Lies that chilled, urging the dark wings trapped behind my ribs to unfurl. To beat back the waves of sedation and fight for dominance, refusing to be swallowed up by the many. With a snarl, I met the lotus halfway. Clashing with the shades of my people, with thousands of forgotten sisters and the tiny handful who still walked among the living. Their ki struck with force enough to stagger, laced with pure knowledge and millennia upon millennia of combined experience. All of it bound up in the lotus’ song. Singing with a single voice, they demanded I bend.
So… hungry. Deniedsolong…
Thatwas the lotus’ truth. Perpetual denial. None had been able to quench its thirst. All those women, all thatpower, and not a single Priestess had been equal to the challenge.
Creeping… reaching through my very skin, the lotus wriggled closer. Its hunger eclipsed all but my own, desperate for more. Determined to take what I had been born to wield.
“… That’s it, Mila… let the lotus in and show us what the Goddess gave you…”
She wanted to see, did she? The great and powerful High Priestess needed a flower to show her what I wasn’t hiding?
Fine.
Lips peeled back, I turned on the lotus, seizing the delicate tendrils of ki before they could sink into me. Before they could take at will.
Let them see. Let themallsee.
I forced the lotus to drink, and drink deep, baring myself to generations past. Exposing myself to judge and jury of my peers long taken by the Void, and yet, I did not kneel. Where the lotus begged for ki, I gave it. Forced the ancient thing to feast on my excess until it was ripe and heavy in my palms. Deaf to all but the song playing an endless loop, I forced it beyond satiation. Pushed until the lotus could take no more and the High Priestess’ voice could be heard above those of my people—her words meaningless in the moment.
And still, I gave. Filling that desiccated flesh with everything I had, and in return? Their song… their knowledge… all that ancestral wisdom would be mine…
When I was finished, the lotus would sing a symphony to its savior, and no other.
With no choice but to accept, my essence rushed through tissue long left to ruin. I gave the lotus what it wanted—gave until the excess spilled over my clenched fingers and coiled about my wrists.
“… Mila! That’s enough! Stop! Mila stop!”
Enough? Oh, but I’d hardly begun! Hadn’t claimed payment for the gift I’d given so freely. Had yet to reach into the Void and seize what I was owed.
“Mila!”
Ice seared the back of my neck, shattering the delicate wisps of ki connecting me to the lotus in an instant. Lips parting on a silent scream, I was pulled from the edge by the Glaith. Forced to return to consciousness with a callous jerk, utterly drained. Denied. A debt left unfulfilled by the High Priestess herself.
“Breathe, girl,” she whispered, pushing damp hair back from my face with trembling fingers. “Come back to us. That’s it. Breathe.”
I wanted to snarl and rage. Wanted to unleash the pain of denial she’d etched upon my every bone with a pen of Glaith, wanted to scream until until I couldn’t andsheknelt in supplication, begging for mercy.
But I couldn’t.
I could do little more than what she commanded, dragging oxygen into lungs tight with agony. Blinking away tears.
So close! I’d been scant seconds from touching the Divine and all that came with it.
“Goddess,” my father whispered, his familiar voice chasing away the last of the fog clouding my vision. “What does it mean?”
But the High Priestess had nothing to say. She merely stared at what had become of her most precious belonging, keeping a chunk of Glaith pressed to the back of my neck.
Without the strength to swat her away, I gazed at my Truth.
The lotus had indeed been transformed. It clung to my wrists, fuzzy runner vines holding it secure. And from my hands?Dozensof midnight flowers. They spilled over my fingers, some tiny, others capable of competing with that of the High Priestess for size and girth. No two were the same, and yet, each and every bud shared an enchanting mix of black and silver—the most prominent among them, a matched pair the size of my palm, glimmering with lingering ki.
On the right, a silver blossom with a black heart—its twin boasting black petals streaked with moonlight.
Petals stained by my Truth, and yet, I remained unrepentant.
After all,they’dwanted to see.
Chapter 9
