And that name –Selene Amaris– settled upon her shoulders almost awkwardly. As though she had taken something meant for someone else.
Her head spun as Nyx grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the crowd, Celeste closing in on her other side. The girl looked back, her bare feet skidding on the marble floor.
Only the Maiden met her gaze. She nodded, smiled, and then she joined the rest.
Nobody else followed them as Nyx and Celeste dragged her in the direction of the small wooden door at the far corner of the room that led to the kitchens.
Instead, the faeytes were forming a line. One, and then another, all of them, such perfect lines that it was almost as if they had practiced. Even the Crone stood, her chin high as she slowly descended from the dais. The others made space as she walked through to the front, her cane tapping the floor as she took up a position in the middle, the Maiden at her side.
The lines formed in front of the huge doors that had always entranced Selene. Beautiful, carved, pale golden wood that towered far above her head and opened at the top of the many steps you had to climb to enter Hala’s temple.
The doors were open, as they always were. They did not turn away those in need.
None of the faeytes moved. They waited for something Selene didn’t understand. There were no prayers, no murmurs. Only a silence that felt louder than the screaming she could still hear from the town.
And then her sisters pulled her through the doorway at the back of the hall, and they were gone.
“You’ll go through the gardens.” Nyx was breathing unsteadily as she pulled Selene into faster movement, Celeste hurrying behind them. Their cloaks flew out as they broke into a run down the hallway, beneath the dark carved wooden arches that dotted the ceiling above their heads. The white adralite floor, always so warm, now felt cold and hard beneath her feet in a way it neverhad before. “You’ll get to the harbor. Use the smaller paths – you know them. There will be—,”
Her words cut off. “You will leave, Selene. Today.”
Leave?
The bottom hollowed out in her stomach. When she staggered, her sisters hauled her upright, not pausing as they pulled her on, past the curved wooden staircase that led to the upper floors and forward, toward the kitchens.
She had never left Asteria. Had never wanted to, had never wanted anything more than what she already had.
This was her home.
She had so much. And yet – it felt very much like she was losing something, as they ran.
As if she might be losing everything.
She tried to force them to a stop, her voice shrill. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Something that sounded like a sob came from Celeste. From her stoic, quiet sister, even as she pulled harder. “But you have to go, now.”
Nyx suddenly stopped, the girl almost crashing into her back, and glanced back over her shoulder down the empty hall that stretched out behind them.
They had reached the kitchens. The low wooden benches where she had sat and kicked her legs and peeled vegetables greeted her, thousands of nicks and grooves in the wood for every faeyte that had gone before her and done the same.
But none would come after.
The earlier thought caught, held.
She was the youngest. There were none younger than her.
This home had once been filled with inritus, she knew. With Caelumnai. With lovers, and friends, and partners. With children running through the halls.
But sixteen years ago, an unnamed faeyte had returned to Hala in childbirth, leaving the girl who would become Selene Amaris behind. The first faeyte born in years. There had been so few before, and there were none after.
The girl—Selene, she reminded herself, although it did not fit—had been unusual. She had been told so often enough, as the other faeytes taught her, and scolded her, and trained her, and pushed her. All of them, always, focused on her.
Almost as if…
She twisted. Her hand reached for Celeste, gripped her wrist tightly. Celeste’s eyes flew to her face, and the girlknew.
Her voice rose, high and shaking. “Who read it?”
