Page 11 of The Scarlet Star

A sharp, metallic sound filled her ears, and she flinched as a cold sword touched her throat, the tip hovering just below her jaw. She raised both hands slowly. “P… please… I wasn’t trying to trespass,” she stammered.

“Stand,” a deep voice instructed.

Maybe this wasn’t the Priesthood Temple at all. The thought raced through Ryn’s mind as she stood and turned, keeping herhands raised and lifting her gaze to a swordsman with a dark hood.

A set of brown eyes looked back at her. They widened, and Ryn gasped.

“Theo?!” Her voice came out high and loud. “Divinities, Theo, what are you doing with a weapon—?”

Theo sheathed his sword and grasped Ryn, pushing her against the wall with one hand and slapping the other over her mouth. “Shh!” he instructed. “Are you out of your mind, Ryn?” he whispered, looking her up and down. “What are you doing here?”

“What areyoudoing here?!” she wanted to ask, but it was muffled through his fingers.

Theo chewed on the inside of his cheek, then huffed. “Forget it. I’ll take you in.” He tugged her off the wall and ushered her around the corner to a moss-covered staircase that led to a door she didn’t see earlier. Ryn watched his sword sway at his side as he walked. She took in his black hooded cloak, the cuffs of his emerald Priesthood garments peeking slightly from his wrists.

He knocked in a complicated pattern, and the door swung open. The priest inside looked Ryn over but didn’t ask questions as Theo pulled her into a hallway filled with the distant murmur of voices. A brighter room lay at the end of the hall, and Ryn marvelled at how she hadn’t seen a single drop of light from outside.

“Did you black-out the windows?” she asked Theo.

He didn’t answer.

Ryn tried something else. “Where are you taking me?” They reached the end of the hall. “Theo—”

“To Kai,” he finally said. “You shouldn’t have come here, Ryn. We would have contacted you. Kai sent someone in as soon as you were taken.”

“Sent someone in where? What are you talking about…” Ryn’s voice trailed off as they entered a large, bright room with dozens of priests in emerald green conversing in heated debates around tables. Most of them appeared to be in their twenties or thirties, and many wore swords like Theo.

One at a time, they hushed as they noticed Theo and Ryn standing there. Theo pulled his hood off.

“Ryn?” Kai’s voice filled Ryn’s ears as a priest moved from his spot, running around a table. She gasped at Kai’s swelling bruises as he grabbed her shoulders, his jaw dropped. “You lunatic!” He slapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes stricken with horror. Then he smiled; it crept past his hand. “You escaped?! You’re such a lunatic,” he said again.

Ryn grinned. “Now we can run to a remote village and start over!” she told him. “Or we can go hide in the wasteland deserts with the tent people.”

Kai’s face fell. His eyes lost focus for a moment, and he stared off, dropping his arms to his sides. “I despise myself today, Ryn,” he admitted. His throat bobbed when he swallowed. “First for letting the Folke take you, and second for…” He bit his lip.

Ryn became acutely aware of the rest of the Priesthood watching them. They stared at her like they recognized her even though she only knew Theo and Matthias. She didn’t see Matthias now. “For what?” she asked.

“Adassah.” Someone said her name—herAdrielname.

Ryn spun, her body warming. She hadn’t been called that name in over six years.

A young man with long blond hair down to his waist and a green robe came to meet her. “I’m the High Priest. My name is Saturn, but that’s not important. The only important name right now isyours.”

“Please, let me be the one to ask her,” Kai cut in, and Saturn hesitated. A second later, the High Priest nodded and took a stepback, folding his hands neatly in front of him. With his light hair and gentle movements, he looked like a god in a painting. He also looked way too young to be a High Priest.

Kai closed his eyes and inhaled, his chest expanding and deflating.

“Ryn, I despise my Priesthood for even suggesting this,” he said. “But we’ve been talking about it for hours and they’re not wrong. I hate that I have to ask such a thing of you, but we’ve never had an opportunity like this,” he said and then swallowed. Ryn scooted back a step as something sunk into the pit of her stomach. Kai never fidgeted, yet he clasped and unclasped his hands now.

“Kai, what’s going on with you? And why does Theo have a sword?” Her voice wavered. She looked around the large room, at the big chandelier overhead, at the tall, pointed windows covered in black paint. “And why are you meeting at night in secret?”

When Kai opened his eyes, they were rimmed with red. “We’re a private branch of the Priesthood that’sdoing somethingabout the persecution of the Adriels. The rest of the Priesthood either don’t know we exist, or they turn a blind eye because they know what we’re doing is right,” Kai said. “We’ve been training in combat to defend our people. We’ve been covertly trying to gain influence across the city, especially in politics, and waiting for a chance to enter the palace.” He took hold of Ryn’s shoulders again, tighter this time, and Ryn blinked at him. She’d never heard Kai plead, either. “Ryn, I wish it wasn’t you. But you’re the only Adriel who’s ever snuck inside with an influential position.”

For several seconds, Ryn thought she was somewhere else. Like the person standing across from her wasn’t the same Kai who spent his evenings reading his studies to her. The same calm, soft-spoken priest who tended to the needs of the children on their street with his medical supplies when they scrapedtheir knees, and who delivered spare apples to all the houses down the road. Never would she have dreamed he was a part of something secret, and she couldn’t imagine him learning to fight or speaking up against the Weylin ways.

Only now did Ryn notice Kai wore a sword as well.

“Kai,” she began in her softest voice, “I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do, but if I go back to the palace, it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out I’m lying about my name. Adriels are forbidden from entering the palace grounds, and I’ve already done that. I’ll be killed for breaking the law the second my identity comes out.”

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