Page 30 of Kissed By the Gods
And suddenly, being on my knees before a goddess who has never lifted a finger to help us feels wrong. I know I should be expressing supplication and veneration. But instead, I’m angry.
I’m furious.
There’s so much rage inside me it could burn me up, and right now, it is directed at this goddess for ignoring my mother’s prayers. It’s directed at the gods in general for the life they cursed us with.
“Fuck this,” I say it as a whisper, but the words are swallowed up by the silence too quickly for my liking.
I jump to my feet. “Fuck this!” I shout it this time, getting a satisfying echo back from the wall-to-wall mirrors and stone floor.
I won’t kneel here. I won’t kneelanywhere. I storm around the chamber.
“How dare you? Who do you think you are to play with people’s lives? To ignore people’s prayers?”
The only answer to my shouting is my own words bouncing back to me until they disappear. But this feels good. It’s cathartic.
“How dare you turn a blind eye to all the suffering? Are you not the goddess of justice? And yet you allow an entire kingdom of people to live a paltry, pathetic existence. You don’t care about your worshipers, so long as you get your offerings,” I spit the word, and take a swipe at the pretty bangles on the table. The clattering of the precious jewels and metals dropping to the ground pleases me.
There’s no response. I didn’t expect one.
“And now,” I laugh, but it’s brittle. “Now I’m expected to come here and grovel to you, to beg for your intervention so that I might live. No! You owe me! You owe my people, my family.You owe for every prayer of my mother’s you ignored. You owe for every boy that never came home from the mines. You owe for every whiplash from every soldier, for every mouth that goes without food, for every child that learns fear before they learn wonder. You,” I jut my finger in all directions, swinging around the room, “all of you gods, living your comfortable life in Sol’vaelen, have debts to pay!”
The rage in my chest expands until I think I’m going to catch on fire. It boils dangerously until it overflows and I strike out, flipping the table holding the candle stick and sending it flying across the room. It hits the mirror across from me, shattering the glass into millions of little shards that rain down on the room even as the wax splatters back at me. The heat of the wax on my face shocks me into silence.
My heavy breathing is the only sound in the room.
The candle, now laying sideways on the ground, flickers brokenly on the shards of glass, creating a prism of light that fractures. Then the flame of the candle goes out altogether, and the room plummets into darkness.
I kick uselessly at the pile of glass, and it jangles on the stone as it scatters across the floor. “Godsdammit!”
“Such a temper, daughter of Selencia,” a light, musical voice says from the darkness.
The unexpected voice has me whipping around, but I’m not able to utter a sound or take a single step forward before pain flares from deep within my body, paralyzing me. I drop to my knees, unable to control my fall. Even the pain of my knees slamming into the glass-covered stone floor pales in comparison to the agony inside. Every bone in my body must be at risk of shattering from immeasurable pressure.
A match flares against stone, and the room immediately brightens again as a new flame blazes to life. The fingers holding the match are unadorned, but are elegant just the same. Thehand guides the match to a new, pristine white candle. The flame lights the candlewick in an instant, and the woman brings the match up to her mouth, so close it might be touching her golden lips, before she puffs out a breath to extinguish the match.
The pain cascading through every piece of me is so overwhelming, it’s difficult to process all I’m seeing. My vision is blurred. But I still notice the room is … different. For one, there’s no newly shattered mirror. There’s no mirror at all, just a vast nothingness where the walls should be. There are no offerings on the ground, no kneeling stool.
And the woman in front of me … she’s magnificent. Even with the low light, her dark skin radiates with glossy perfection. Her hair is a deep, dark black and luxuriously thick, falling around her face in waves. She’s tall, with a lithe build, but it’s her eyes that really take my breath away. They glow, and the tint of her irises matches her lips—they’re gold.
“You’ll need to learn to control that temper,” she says. “Or it will carry you away.”
Part of me wants to laugh in disbelief—is she serious right now? But I’m still paralyzed, and making any sound at all is completely beyond me. I desperately try to stand. The attempt is torture, searing pain shooting down from my shoulders to the tips of my toes.
“How the mighty do fall, no?” She laughs at me. “Perhaps you’ll find after this that kneeling isn’t so bad.”
I raise my eyes back to the woman before me, but I’m suddenly distracted by the candle. Because the wax now melting and oozing down the side of that pristine white candle? It’s black—exactly like it is in my dreams.
But this is no dream.
It’s a nightmare.
“The Altor are Thayana’s chosen. The Kher’zenn are Kheris’s curse. Only the end of days will tell which will stand victorious.”
The Litany of the Divine Accord, preserved at the Temple at Elandors Veil.
