Chapter one
Ascension Day
The girl was not impressed to be woken so abruptly that morning.
Not even to the unusual sound of laughter, and cajoling, and bright rays of sunshine that seared her eyes through lids far too reluctant to open.
She grumbled her displeasure, curling herself back under warm, feathered covers that kept the morning chill far away and trying to lose herself in her dreams again.
Always, the same dreams.
Dreams she never dared share with anyone else. Not even Celeste or Nyx, who barely tried coaxing her out of bed before Nyx lost patience and ripped the covers away. Celeste clapped, then cupped one elegant, tawny hand over her lips, hollering in a way that the girl had seldom heard.
“Up! Get up! It’s Ascension Day!”
“Hush!” Nyx threw her elbow into Celeste’s side. “The Mother will hear you.”
“And we’ll all hear the Mother, ifsomebodydoesn’t get out of bed. We should have been at prayer an hour ago—”
The girl shot out of bed before her next breath, and the others laughed quietly, their amusement somehow lightening the room until the girl felt a smile creep across her own face. The threads of her dreams vanished beneath the here and now.
Because today was, indeed, Ascension Day.
After today, she would finally—finally—be permitted to join the others at Hala’s temple. She would first say her vows in front of her sisters, her family, and then she would climb the thousand winding steps to reach the pinnacle of Asteria and complete the ceremony at the Sanctum.
Alone, at first, before her sisters joined her for those final, sacred, secret rites.
She would emerge in the light of the full moon as a blooded faeyte. A scion of Hala, blessed and—if Hala deemed her worthy—gifted.
Today, she became just like everyone else. No longer a child, tolerated and occasionally amusing in her whimsy, but truly a faeyte.Closer to Hala. Respected, reverent, obedient, and—
“Where ingods-damned Caelumis my robe? It was hanging right here!”
Nyx gasped at her cursing, but Celeste’s smile deepened. There was a sadness in that smile, a heaviness that seemed to disappear as the girl looked at it. Perhaps it had never been there at all. “I took it last night and pressed it. Here.”
The girl breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the moon-touched silk, translucent and gifted to her the week before in preparation for her Ascension. Silver thread glinted as she snatched it up and darted from her bedroom down toward the bathing chamber, trying to keep her steps at least a little steady and tryingnotto burst into her usual sprint. At every turn, she was stopped. Other sisters, each as familiar as the phasesof Hala’s moon, smiled and murmured blessings in quiet but genuine pleasure.
It was like a cloak, that pleasure, a warm cloak that wrapped around her as Nyx and Celeste chased her from her room an hour later. Nyx had jammed pins in her hair to braid it back in an intricate but pretty white crown that immediately made her head ache.
The girl ran down the hall, her bare feet slapping against the smooth warm stone. She picked up her skirts to run faster, ignoring Nyx’s hissed protest to be careful.
After today, she would slow down, she promised silently. She would walk with the gentle, patient steps of those who came before her, Hala’s grace inherent in every movement.
Although, she would never smile at another the way her sisters smiled at her today. There would never be another girl sliding on bare, wet feet through the halls, clumsy and loud and apologetic.
Never would she get to act as a guardian to a younger faeyte, the way that Nyx and Celeste had done for her.
She was the last.
The girl shoved those thoughts away, pushed them down and buried them where they could not mar the joy bubbling in her belly at what was to come.
Today was for celebration. Even the atmosphere felt different. The way her sisters looked at her felt different, too.
After today,everythingwould change.
She had always loved to run down these halls—to skid around corners, testing how far she could swing before falling—and so today, on her last day of youth, she intended to make the most of it.
A small whoop escaped her as she gripped the corner of a wall, swinging around it—
