“It burns!” Janessa wailed, fighting against my hold.
“It’s the diadem,” Rylynn realized. “It’s cursed.”
With fae magic. The same magic that had held two hundred and twenty-one guests in thrall was now burning my sister alive.
Rylynn tightened her hold on our sister as she turned her head up to our father, still standing helplessly in the center of the temple. The priestess had disappeared entirely.
“Help her!” she demanded.
But my father only gaped like a fish, staring not at his bleeding, keening daughter, but at the diadem that crowned her head.
“It burns!” Janessa screamed again. She wrenched her hands free of mine, reaching for the diadem. The scent of burnt hair and flesh overpowered the frankincense and palmarosa.
What was left of her hair fell away in golden ribbons. The skin of her scalp blackened and began to melt. My stomach turned, but Rylynn grabbed me before I could flinch away.
“Help me pull it off!” We twined our fingers around the diadem, cool to the touch even as my sister’s hot, melted flesh seared my arm.
But it would not budge. We pulled together. Again and again and again. Until it was no longer Janessa’s flesh, but her skull there beneath the ornately wrought diadem. Until Janessa’s screams stopped. Until my sister died in my arms.
CHAPTER 10
I had a knife,but pulling it out to trim the points from my nails seemed unwise with the armed guards looking on. My teeth had to do the job instead. I kept my eyes down as I moved from altar to altar, but none of the other supplicants approached me. By the time I reached the blood fountain to eat, they were nowhere to be seen.
I hadn’t been in a temple since Janessa’s death.
They were all roughly the same—an entrance at the front, an exit at the rear, and a wall with an altar to each of the gods. The blood fountains were unique to the temples that preceded each of the gates.
I could still remember the scent of my sister’s blood as it coated my hands. More than three hundred years had not been enough to dull the memory. Her screams pierced my ears, overtaking the bubbling of blood as it fell from one tier of the fountain down to the next. I blinked, and I did not see the fountain at all, but my father, standing there presiding over the gore, gaping and fucking useless. He should have been the one to die that day, his obsession with the fae bringing nothing but death and?—
“Your meal.”
I blinked. The memory was gone, replaced by a trembling acolyte who stood between me and the blood fountain, a tray balanced across her forearms.
Garbed in the same emerald-green robes as Tomin, this acolyte avoided my eyes and hurried away as soon as I accepted the platter of food. Good. I wasn’t in the mood to chat.
My mind blanched at the prospect of eating with the memory of Janessa’s death so fresh and visceral. But by the time I balanced the tray across my lap and picked up a utensil, my stomach was already grumbling traitorously. It had been months since I’d had a full, rich meal, and the array spread out before me was nothing short of magnificent. I might not need food to survive, but it made life a lot more comfortable.
Thick pats of butter melted atop three slices of crusty brown bread, the edges sopping up the red wine sauce that bathed a cut of meat the size of my hand. And along the other edge, sliced and roasted to perfection, werevegetables. Thick asparagus, vibrant orange carrots, seasoned purple potatoes… fully colored, fully mature, and fucking delicious… not the stunted, pale versions that popped out once out of every hundred sowed in the farmers’ fields.
I hadn’t even realized food like this still existed in Velora. The gardens of the temple must be exempt from the gods’ curse. Or maybe they were imported from across the sea… I didn’t care. I ate.
I was taking my last bite when the others began to appear.
More acolytes in emerald, taking up places at even intervals around the perimeter of the fountain. They remained standing. I kept my seat on the stone bench and chewed slowly, drawing out the pleasure of every dash of salt and drip of butter.
When one of them took my plate, I sighed but didn’t resist. Not because I was above sopping up the remains withmy fingers, but because the first of the other supplicants had arrived.
A young woman about my height appeared. Pretty, her gold hair was pulled back in a tight braid that made her large, doe-eyes appear even bigger. Those eyes darted around the circle, widening at the blood fountain, landing on me, and then flinching away to stare at the ground.
Not much of an opponent. Unless she was putting on a ruse. She continued to stare at the ground. I stared at the blood fountain, but every other sense was attuned to her, making mental notes.
If I was going to masquerade as a human, then I could not use my active power. That left me with spells, but I’d have to be very careful and judicious with how I used them. Spells had to be spoken aloud, so I would have to be out of hearing range of the other competitors; not impossible, given how poor human hearing was. But the fae would be trickier. And I could only use spells when their consequences could be attributed to something else, like the gates themselves.
Quick footsteps and another supplicant appeared—another woman I’d peg in her mid-twenties, dressed in worn homespun clothing but neat and upright. Unlike the doe-eyed girl, who had taken a spot on the opposite side of the fountain, this one took the space directly to my right, with only a singular acolyte separating us.
She leaned forward, looked at me, then turned to the acolyte. “When will we begin?”
The acolyte shook their head, keeping their eyes fixed forward.
