He put a mocking hand on his chest. ‘I’mhonoredyou hold me in such high regard.’
The scowl on her face was evident as she made her way toward the staircase on the far side of the hall.
‘Don’t forget to bathe,’ he called after her. ‘I can smell you from here.’
She flipped him her middle finger over her shoulder, his laughter chasing her up the stairs as she left him standing there. Her footsteps were slow as she trudged to her room, the blood on her hands and face feeling thicker the longer it coated her skin.
To serve her gods and her kingdom was an honor, she reminded herself.
And for someone like Aya, perhaps it was a penance, too.
3
Aya was screaming.
The sound ripped from her throat as she stared over the edge of the Wall. His broken body lay at its base, his shouts of pain piercing the air as he clutched his shattered arm, the white of his bone showing through his skin.
She hadn’t meant it.
She hadn’t meant it.
She hadn’t meant it.
It didn’t matter. Because that was blood seeping from Will, soaking the grass at an alarming rate.
Aya dashed down the path, her body trembling as she raced towards the base of the Wall. A pair of arms caught her around the waist, the grip so tight it stole the air from her lungs as she was hauled backwards. A raven-haired healer with pale skin and cobalt-blue eyes dragged Aya away from Will’s body, her face grim.
Will’s head lolled to the side, his gray eyes going blank as they met Aya’s.
She was screaming again.
Aya thrashed against the healer’s grip, fighting to reach him, to prove he wasn’t dead, to prove she wasn’t the monster she was terrified that she was.
A blinding flash streaked across the sky and suddenly she was free from the healer’s grip. Aya whirled in time to see the woman’s body fall to the ground with a sickening, permanent thud. And then …
Darkness.
Aya jolted awake, her fingers instantly finding the small blade on her iron bedside table.
A dream. It was a dream.
But her heart hammered anyway, cold sweat soaking the soft cotton of the nightshirt she’d stolen from her last rendezvous with Elias, the handsome young noble in town. She scanned the four corners of her bedroom, unable to shake the feeling that something lingered in the shadows.
The Phanmata, her father would say in the Old Language – the language of the gods.The lingering ghosts of your nightmares can do you no harm, mi couera.
My heart.A term he had once reserved for her mother, until she passed.
Slowly, Aya’s shoulders began to relax. She released the blade as she settled back against her pillows, forcing her breathing to slow.
It had been a year since she’d been visited by the healer in her sleep. The nightmare always began the same, with a memory that made her stomach roil. Then it would warp into something else entirely.
The queen refusing her a place in the Dyminara.
Will killing her for persuading him to jump.
Saudra, the goddess of persuasion, stripping her of her affinity.
But worst of all were the nightmares like tonight’s, where he never rose from the ground, and Aya would take two lives in the span of minutes.
