Eira grabbed one of the pillows from the seat and pressed it against her face to muffle her screams.
* * *
She had exchanged one prison for another.
For two days, they didn’t let her out of her room. A servant wearing a tabard emblazoned with three vertical lines, the same as the man’s scars that she’d frozen in the alleyway, brought her food twice a day—once at dawn and once at dusk. It was the same young morphi man attending her, time and again, but he never said anything. On the night of the second day, Eira tried to speak with him.
He gave her a glare and vanished.
If he wasn’t going to help her, Eira was determined to help herself. But when she made an attempt to listen to the room, there was nothing of note to be heard. Just prayers, and murmurings, and the ravings of madmen.
She was waiting for breakfast on her window seat when the door opened and finally revealed Ferro. He spoke in that same sickly-sweet tone as before and Eira had to pretend to lap it up like nectar. He gave her new clothes—similar to what the young morphi wore—and told her to make herself clean before noon.
Thankfully, he didn’t stay to ensure the task was done. But Eira followed the instructions to the letter. The way he spoke made it sound like she might be getting out of her room, and that would be the first step to planning some kind of an escape. Or maybe just trying to get word out that she was trapped here.
Eira adjusted the tabard on her shoulders and tightened the belt. She stared at herself in the mirror, not recognizing the young woman staring back. She looked like one of them—a zealot. Eira practiced making faces of wonder, horror, and her best attempts at pious up until the moment Ferro arrived.
“Come to me, pet,” he said gently.
Eira bit back a demand that he never refer to her as such again. But instead her face fell into a trained look of relief. “I couldn’t wait to see you again. It’s been so lonely.”
“I know, but this is what we all must endure. The seclusion is what breaks your ties with the old world that misguided you and filled you with evil.” He stroked her hair as one would an animal. Eira suppressed a shudder. “But you are taking this first step with grace. Now it is time to take another.” He held out a blindfold and Eira didn’t bother objecting.
They made a right out the door, thirty paces, then a left, fifteen paces, through another door, forty paces… Eira tried to keep track of the route they took. She didn’t know where they were going yet, and it was likely they’d end up somewhere she didn’twantto return. But beginning to try to map out the estate felt like she was doing something. Eira needed every little bit of potential hope to help her maintain her resolve.
A heavy knocker thudded, startling Eira from her repetition of their walking path. She heard the grinding of metal on metal and a chain clanking. There was awhooshof air and the temperature rose slightly.
“Head up, come along,” Ferro whispered to her and pulled her forward into the warm room—thankfully not nearly as hot as her cell. Eira heard a heavy clank behind her as Ferro undid the blindfold.
She was in some kind of audience chamber. The hall was taller than it was wide, pointing at the apex. Before her was a raised platform with three large basins, burning brightly with fire. In front of these stone firepits was an ornate throne. A woman sculpted in gold loomed over the chair, her arms reaching down as if to embrace the seated elfin man.
He had a beak-like nose and short, cropped black hair that was pulled tightly against his head. His golden armor blended in with the throne, making him look like a living statue. His plate was embellished with mother-of-pearl and intricately carved with squiggles and lines like lightspinning glyphs. The man’s blue eyes were a colder shade than even Eira’s, looking more like steel than water or ice.
A robed Pillar walked toward the edge of the stage, stopping and shouting, “Eira Landan, you come before the Chosen One, the Champion of Yargen, the man who is destined to restore Her goodness and order to our world. The man who is the rock of the Pillars, our base, our foundation of righteousness.”
“Kneel before your leader, commander, and rightful ruler of Meru,” Ferro hissed into her ear.
Eira did as commanded. She initially kept her gaze on the floor out of habit drilled into her for how to approach royal meetings. But her eyes began to wander, running down the lines of more robed Pillars along the walls on either side of her.
“Ferro, you have brought before me a new supplicant,” the man who had been the Champion of Yargen said after a long stretch of silence.
“May she be worthy,” the Pillars chanted. Eira lifted her eyes to the Champion. It was impossible to tell how old he was by appearance alone—as was the case with most elfin. But he didn’t seem as young as Ferro. Though Eira couldn’t tell if that made him fifty, eighty, or one hundred.
“I do not think she is worthy yet, Your Grace, but should Yargen find purpose for her, then may she wash away the evil marks her forefathers imprinted on her soul.” Ferro said the words as if he were reading from a script. Eira was clearly not the first person he had brought forward in this way.
“And what sins they are.” Their leader hummed. “A human, from the isle of Solaris.”
“The isle of the evil one. The isle of the evil god Raspian’s former tomb,” the Pillars chanted.
It was little wonder Ferro was driven to murder if this was the world he’d grown up in—how he was taught to think about her home. But the realization didn’t garner him much sympathy from Eira. Her brother was still dead. Her fellow apprentices of the Tower were still dead. Understanding his actions wouldn’t bring them back, but it might help her out-maneuver him and the rest of them.
“Do you think you are worthy of serving me—Yargen’s Chosen?” the man asked her. He didn’t seem to have a name beyond “Champion” or “Chosen.”
“I—I don’t know.” Eira hung her head as though she were ashamed. The curtain of her hair gave her a moment to collect herself and smother the disgust growing within her for what she was about to say and do. “I have been told my people were responsible for a great evil, but I don’t understand.”
“Of course you wouldn’t, child,” the Champion said sweetly, his manner almost fatherly. The tone made her bristle. “Would you like to learn?”
“Very much.” Eira brought her eyes back to his.
