Page 58 of Kissed By the Gods
I fall to my knees, lowering my head. I squeeze my eyes closed, where no one can see, and a single tear escapes, traitorous and silent. It’s the only one that I dare risk as I grieve—not only for my family, but for a version of myself that will never come to be. For Leina Haverlyn, a girl who wanted to grow old beside Alden, her best friend and her love. Who would have planted herbs in the garden and woven days together with laughter and the smell of rising bread. Whose children would have known the comfort of their grandmother’s soft hands and ancient lullabies.
That life—simple, beautiful, heartbreakingly human—is gone.
Instead, I’m this. This woman that fights. A deep cold creeps in, and there’s no Alden to wrap his warm arms around me. The stone is frigid and unforgiving. I press my fingers against it anyway—not for comfort, as there is none to be found here—but to anchor myself in my new reality. I curl my fingertips over it, holding on with desperation. I don’t want to drift away entirely.
Then a hand moves across the stone—deliberate and maddeningly slow. Ryot, kneeling next to me, bracing his hands on the ground. He brushes his pinky against mine, just a whisper of a touch. But it might as well have been lightning for the way my heart races.
I peek up at him, but he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t acknowledge me in any other way, keeping his head bowed. Still, his hand lingers there, touching mine. Close enough to unravel something in me I didn’t give him permission to touch.
It shouldn’t mean anything. He’s not Alden. He’s not safety or sweetness or soft promises whispered in the meadow. He’s flint and friction; the scrape of something real, something that doesn’t pretend to be gentle.
But for one reckless second, I let my finger stay where it is, touching his.
Maybe I should pull away.
But I don’t want to.
The Elder steps forward, until his boots are next to my fingers. I pull my pinky back. “Do you come before us with full understanding of what you forsake?”
I swallow hard. My name. My past. My family. Seb and Leo.
But I gain something here, too, and I can’t let myself forget that. Here, I gain leverage and power for those very same people.
“I do.”
“Do you swear your loyalty to the purpose of the Synod, forsaking all others?”
My mind races, parsing the words. “Can you state the purpose of the Synod, Elder?”
A silence follows, heavy and weighted. It’s enough that I raise my eyes a fraction, to find the Elder’s gaze on me with approval glinting in his eyes.
“You ask for the purpose of the Synod? Then know it, Leina Haverlyn—while you still have the name to give. The Synod exists to hold the line between this world and oblivion,” he says. “We protect mortals and the divine alike from the chaos that stalks at the edge of creation. From theKher’zenn—the death demons and harbingers of ruin, the spawns of Kheris, goddess of chaos, who seeks to unmake all that exists and return it to void.”
He raises the dagger slightly, and the flickering candlelight dances along its edge. I can’t look away. His words are both myth and the naked truth.
“We are weapons in the hands of the divine. The Synod was not made to rule, but to resist. We are the watchers, the warriors, and the sacrifice.”
In a nearly silent murmur, he finishes, “We give up everything so the world may go on.”
That last breath holds everything he’s lost. Men and boys, friends and commanders, pieces of himself, his family. A life beyond war, with laughter and pleasure and love.
“Will you swear now, Leina Haverlyn?”
“I swear,” I manage.
The Elder nods, once. “Repeat after me, Leina Haverlyn:
“I vow to stand against ruin.
“I will shield the sacred realms from chaos,
“guard the thrones of gods and the hearths of men,
“until the stars fall from the heavens and the seas swallow the earth.
“My blade is not for power, but protection.
“My life is the barrier; my will, the flame.
