Page 52 of Scourged

Ciana lifted her chin, inhaling a steadying breath. “Tell us what you know, priestess.”

The priestess glanced at Kiira, who nodded reassuringly to her. With a shallow bob to her head, the girl cleared her throat.

“Shortly before the Winter Solstice, we were ordered to leave the city and our temple by the High Priestess. We were told that the Queen Apparent was planning something horrible, and that we would be celebrating the Solstice far from her reach.”

Something horrible. Ciana remembered all that horror: the throne room filled with so much magic and light and life, it was nearly blinding.

“Many of my sisters were all too excited to leave,” the priestess continued, twisting her hands in her robes. “They were blinded by the High Priestess’s words, and … many were jealous. Jealous that a commoner was Chosen as queen, while they were simply dragged into temple servitude. They questioned nothing.

“But I …” The girl swallowed again, meeting Ciana’s stare. “Ifeltwhat happened on the Solstice. Even away from the palace, I felt it. Never in my life have I felt such raw power and magic. Something changed in the earth that night, and it was powerful, and blessed, andgood.” Conviction shone in her eyes. “I felt the queen’s power, and I knew it was real. I knew I couldn’t defy her without also defying my goddess.”

Ciana and the rest stood in stunned silence, staring at the priestess. They’d known that what Mariah had done on the Solstice was earth-shattering, soul-shaking, but Ciana hadn’t expected it to be felt outside the city, even by those simply participating in their own muted version of the celebrations.

But was it enough to convince a timid, young priestess to commit an act of rebellion? The girl’s tale certainly seemed genuine and believable. But, then again, Ciana knew well that an innocent face was more than capable of masking deception.

She narrowed her eyes at the priestess, trying to pierce beneath any façade. The girl was clearly still terrified, face washed of color, but she held Ciana’s stare without wavering. Her body trembled, hands clenched around her pale robes, but she did not falter.

A towering, golden-haired figure stepped to Ciana’s right. “Why now, priestess?” Drystan asked, voice soft and gentle. “Why flee your sisters and come back to the city now?”

The girl darted her eyes around the room, pupils wide, before settling again on Ciana. “The High Priestess visited us recently.”

“Visited?” Ciana asked. “Ksee hasn’t been with you?”

The priestess shook her head. “She was with us for the Solstice but then left. We haven’t seen her in some time, not until about a week ago. We didn’t know where she’d gone, but she didn’t look well.” There was a nervousness in the girl’s voice, a hesitation that Ciana knew was born from fear.

“Tell them what you learned when Ksee visited you,” Kiira prompted, accented voice soothing.

The girl nodded. “I … overheard some things.” She flushed. “I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but the High Priestess was saying such strange things. I owed it to my goddess to learn more.”

“Priestess,” Ciana warned. “What did you learn?”

A flush again rose to her cheeks. “The Royals have the Queen Apparent. They captured her with the help of one of her Armature, and have been keeping her imprisoned in Khento, at Lord Shawth’s keep.”

The bottom of Ciana’s world fell out beneath her feet. She reached for Sebastian on instinct, grasping his arm, digging her nails into his skin. Curses echoed around her.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Feran had approached, standing beside Drystan, voice deadly soft.

The priestess nodded. “That was why I ran. I had to get here, to you. They—the Royals and Ksee—are planning something. A ritual, or … I don’t know. But they plan to involve the Queen Apparent in it somehow, and … I don’t think they mean for her to survive.” She glanced pleadingly around her, meeting the stares of each of Mariah’s court.

Minus one, of course. But Ciana couldn’t bring herself to focus on that. Not yet.

“Queen Mariah is in Khento, and if you don’t save her, I don’t think she’ll survive the next week.”

Chapter 20

The solitude was her companion. The cold, her friend. The anger, her ally.

And the confusion … her nemesis.

Mariah stewed over the strange encounter with Andrian the night before. Everything about it was … bizarre. Not only his appearance—shirtless, bleeding, haggard—but even his steps were jilted, expression twisted yet blank, eyes shadowed yet manic. None of what he’d done made sense. From the moment he’d unlocked the door to her cell, then stepped closer to her with that small black key in his hand.

When he’d unlocked the shackles around her wrists, the stone falling to the ground at their feet, before rushing from her cell like some sort of man possessed.

She’d been left dumbfounded … until her gaze had landed on the cuffs, now lying on the ground. Elation had soared around her, and she’d braced herself against the onslaught of her magic, joyously freed from its binds.

An onslaught … that never came.

When the cuffs fell from her wrists, she’d felt nothing but empty nothingness. Not a whisper of those threads wound through her, not a single one stirred.

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