“And help, perhaps I can,” Psylbe answered. “But I will need to confer with the Chronicler first. She must bless any use of my powers, even if it’s just hunting through a discarded memory.”
“There’s another complication,” Cassandra said. “The original memory is gone. It was stolen from us last night. But as Tristan said, I’ve viewed it hundreds of times, so was hoping you might be able to pull it from me to conduct the interpretation.”
“It’s possible, but the interpretation will take longer and I cannot guarantee the result will be accurate. Pulling a memory of a memory fades the details, like making a copy of a copy. Fortunately, the memory is only once removed. The more layers there are, the more difficult they are to decipher. Once I have the Goddess’s blessing, we can get started. So I must ask Cassandra, what do you seek through this work?”
Cassandra didn’t hesitate for a second. The answer had been prowling through her mind for days, a hungry, insatiable beast caged by her inability to rescue her friend. And if she couldn’t deliver it, she hoped the High Gods would.
“Vengeance.”
The Artisan spread her palms, a impish smile tugging at her lips. “The Chronicler’s favorite answer.”
And Cassandra nearly fainted at the sight of the faded red scar, similar to Tristan’s, slashed across the Artisan’s left palm.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
The Temple of Letha in Meridon was familiar, yet distorted. Like walking into one’s childhood home to find the furniture rearranged and the walls freshly painted—a disorienting pang of nostalgia-tinged melancholy.
The structure exhibited the same pale stone walls and red-tiled roof as the Temple in Thalenn, though was only half the size given the small population in the southern colonies.
Which only increased the chances of someone noticing that Xenia was very much out of place.
She breathed through her rising panic as she peered through an iron gate into the atrium. Moss-covered sandstone arches ringed the two-storied courtyard and garden beds teeming with glossy leaves and fuschia flowers lined the brick walkways.
A crowd of supplicants languished on benches and leaned against the arches. Far more than Xenia would’ve expected for a Temple this size, at this time of the morning.
The statue of Letha stood sentry in the center, the spitting image of the one back home save a single detail—the Goddess’s right arm was missing. The cleaved stump of her marble shoulder hovered above the water jug cradled in her sole remaining arm. Xenia wondered who had disfigured the statue: a disgruntled Sister, an angry supplicant, or something worse.
Xenia had no idea how she’d gotten here. She didn’t even know how much time had passed. It was still morning, but could have been days later.
As soon as Xenia had awoken from a second blissfully nightmare-free sleep—after she and Cael had achieved their tentative peace—Alexei had barreled into their cell and tugged her out without so much as a word of warning.
She’d sent a panicked look in Cael’s direction, but his face was stone cold, sharp. Not for her, she knew. For their enemies. He was showing her how to behave today. And she’d gratefully taken the lesson. Had put on an icy mask of neutrality as Alexei dragged her out of the dungeon and up into the breezeway. Alexei had pushed up her sleeve and sank a small needle into the crook of her elbow. Before she could even cry out, the world had gone dark, and the next thing she knew Alexei was slapping her awake outside the Temple walls here in Meridon.
The bells chimed eight, a soft tinkling compared to the booming gongs in Thalenn. A line of midnight-blue-clad women spilled into the atrium, pushing through the crowd like a branching river.
Xenia creaked open the gate and scurried in among the flock, fixing the square of navy silk she’d ripped from the interior layer of her skirts to cover her curls. She couldn’t risk rumors traveling the colonies about a blonde, bushy-haired kidnapper. Besides, the Sisters at the Temple in Thalenn must be aware by now that she was missing and if they heard such a description, they’d instantly know it was Xenia. She shuddered to think what Maksym would do to her—and Cael—if she could no longer be of use to him.
As she tucked in at the end of a line of four Sisters, she dipped her hands into her deep pockets, running her fingertips over the four tiny glass bottles of tainted Delirium. For her intended victims.
She scanned the heads in front of her. Two blonde, one silver, and one a deep chocolate braid so similar to Cassandra’s that Xenia had to bite her tongue to keep from calling out her friend’s name.
Which of these Sisters would Xenia damn to a cruel fate at Maksym’s hands? She swallowed her rising nausea as the group scurried down a set of shallow stone steps and passed through an arched wooden door.
Stale, tomb-like air and cool, stone walls closed in on her, devouring the sounds of footsteps and lingering chatter.
Rounding a corner, the Sisters paused as they came upon a row of stone doors evenly spaced down a dim corridor. The women separated, each aiming for her own extraction room.
Heart ramming against her ribs, Xenia followed the dark-haired Sister to a door at the end of the hallway.
The Sister swiveled and her lips lifted into a tentative smile. She was a younger woman, in her mid-thirties if Xenia had to guess. “Can I help you?”
The woman’s eyes were so kind and her expression so genuine that Xenia nearly confessed everything. Who she was. What she was doing here. Almost begged the woman to help her.
But she had no idea where Cael was being held. Couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving him on his own to die.
She wracked her brain for an appropriate response to the query. Thought about the cunning heroines from her books, and asked herself what they would do in this situation.
“I…I’m…” Xenia’s mind scrolled through an infinite number of story angles before it grasped a thread and the lie spooled smoothly from her lips. “I’m a novitiate from the Temple in Primarvia.” She raised her wrist, exposing her tattoo. She prayed to the High Gods that this woman had never been to the Temple in the northern middle colonies. “I was sent here to shadow you today.”
