell were these boys under? Not boys, men. Alawani had seen twenty-four first suns and five blood moons, and Máywá, if she was right, was maybe a first sun or two older than her. They weren’t children. What magic held their minds so strongly that they could not see reason? Why did she have to beg them not to die? Was death suddenly something not to be feared? Or was she missing something?
Kyà’s eyes flitted around anxiously, searching for any figures or shadows that might approach them. ‘Leave him if he wants to stay, we need to go,’ he said.
‘I’m not leaving this temple,’ Máywá said, holding on to the door’s handle.
