Page 61 of The Dead Saint

Even now, several days later, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Lacus and the lake. What she truly wanted was for things to return to how they’d been before the Empire of the White Snake had moved west and south. She wanted Ines to gossip with and Kahina Kira to help interpret dreams and Rohan to answer questions about the tattoos he had planned for her. She wanted to read all the books and scrolls in the library, wanted to read the most secret of them, and come to truly understand her place in the temple. As the oracle. The vessel. If she went on, collecting the relics at the behest of Prince Eine, then it was possible her friends and family would return.

But at what cost?

Sorcha followed Adrian to the cliff edge, holding her breath.

“Ready?” Adrian asked, ready to let her go, to drop her. “Hold on.”

Sorcha nodded, looking down and touching the rope around her waist and thighs with the lantern tied to it—checking and double-checking. She met his gaze and searched for the man who’d whispered shattering words into the wind, hoping they’d take them away, that they wouldn’t linger between them. She was sure now he hadn’t meant for her to hear him.

Heart pounding, stomach in her feet, she let them swing her out. Rain misted her hair and face, the wind blowing up her skirt as she hung over the rocks below. With a creak of wood and rope, the Black Tomeis began to lower her.

Adrian stood at the cliff edge and fed out one of the guiding ropes, eyes following her down. But his expression gave her nothing.

* * *

Sorcha bumped against the cliff face, scraping her shoulder, and small stones tumbled away into the waves below. It was a boiling pot she would never come out of if she was dropped into it. Wind whistled in her ears, drowning out everything else, even the churning water below. It cried and wailed against her, against this intrusion, warning her away.

But she had to go on. There was a cave, and within that cave lay a relic—the Saint. She would retrieve it, pull him out of his hiding place, and into the light of day.

Above, Adrian and his Black Tomeis waited, silent and suspicious, stony faces unreadable. They watched to see if she would succeed or fail, fall or rise triumphant from the sea. And what did Adrian watch for?

Adrian.

Sorcha felt the change between them in her gut. The path they were on was beginning to alter. It wasn’t the straight-and-narrow way Prince Eine had laid out before them any longer. But she wasn’t sure yet. All she knew was how she felt, the suspicion, an edge, a hint, a whisper. A soft murmur that, if she listened too closely, would vanish. Yet it was there, at the edge of her consciousness, this feeling that Adrian was tied to it all.

Sorcha bumped slowly down the cliff, jerking to a halt, the rope slipping. She cried out, the wind whipping her voice away. For a moment, she thought there was an answering cry from overhead. She lifted her face to the sky as the misting rain intensified. A bank of fog rolled over the cliff edge, gliding toward her in a wall of soft white. She gripped the rope with two red-gloved hands. It engulfed her, bringing a deafening silence and wrapping her in a cloud heavily scented with evergreen and a hint of dampened campfires.

One breath and then another passed while she twisted at the end of the rope, suspended in a world of white. It morphed and swirled around her, shapes forming and blurring, her mind turning the nothingness into faces.

The rope creaked, and she dropped several feet, her stomach free-falling. Then she saw the mouth of the cave below her—a narrow opening, barely large enough to squeeze into.

“Stop!” Sorcha called up, still falling. “Stop!”

The rope jerked to a halt, and she swung back and forth. The lantern was unlit. She would have to scramble in the darkness, light it, and hope it would stay lit. She had no idea what the cave might contain. There was a relic there, and that was all that mattered, but no hint of what might protect it. She hoped it was the remote location and nothing more; the ocean and the cliff and the waves and the incessant wail of the wind fighting to blow her away. This was dangerous enough.

And yet, in each place they’d gone, there had been something—man or creature, monster and myth. The Saint had never been left alone. Each piece cared for, cherished in these out-of-the-way places. And waiting for her.

Reaching the opening, she stretched out a foot, scrambling for it. The wind caught her, twirling her away, sending her in an arc that brought her out farther across the water and rocks beneath. The taut rope creaked with her weight.

She was grateful again for the gloves, for the protection and warmth they provided. For Adrian insisting she wear them.

That was another thing, another part of the unconscious whisper at the back of her mind. Adrian recalling her from bleak visions in the night and riding beside her in the day, the hint of emotion in his black eyes.

She pushed it away and reached for the cave opening again as she swung back, foot catching on the lip and landing one hand against the stone. She gripped the rope with the other, fingers aching, fumbling for a firm hold.

Panting with the effort, cold with fear, she managed to get inside and tugged the rope to let them know she’d made it. She took several steps into the darkness, bringing the rope with her—a lifeline to the top of the cliff, to Adrian, to the world beyond this secret place.

After opening the lantern hatch, she fumbled with the flint. Orange sparks fell before it caught; light jumped, pale yellow with a tinge of blue at the edges. The wind howled at the cave mouth, frustrated with her escape, leaving her ears aching. She was free for the moment, her body filled with her pounding heart and gasping lungs. She took a breath and then another, closing her eyes and picturing the silent temple, the quiet of sunbeams with dust motes, the muted city beyond the walls.

She waited until her heart calmed, until breathing was easier, until the fear receded from her mind, before beginning down the passage.

* * *

The lantern light shone across the painted walls—the stone beneath smoothed to perfection, the paint bright even after countless years. It had been a time of peace. Each new section that was illuminated depicted prosperity and happy people. But Sorcha knew the Saint’s life had also been filled with death and retribution. He’d brought vengeance with him, dealt out death to nonbelievers, and terrorized nations. But that had all been forgotten, his followers dwindling down to hundreds instead of thousands, his reach fading into history.

There were still believers, the faithful praying in temples, protecting his remains.

And she was one of them, wasn’t she?

---