Page 118 of The Half King
She strode across the lawn while raising her hands toward the hedges, willing them to stretch forth their branches and cover the carriage wheels. They sprouted, one branch atop another, thicker and thicker until not a glimpse of wood or metal remained.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “Except to the goddess. Then she can deliver the justice that you deserve.”
Father Padron turned around and leaned against the hedges for support. Though he was weak and bleeding, he laughed at her, a reaction that struck her as odd. It was then that she realized her mistake. He’d predicted that she would follow him.
He had lured her there and set a trap, and she’d just walked into it.
The space around her formed an invisible cylinder, and then dirt began to fill it from the ground up. It seemed Father Padron lacked the strength to stop her heart, so he meant to suffocate her.
Thinking fast, she conjured a bubble of air around her head. Dirt rose up to her face, blocking her view. She imagined the cylinder bursting apart. When that didn’t work, she envisioned a hole opening up at the bottom of it, wide enough for her to crawl through. It took two tries to pierce Father Padron’s magic and another two tries before she managed to squeeze out onto the grass. She stood up, shaking the soil from her body, and found half of the carriage wheels uncovered.
“I told you,” she gritted out. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She braided the hedges back together, this time trapping him between the branches. Her mouth watered with the metallic tang of magic. She could choke him, make him suffer the same death as Nina.Yes, she decided. But as she willed the branches to wrap around his throat, a sharp howl rang out from inside the sanctuary, and she whirled toward the sound.
Blue.
She squinted through the open doorway, but the air had turned hazy, and she struggled to make out Blue in the distance. He seemed to be writhing on the floor, surrounded by the sandaled feet of priests.
Cerise tensed to run to him, but she hesitated. Father Padron would never be this weak again. This was her chance to end him, to make him pay for what he’d done to Nina. If she left to go and fight the priests, she might not have the strength to kill him when she returned.
She was still wavering when Blue cried out in agony, and the decision made itself. She wove another thicket of branches around Father Padron to hold him in place, and then she spun around and bolted back inside the sanctuary.
The room was in ruin.
Someone had knocked the sacrificial bowl into the curtains, which had caught flame and filled the air with smoke. Figures ran to and fro, but she couldn’t discern who anyone was. She dropped to her knees to peer below the haze and crawled closer to Blue. She counted ten pairs of feet around him—too many priests for her to fight alone. Then she noticed the faces of the fallen, some of whom she recognized.
There in front of her was Father Bishop with his neck broken, and beside him lay sweet Lark, the young, freckled maid who had once braided Cerise’s hair, now slain, her eyes open and sightless, exactly like Nina’s. Another girl of no more than fifteen lay sprawled beneath the weight of a stone slab that a priest had cast onto her chest. Sandaled feet trampled over the girls as more priests gathered to surround Blue and combine their magic against him. When one of the priests stepped on Lark’s face, Cerise felt her heart rend in two, and she realized something that had eluded her before.
Lark meant nothing to the priest. He didn’t value her life. He didn’t respect her in death. And he never would. None of them would.
So it was within the Order. These were the same men who had rejected Cerise in favor of a monster of their own kind. They would never accept her as a priestess, because to them, women were objects to be tamed and controlled or else threats to be cut down. Even the goddess had been no exception. The priests of long ago had resented Shiera’s power so deeply that they’d tried to dampen her flame. A thousand years later, the Order still hadn’t learned, hadn’t changed. They would rather extinguish a woman’s flame than stand in her warmth.
As above, so below.The flame you seek to dampen will consume you.
Cerise finally understood her purpose. It wasn’t to restore balance to the Order; it was to raze it to the ground and build something new.
She turned her gaze to the enchanted murals on the ceiling. Through the smoky haze, she found the vengeful side of Shiera’s face—one eye blazing, her upper lip hitched above a lethal incisor. Cerise didn’t shrink away from the sight. For the first time in her life, she understood the value of wrath over mercy.
“Mother Shiera, mistress of worlds,” she called out in a voice that matched the goddess’s fury. “You are darkness and light, balance in all things. You foresaw that to give more power to your own sex would create instability, and so you favored the priests with magic. But now, balance is lost. Power has rotted them. They use their holy gift to dominate and murder your daughters. Hear me; make me your vessel. Punish my enemies and yours. Fill me with your flame, and let them be consumed!”
Ebony fire erupted from the burning altar. Cerise yanked free the golden chain Nina had given her. She sent the chain slithering across the floor and commanded it to lengthen and loop around the ankle of every priest left standing. Then she reached a hand toward the burning altar and imagined a link between herself and the flames. She opened herself like a conduit, channeling the flames through her body and into the metal necklace.
Scorching heat flowed through her. The black flame seemed to boil the blood inside her veins. She screamed out in agony, her limbs trembling while she held the connection. Throughout the room, bodies stiffened and fell. The smell of burned hair and flesh rose above the smoke. Even still, Cerise willed the goddess to give her more fire, more vengeance, until the final priest dropped and she broke the link.
She collapsed onto the tile floor. In the wake of the sudden deaths, shouts of confusion broke out, followed by retreating boots. She dragged herself to Blue’s body and gently skimmed her palm over his hide. His tongue was lolled to the side, his eyes rolled back in his head. He didn’t even try to sit up, and that scared her the most. The priests had wounded him in places she couldn’t see.
She darted a glance at the garden door while stroking Blue’s head.
“I’m here, sweet boy,” she murmured. “They can’t hurt you anymore.” Closing her eyes, she poured what remained of her energy into his body, imagining his broken bones mending and his severed tissue knitting back together. She gave him everything she had, and with her last drop of magic, she enchanted him to sleep so he wouldn’t suffer.
When she had healed Blue to the best of her ability, she stood up and swayed for a moment, gripping her thighs for support. The curtains had burned out, and with nothing else in the prayer room to catch flame, the air was beginning to clear. She followed her own trail of dirt back to the garden. Along the way, she passed a discarded sword and picked it up, but she had little hope of using it. She had been gone for too long, and Father Padron was too clever to have stayed where she’d put him.
She stepped outside, and her shoulders rounded. The carriage was gone, the hedges shredded into piles of leaves. She didn’t bother walking to the hedge wall to scan the horizon for him. Even if she knew which direction he had gone, she was too weak to ride after him. She plunged the blade into the grass and raised her face to the moon.
Tonight, she had broken more than a curse.
She had broken everything that mattered.
