Chapter 11

Chapter 11

M ariah had thought she knew what it felt like to shatter.

She’d thought she’d known true pain. But really, she had no idea, not until she saw the hands of the man she loved wrapped around the body of a girl who wasn’t her. Saw his lips pressed against hers, saw something spark in his eyes that she’d thought had once been just for her.

She was such a fucking fool .

The cell, already cold, dark, and wet, had fallen into further decay. Hope and any chance of leaving its captivity seeped from the walls along with Mariah’s tears. The moisture on her face had long since dried, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still feel it, right there behind her eyes, clawing for a way out they couldn’t find.

Just like she felt.

“I always warned you to remember your place, Mariah.”

She hadn’t even heard the approach of her latest tormentor. If she had anything left in her heart that could allow her to care, Mariah would’ve felt a streak of anger, of outrage, at Ksee’s voice echoing against the walls of her prison. Instead, all she felt was a slight surprise that faded into learned, defeated silence.

She was hardly shocked Ksee had chosen this moment, when Mariah was at her most broken and defeated, to show her face. To reveal where she’d disappeared to since the night she’d taken her priestesses and fled the city, days before the Winter Solstice.

To finally flaunt her victory over Mariah.

Mariah turned a vacant look to the high priestess, meeting her molten brown eyes, a soft ember of fire—a reminder of the magic that had exalted Ksee to her position—resting in her open palm. The faint flare cast the priestess and her golden robes with a sickly glow. Ksee knelt, holding her robes from the dirty, wet floor with one hand, lifting her other with the light, sneering at Mariah.

“And this … this is what happens when you forget.”

Mariah only stared at the priestess. There was no response on the tip of her tongue, no desire to rise to Ksee’s challenge.

That girl had died the day Andrian had locked the foul stone cuffs around her wrists and was buried no more than a few hours before when his lips met another’s.

“You probably still think your little Solstice was a success, don’t you?”

Ksee’s words awoke something. Not fully, but enough to spark the most subtle of flickers, faint shifts of light deep in Mariah’s soul.

Mariah blinked, a slow fading of light as her eyelids dropped and lifted. “What do you mean?” Even her voice was raw, scarred, maimed.

Ksee’s lip lifted further. “Did you really think we would let you get away with that … that defilement ?”

Another slow blink. “What defilement?” But a memory flashed into her mind. Of the day after the Solstice, when she’d placed a hand upon the pillar and reveled in the power and luminosity of the allume that her magic—her people —had generated the night before. It was a forbidden thing, to touch those pillars. Yet that hadn’t stopped her from binding the magic in her blood to them during the Solstice, nor had it stopped her from basking in her success the day after.

She also remembered that feeling she’d sensed beneath all the light. The one of twisted darkness, a black reeking of anger and fear and the pain of those who were innocent and couldn’t protect themselves. All the feelings Mariah had once set out to eradicate from her kingdom, coiled amidst her sweet light.

What a fool’s dream that was, to believe she could bring such change.

“You created an abomination,” Ksee whined shrilly. She lifted her chin, staring down her pointed nose. “Tainted the pure magic of our goddess. So, we turned to another to help correct your mistake. We were left with no choice.”

Something about Ksee’s words made Mariah’s blood run cold. Made the sparks of light in her chest beat a little harder against her heart. She sat just a little straighter, cocking her head slightly. “Another … who?”

“Another god , you stupid brat. The Consort God, Priam himself. He does not fault the choices of his Consort—he would never do such a thing—but he knows you were always a mistake. A mockery. A trick .”

If it weren’t for the shifting threads deep in her soul, threads that made the stone on her wrists burn and sting her skin, Mariah would’ve believed Ksee’s words. Would have collapsed back in on herself like a dying star, content to let the vacuum of her imprisonment consume her, body, mind, and soul.

But because of those threads, a presence she’d only felt in moments of significance those past weeks, she focused on what they whispered to her from behind the walls of their prison.

Wrong. Something, everything was wrong .

“What did you do?” Mariah asked, her voice quiet and confident in a curious, contained sort of way.

Her father had taught her to heed her instincts—something she’d forgotten in the face of love. She wouldn’t forget again.

Mariah had stood in the Antechamber of Priam. She recalled the presence she’d felt there: warm, comforting, something solid to guide the souls of the dead crossing into the realm of the gods for their final rest. There was no judgment to be meted out, no coups to be staged, no questions against the Goddess of Life to be asked.

“What did I do?” Ksee snorted, oblivious to the shift in Mariah. “Just a cleansing ritual. I have heard and learned more from Priam since the Solstice than I ever had from Qhohena.” A tinge of bitterness seeped into Ksee’s tone, something angry and wanting.

Mariah did not miss it, though. “But aren’t you a priestess of Qhohena?”

“I am,” Ksee snapped. “Or … I was. But with you, with your Choosing, I have lost my faith in my goddess. I still follow the gods, but I will do whatever it takes—listen to whatever deity honors me with their guidance, whether that be Qhohena or Priam—to protect Onita from vileness like you.”

She rose from her crouch, movement brisk, robes swishing down around the floor as she released them from her grip. With a scathing look, a final parting glare meant to strip Mariah down, Ksee turned on her heel and strode from the cell, taking the flame of light in her palm with her. The space plunged back into cold, bleak darkness.

But Mariah was awake and beginning to feel quite at home in the darkness.