Daphne picked up the teapot that had been delivered in her absence and poured out a small cup. Elysia pretended to not hear the words beneath her remark. Pretended that irritation did not flare within her, threatening to tense her posture and heat her gaze. Instead, she settled back in her chair. She let her eyes drink in the delicate gold filigree swirls and dots that danced across the ceramic pot. And let out a soft murmur of agreement.
She ran one finger along the rim of her teacup. “I’ve missed you both.”
The words felt forced. Chalky and dry in her throat. But it was the best peace offering she could scrounge up at the moment. She was too tired for pretty words or sparkling apologies she wasn’t sure she even meant.
She looked between Remy’s shimmering hazel eyes and the light aqua, startlingly pale tones of Daphne’s. The former looked on with neutral curiosity and the latter ready to brandish a Fillie’s jam knife in friendship and propriety’s defense.
Remy paused, considering her words, long fingernails tapping against her arm. She then spoke gently before the jam could fly, cutting a firm glare at Daphne. “We aren’t mad at you, Elysia, but we would like to know what’s going on. There have always been parts of you and your life that are only yours, but now it’s as though all of you has gone away somewhere. I wouldn’t even know where to look to find you.”
Elysia burned with shame as the love in Remy’s words flowed over her. She ignored Daphne’s not-so-subtle mumbles. “What she means is, you’re a sneak.”
She’d been such a terrible friend these past months. But even as the shame pricked her eyes, she could find no words to tell her friends what was wrong. She had known this conversation was coming, but if she couldn’t tell Gage, the most trusted person in her life, then she surely could not tell Remy or Daphne.
Anxiety closed its fist on her lungs as the wordless realization hit her that if this many people had noticed something was off, then it was extremely likely others had noticed as well. Her time was running out before the wrong person noticed and cried magic.
She looked at her friends waiting for her explanation and prepared herself to throw them off her scent for good because she knew exactly what would happen if she didn’t.
Once when she was a small child, Elysia had escaped the castle gates, waiting until the guards laughed and joked as they always did at shift change, and skipped right out the doors.
Because rumor had it that it was Day of the Moths.
It was a time to celebrate the death of autumn, and Elysia longed to see the street filled with vendors and celebration and plumes of scented smoke.
She had heard whispers of this rebel celebration. Curled like a kitten within a library shelf, barely visible to the adults who loomed above her, she listened to them speak of what must be done to these wandering charlatans and thieves.
But she had been transfixed with what she found on Relaclave’s cobbled streets.
Women floated through the city in faded shrouds, their faces painted in shades of bone white and wretched black, all to carve them into ethereal creatures of death. They moved like shadowed wraiths, slithering and writhing like the smoke that coiled up and off of the streetlamps.
Elysia listened in rapt attention to their strange mix of accents and lamenting songs. They were priestessesfrom the temples in the city of Ryspur in Bellia, celebrating the Day of the Moths. A day to honor all the souls who had returned to the light from whence they had come. A practice Kava no longer knew or acknowledged. Yet old Kavian men who dared to remember Kava’s past offered them coin and food for their travels. Old men who knew they were in their own autumn and wished to pay their tokens to the priestesses as they had been taught.
There was such a mournful joy that evening. The women whirled and danced, their limbs and song pulling everyone back into a world where magic might exist. But it was fraught with fear. The invisible fear that whispersthis cannot last, cannot last, cannot last.
They should have listened to that whisper.
One of the priestesses had spotted Elysia, so out of place with her wide eyes in her black woolen dress with its red sash marking her as Crown. The woman threw her head back and laughed to the smoke-laden sky at the sight of her.
Elysia trembled even as curiosity sparked within her.
The woman walked closer with wanton steps meant to ensnare and delight. Ducking down low, she stared baldly into Elysia’s eyes. She clutched her small, soft child arms. “Did you feel it, child? Did you feel the call from behind the towers and gates?”
Curiosity curdled back into fear.
The priestess grinned wildly and rubbed a finger upon her painted face before pressing it to Elysia’s brow. She smiled more gently now because death could be kind, too. And then death blessed Elysia with its mark and peered deep into her eyes. “You will know when you hear your call.”
Death’s servant left as swiftly as she came.
Elysia’s heart pounded and shook within her chest.
Tower bells were ringing now. Feet and armor clashing closer.
Yet small Elysia stood frozen with fright. Her body was heavy with the weight of questions her child’s mind did not know how to form nor answer. So, she stood there clutching an uneaten sweet and sticky treat until a rush of guards flooded past her into the streets.
Because the Crown did not celebrate such things, nor would it tolerate these travelers with their strange, unwieldy customs.
The undead gods of Kava were gone.
The undead gods had no ears here and no one would dare act as their hands.
