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She stared at the ground, which cracked dangerously as if we were standing on a sheet of ice.

In the distance, I spotted a few Quatura girls who had stopped. Novices who were now staring at us. Or rather at the expanding ice beneath us.

I tried to control myself, tried to sort through my emotions, even though I couldn't even classify them...

“I should have done it in your place,” Grace said, raising her head. “And I would have done it with honor.”

Her voice was collected. But that was just the Grace she always played here. Inside, she feared my power, and I knew it.

I didn’t even mean to frighten her, wished I could turn back time to the moment I had lost control during her first rite.

“You wanted responsibility, Julie.” She stared at me, and I failed to hold her gaze. “Now you have it.”

No, I never had wanted responsibility. Why didn’t she understand that?

“Do one thing right for once.”

She wheeled around, her black cloak billowing behind her in the cold winter afternoon, and left the creaking ice to catch up with Amber and Vivienna.

They would be there. They would watch. And everything inside me cringed at the thought.

It made me want to pack my things and leave. To Vanderwood, or better, far away from Blairville. But the Councils were everywhere. They would find me and bring me back in their own way.

Besides, I knew what they did to Quatura who tried to escape. They made them disappear, faked their deaths to destroy their neural networks through Salma, and used their lobotomized Quatura bodies for private research purposes.

Once they had my baby, it wouldn't be long before they did the same to me if I made even one misstep. They wouldn't need me anymore.

Another reason to make a plan to get out of here while I still had time. But until then, I couldn't let on that every second I was stuck in this cage, I desperately wanted to escape.

My spiraling thoughts couldn't distract me from reality.

They would force me to attend this ritual.

I knew I couldn't turn back time. It would have come to this anyway. I would never have had Erik’s child aborted, probably not even if I had known earlier who he really was.

Eternity Beyond Forever

Secession Studios

With her head held high, Sister Silvar – a dark blonde Air Quatura in her forties with graying hair, wearing a grey robe – walked ahead of me down the corridors of Moenia's underground system.

The stone walls of the corridors, decorated with oil paintings, ancient frescoes, elemental mosaics, and dark bookshelves built into the walls, were lit by dim wall-candleholders. A storage spell by Tana Salem, one of Blairville's first Fire Quatura, lay upon them.

I tried to concentrate on the elemental mosaics of gods and rituals, but the trembling in my limbs was so strong that at some point I had to face the fact that this was going to be the second-worst day of my life.

The woman in front of me was walking much too fast, as if we were late.

Her job was to keep an eye on me in the temple, just as Rebecca was supposed to do at Vanderwood. And Silvar took her job very seriously.

I often spotted her less than ten meters behind me. When I ate, when I walked through the greenhouses behind the parks. Even when I read in one of the study rooms down here, she sat a few meters away and read as well.

I wasn't afraid of her, only of the fact that she was under Gloria's influence. And of the things she would do to me in a few moments.

The lump in my throat balled up into a massive chunk and hardened into a stone as we took the last staircase to the corridor with the main entrance to the great temple hall.

I was naked under the robe. And I was trembling.

I stopped.