For a brief second, Rowellyn’s bow glowed with soft blue light. Her eyes widened, a million questions in them. But I shook my head. The sun was tracking higher overhead with every passing second.
“Go.”
Rowellyn did not ask any of those questions. Nor offer thanks, though I could not have accepted them. This was the least that I owed to my sister.
I started the walk back to my sisters, my feet heavier than before, my chest, too. I would never return to the glade. There was no peace to be found there anymore.
CHAPTER 34
“Are you all right?”
I blinked through the weight in my chest, the block of ice that had formed the first time I’d met Rowellyn somehow present once again, as real as it had been that day in the glade.A place where you have felt peace.
Peace was not among the Dark God’s gifts to the witches. Nor had the gods gifted it to me in the twenty-three years of my mortal life. If I’d had any as a child, it died with my mother before my sixth birthday.
I refused to feel sorry for myself. But Tomin’s golden honey eyes shone with emotion he did not try to shield. Pity. Sadness. Even in the darkness of the cave-carved temple, it was impossible to miss them.
The scrape of his palms against was mine too intense to bear. The walls of the temple themselves pushed in on me, the darkness that was supposed to be a witch’s solace caving in until it threatened to crush me.
I jerked my hands from his grasp. “Keep your tricks for the fools who need them.”
The pity in Tomin’s eyes did not shift to hurt. He saw me pulling away, pulling into myself, and he felt bad for me, still.
He did not need me as a friend. I was a supplicant, he an acolyte. He had entire temples full of companions. Before long, he would be a priest in his own right and have a bevy of acolytes at his command. He did not wantmeas his friend.
I was alone.
I ran back to the dormitories, too deep in the torrent of my own emotions to care about how much noise I made. I wrenched open the door and threw myself into my bed. Across from me, Garrick sat up.
I buried my face deeper into the cloak that I’d layered atop the blankets and sheets. I would freeze the sob in my chest before I would let him or that fae bitch hear it. After several minutes, the mattress groaned. Garrick laid back down. But neither of us pretended to sleep for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 35
“No,”I groaned at the hand shaking my shoulder. I’d only just gone to sleep. And by some mercy from Seraxa, it had once again been dreamless. Actual sleep, not the charade that Garrick and I had put on the night before.
Someone whispered, and there was that bony hand again.
“No,” I growled, rolling in my bunk and throwing an arm over my shoulder. The back of my hand connected with someone’s face, a yelp echoing off the carved walls. No one was grabbing my shoulder anymore. That was all I cared about.
I started to roll back to my stomach?—
A strong hand caught my wrist. I recognized the size and breadth of that hand, even half-asleep. Which meant I wrenched away harder, even as my back arched in a completely involuntary and wholly humiliating attempt to get closer to him.
“It appears our first sacrifice is sleep,” his voice rumbled, still husky and rough from slumber. My stomach flipped over inside of me. Is that how he would sound?—
“Stop!” I screeched, to no effect.
Garrick dragged me upright and to the edge of my bed. I was so disoriented, I did not fight him half as hard as I should have. But reality was slowly sliding into place. The other supplicantsalready stood at the door of the dormitory, each flanked by an acolyte in their customary emerald robes.
Nash had arrived in the late afternoon, Nimra an hour after him. The time of making small talk had passed. We all kept well clear of one another. Except for Garrick, who lurked behind me like a shadow.
Garrick only allowed me to shake him off once I put my feet to the stone floor and started dressing. A mass of green hunched over the end of the bed, rubbing at their eye. I recognized the other acolyte, rubbing the injured one’s back and murmuring something about Xyta. But this time, Tomin did not look at me and wink. He did not look at me at all.
I am alone.
Which was exactly what I deserved.
I begrudgingly joined the procession of supplicants, Garrick at my back. There was no parade around the temple this time and certainly no breakfast. Varian and her minions marched us out of the dormitory and into a dark hall that challenged even my heightened senses. I reached out a hand to find the wall that I could sense but not quite see. Like the rest of the temple, it was roughly hewn. I kept my hand there, letting the solid rock anchor me as we walked deeper and deeper into the mountain.
