Page 89 of Scourged

“One day, I wanted to leave the stall to go down to the docks to see my father and the ships as they came in. There was this … girl.” Mariah risked a glance and saw Liliane’s cheeks flushed a rosy pink in the starlight. A smile tugged at her lips, but she kept silent.

“Her father also worked for a merchant, just as mine did. We liked to sit on the docks in the mornings and watch the ships pull into the Bay of Nria, guessing where each might have come from. Of course, only the Onitan trading vessels could make port at the docks, but we could see the other ships dropping anchor in the Bay.

“That day, she’d told me to meet her at the docks. New ships were coming in, she’d said, and she wanted to watch with me. But …” Liliane swallowed audibly. “But Father had to work a double shift and Mother said no, she needed my help at the stall.”

Tears now rimmed Liliane’s brown eyes. “I got so mad,” she continued. “I screamed and cried and threw a tantrum, like a child. I felt something boiling up with my anger, and before I knew it, flames were leaping from my fingertips, and my family’s stall was going up in smoke. All those baskets and nets that my mother spent hours weaving until her fingers bled … all gone, just because I wanted to see a girl when instead I owed my family a single day.”

Mariah furrowed her brow. She searched the girl’s face, a little surprised at how much of herself she saw there. A hunger for a life different from what she’d been born into. A thirst to forge a new path, one just for herself.

Liliane wiped away a tear before resting her hands back in her lap, recomposing herself into the perfect, poised priestess. “I couldn’t look my family in the eyes after that. Not after such shame. So when the priestesses came for me the next day, I went with them gladly.”

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes, the cavernous throne room silent and still, even with Feran lingering across from them against a pillar.

“Thank you,” Mariah said, “for sharing. I’m sorry your first experience at magic had to be like that.”

“It’s nothing,” Liliane rushed. “It was a long time ago.”

Seven years is hardly a long time, Mariah thought, but held her tongue.

“Liliane,” Mariah said instead. “I have a more … serious question for you. And if you don’t want to answer, just tell me. I won’t be offended.”

Liliane turned to her, brown eyes wide, and nodded. “Okay. I mean—yes, Your Majesty. Of course.”

Mariah smiled. “You can call me Mariah if you want.”

The girl smiled hesitantly but said nothing further.

Mariah sighed. “What did Ksee do for the Solstice?”

The question had been plaguing her long before she confronted that darkness in thelunestairpillars. It had lurked menacingly in the corner of her mind, ever since Ksee had visited her in her cell in Khento. The things Ksee had said … it seemed to Mariah that the priestess had done something. Something that might have tried to counteract all the progress Mariah had made on her own.

The noxious sludge of the darkness that poisoned theallumeslithered through her. She felt weak and tired, drained from the confrontation. It had felt like a dream, but one that chased her into the waking world. Her senses told her it was gone, but her instincts …

Mariah shivered.

Liliane swallowed, twisting her hands between her pale robes. “I wasn’t permitted near it or allowed to know. I’m too low in the ranks.” She turned to face Mariah. “But … they did something. I’m sure of it. I felt your magic that night, but I also felt somethingelse.Whatever they did.”

Mariah’s lips dropped into a grim frown, and she nodded.

Liliane might not know what had happened that night, how her beautiful magic had been polluted. But Mariah was determined to find out.

“Thank you, Liliane. I’m glad my court listened to you.”

Liliane’s shoulders relaxed, palms lying flat on her legs. “I’m glad they did, too, Your Majesty.” She frowned then, her brow twisting. “Were you ever in danger, there in Khento? Were they really about to do something terrible to you, something you wouldn’t survive?”

Mariah blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

Liliane blanched. “I’d heard—that’s why I came here when I did. I heard a rumor that they were planning something terrible for you.”

Mariah was quiet for a moment, her thoughts turning dark. As they always did, when confronted with memories of that place.

“I wasn’t aware of anything. I was far from safe, and plenty of terrible things were done to me, but they weren’t to the point of killing me. Not yet, anyways.”

Liliane’s eyes had blown wide. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty.” she said meekly. “I didn’t know. They keep so much from us—I should have come sooner.”

Mariah closed her eyes, forcing a breath. The panic of those dark memories slowly abated, washing back into the scarred and shadowed part of her. “You have nothing to apologize for, Liliane. None of it is your fault, and I am grateful you came at all. And seriously—call me Mariah.”

Liliane relaxed as she nodded again. “Okay.” The priestess gripped her robes, about to rise from her bench, before she hesitated, turning back to Mariah.

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