Page 11

Why did you do it? Why did you risk everything and die? No matter how many ways I form the question, how many times I bring it up, Mouse has never had an answer. Over the years, I learned to stop asking, if only to banish the haunted look he gets when the subject arises. Mouse, who has answers for everything, doesn’t have the one that matters most to me. Why?

Thinking of my mother is like unclenching a muscle that I constantly hold tight. I have been working toward this position, this fight, since the moment she died. To answers about this stranger whose long shadow has stretched over every moment of my life.

When Mouse is willing to talk about her as a person instead of as a champion, he does it in the same way other parents whisper folktales. She was strong and beautiful and kind. When I was young, those stories comforted me. As I grew older, especially through the years where I sat ill at ease in my own skin, I couldn’t help resenting this perfect woman who I would never measure up to. Maturity was realizing she wasn’t actually perfect, that Mouse telling me this exaggerated version of her was his attempt at keeping her memory close. Death has a way of grinding off the bad things and leaving only the good, no matter how unfair that is to those left behind.

“What was the last champion of the Moon like?” I don’t mean to ask the question. Truly, I don’t.

The voice is silent for long enough that I assume it won’t answer. But when it does, there’s a thread of fondness below the placid calm. “She was the best of champions. Canny and ruthless, loyal and violent. She was well chosen.”

I swallow down my disappointment. “Those words don’t mean anything.” It might as well be Mouse speaking. She was strong and beautiful and kind. “Tell me something real.”

A longer pause this time, a slower response. “I don’t have the answer you’re looking for. No one among the living does.”

What did I expect? For this stranger to tell me that my mother loved me, that it was hard for her to leave her young child behind in favor of her ambition … or desperation. She was loyal? Loyal to who?

“You’re right. You don’t.” I have too many questions that will never have answers. I won’t ever know that she loved me, no matter what Mouse claims. Maybe she did, but she valued her dream of making a better life for so many more than she valued staying safe so she could be a mother to me. That makes her a hero in his eyes, a martyr.

No one asked me if I’d rather have a martyr or a mother. No one seemed to think of me at all. Not my mother, who fought and killed and then allegedly used her new power to commit treason. Not my father, absent and nameless all these years. Not even Mouse, who has spent my entire life training me to take my mother’s place. There was never a question of what I want. I take a breath and close my eyes.

I want answers about my mother.

I want the people I care about to be safe, happy, and healthy.

I want the power to make both those things a reality.

The mantra has a feel of a stone smoothed from twenty-two years of worrying at it. Finally, finally, I am within touching distance of the answers I’ve spent my entire life seeking. I mean to find them. No matter what it takes.

The ritual that grants the champions the powers of their respective gods is burdened with great secrecy and conducted in the first known temples built in the city, right in the heart of the Cups District. Each is staffed with a singular priest, which seems dangerous in the extreme, but allowances must be made for the Trials.

—EXCERPT FROM THE MAJOR ARCANA: A TREATISE ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLD GODS

CHAPTER SIX

SUNSET, WHEN IT comes, seeps in like the cold on a midwinter’s night. At first, there’s only the barest warning, a hint of it creeping through the cracks in the walls and the space beneath the door. Then, all at once, you’re shivering and shaking and in danger of losing what little body heat you’ve managed to keep for yourself.

Those were the nights I didn’t dare sleep for fear one of the littles would roll away from the great puppy pile we’d arranged ourselves in. To be alone in the dark winter night is to be dead. The only difference between those times and now is that the changing energy in the temple doesn’t hurt. It sizzles against my skin with the promise of more to come.

Magic.

Rationally, I knew it was real, but to finally experience it? I wiggle my fingers, searching for more sensation, and climb slowly to my feet, my limbs having held the same position for long enough that it feels odd to stretch to my full height, such as it is. It takes me a few beats to realize what’s changed—the walls and floor and ceiling are gently glowing with the barest light, as if on the night after the new moon. Even as I think it, the glow grows.

“It’s time.” Again, the voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. “Step forward and accept the beautiful burden of becoming the Moon’s champion.”

Beautiful burden is certainly one way of putting it. I move forward, confusion slowing my steps. My mother gave Mouse as much information on the Trials as she could, but when it came to the events in the temple, she simply said there was an exchange. “How am I supposed to accept it?”

“The altar.” The voice is barely more than a whisper. “A drop of blood and a promise to seal the pact. Power in exchange for your offering.”

Ah. “I see.” Bargains, I understand. Bargains make the world go round. It stands to reason the Major Arcana don’t give away Their power for nothing. That would be too good to be true. That would be a lie.

I move to the altar without hesitation and pull the small knife from the pocket sewn into my pants. It might be proper to use one of the sickles to do this, but they’re large enough I’m worried I’d cut off one of my hands instead of a tiny slice to offer the appropriate amount of blood.

The altar itself looks like a smaller version of the divot I’d been sitting in. It’s a round piece of stone that is beautiful in its simplicity. The sickles now lie on either side of a bowl-sized indentation in the center. I hadn’t noticed them move; no one has come in or left the room since I arrived. Interesting. “That’s clear enough.”

I drag the blade over the back of my forearm and hold it over the altar. “I offer my blood to the Moon.” I watch it drip into the bowl and make no move to withdraw my arm. “I don’t have much beyond my ambition, my strength, and my wiles, but I offer all to you.” Fear thrills through me, a warning that these aren’t mere words. This promise has meaning.

Good, I think fiercely. Either I die in the Trials or I live long enough to chafe under the weight of my vow. So be it. “I offer everything,” I bite out.

“Foolish child.” There’s fondness in the voice, for all that it hardens around the last word. “The Moon shall decide if it’s enough.”