Severine’s chambers were as quiet and pristine as ever. But as I approached the bed, they felt strangely tainted, like everything else in this palais—this world of tarnished promises and gilded lies. Tainted like the jewels embedded in my neck. Tainted like my reflection in the cold honest mirror in the corner. Tainted like the devious little book I held in my hands.
Finally, I stood over my sister. Her face was placid, her lips parted as if she had some secret to tell. My hand closed over her slender throat, where a pulse still beat. My fingertips squeezed, testing the limits of her unyielding form. Lullaby’s voice echoed in my ears:
What are you waiting for?
What had I told her?I’m waiting to prove her wrong.
I sighed, lifted my palm from her throat, and slid her diary gently beneath the hands folded across her stomach. Her fingers, nondescript without their trademark red varnish, seemed to convulse around the little book. For a moment, I fancied I could sense all my sister’s forgotten desires, sweet as honey and bitter as death. I sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
“It would have been us.” My voice rang strangely in the silence. “If things had been different, it would have been you and me in that arena, battling over ancient Relics and vying for our father’s throne.”
My hand brushed against my chest, my thumb fitting against the spot where the pendant usually rested. They’d taken it from me for the third Ordeal, and its absence was like a hole in my heart.
“I believe you, you know. About Seneca. About how hard you fought to save the brother you loved. He must have meant so much to you, for you to risk so much.”
Silence was my only response. I sighed.
“When I first came to the palais, I told Dowser I didn’t care about my parentage. I didn’t care about my family. And I meant it.” I ran a fingernail along the seam of the quilt. I’d never told anyone this before. Not even myself. “But it wasn’t always true. When I was very little, I used to beg the Sisters of the Scion to tell me where I came from. Sometimes, the younger Sisters relented. I was the child of a star and a sunbeam, they said. I was a Dominion shadow who got lost in the Dusklands. I was a dream of the Scion come to life.
“Later, I realized those were just stories—fairy tales to mollify a child. So I concocted my own fantasies. I was abandoned by poor miners. I was a terrible monster whose powers might blot out the sun. I was the secret daughter of a dead emperor.” I smiled a self-mocking smile. It hurt my bruised face. “But nothing I thought up was as brutal and heartbreaking as the truth—that I’d once had a family, but they’d all driven each other mad or slaughtered each other before I was even born.”
I leaned down, so my mouth was very close to Severine’s auburn-ringed ear.
“I hate you for many things, sister. I hate you for being wicked. I hate you for being cruel. I hate you for all the pain you caused to the people I care about.” Air stabbed into my lungs, a keen lament for never. “But most of all, I hate you for loving him when you never even tried to love me.”
The day of the third Ordeal dawned like a curse, all blood-streaked skies and shadow-black clouds. I left my chambers feeling raw and blank, as though the rage of painful emotions I’d felt over the past few days had scrubbed me clean and empty. Gavin had agreed to postpone the third Ordeal until I had time to heal, but even after a week my body felt strange to me; my movements unfamiliar, each step a question mark. And I couldn’t stop touching the diamond shards lodged along my throat and cheek—my palm bore score marks where their brittle edges sliced my skin.
I marched toward the Oubliettes, but Coeur d’Or’s shimmering halls looked strange without Belsyre’s black wolves patrolling the corridors. I’d grown accustomed to their upright forms standing guard outside doorways and between pillars, their strict uniforms like scraps of Duskland shadow, their emerald signats like memories of evergreen kisses.
Gavin’s Husterri had already moved into their role. Dowser assured me it had been an organic transition—the palais needed guarding, after all, and neither Skyclad nor Loup-Garou were available—but the sight of their vermilion-and-ivory uniforms set my teeth on edge. I scanned their faces for emotion—sympathy, loyalty, even loathing—but they were sun-burnished and Scion-blank and if they felt anything, they hid it well.
Dowser and Lullaby came to wish me luck before the Ordeal began, but their gestures were cursory, almost rehearsed. We all knew that everything that needed to be said had already been said. Luca crossed over from Gavin’s contingent of well-wishers to clasp me in a swift hug.
“Be careful.” His hazel eyes gleamed like he wanted to say something else. But then he turned and climbed up into the stands with his new friends.
Leaving me and Gavin alone on the floor. By now, the introduction to the Ordeals felt like a dance I’d learned the steps to. Arsenault lofted the ambric Heart Relic—my Relic—and spoke about truth, integrity, righteousness. My fingers itched with the force of some desire I couldn’t name, and I lifted my hand to my chest, where the Relic’s absence was a kind of weight. My heart throbbed with the promise I had etched onto it:win, win, win.
The Relic fell into its slot. Amber light whispered over the edge of the dais and oozed onto the floor. It pulsed its way across the room in rivulets—veins, arteries—and I swallowed against the metallic tang hanging in the air. The light was darker than I’d expected—red as sunlight, red as blood. It slipped beneath my boots and led me away into the labyrinth of the Oubliettes.
As with the first two Ordeals, an emblem appeared—a gleaming sun. I quickened my steps, preparing to reach for it, but it grew no closer. It just hung somewhere in the distance, a seething eye in a dusky sky. I broke into a run, keeping my arms loose in case the floor fell out from under me or a crystal warrior came lurching around a corner. But I wasn’t getting any nearer. Uncertainty struck through me, and I slowed. I spun on my heel, staring back the way I’d come. But I only saw unyielding darkness, glowering like the heart of Midnight.
“Sister Sylvie!”
The voice clanged into my ears with a wrongness I couldn’t name. I turned back. The light from the distant sun scalded my vision. A figure resolved through the glare, striding toward me across a dust-swept courtyard. She wore a greying, threadbare habit, and her colorless hair was pulled back into a bun beneath her fraying veil. After a long moment, I recognized her—Sister Cathe, from the Temple of the Scion.
“Do not stare so hard into the darkness, Sister,” she scolded. “Dominion shadows will seek you out if you look away from the Scion’s light for too long.”
“I—” My heart thudded strange and dull in the cavern of my chest. I too wore a threadbare habit, too tight at the shoulders and gaping at the waist. “What am I doing here?”
“You were supposed to be sweeping the courtyard.” Sister Cathe nodded at the broom gripped in my hand. “But now you’re late for Salutations. Come along.”
Bewildered, I followed her into the Temple. Dusty, crumbling walls bore faded frescoes of familiar scenes: the Scion in his kembric chariot, resplendent with his Relics and his holy fire; the dusk-cloaked Moon, turning her face away from the light; the hounds of Meridian, named Dexter and Sinister. I’d passed by these walls every day for as long as I could remember, but now their ancient pigments and decaying varnishes caught my eye with inexplicable precision. What was it about today—?
“Sister Sylvie!” Cathe hissed. She gestured brusquely toward the fane. I hurried my footsteps, sliding into the vaulted space behind her.
The scent of cheap tallow candles slapped me in the face. Amber light blossomed against a cobwebbed ceiling. Voices raised in benediction followed a ritual cadence that was as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. I bowed my head and joined in, my lips mouthing long-memorized prayers as I racked my brain for the error in this tableau. It was the feeling of walking into a room with a purpose, only to have it slip out of your mind the moment you crossed the threshold.
I remembered darkness—yes, shadows thick as Midnight. And the sun—yes! the sun!—hanging low and still and distant—and I had todosomething, I was meant to be earning—
