She tilted her head, considering if she should wander back through the portal and call the terrifying goddess back down for some answers.
Her stomach rumbled, and this made Allienna giddy. She smiled down at her feet, recalling books and tales of cravings during menstrual cycles. It was now her turn. She was going to eat absolutely everything.
Allienna moved towards the small pantry against the eastern wall opposite the large communal table. Before she considered the best possible attack on the existing food that Arryn always had so generously stocked, she pulled out a smooth-edged knife from the top drawer and slit deeply into the inside of her left palm.
Allienna winced, but she didn’t know if it was from the pain or from the shock of what she was looking at. There, from the open wound on her hand, was thick red blood painting her wrist and forearm.
Am I no longer Kinnari? Or am I no longer immortal?
It was slower than normal, but the wound did start to heal, as if there was an invisible doctor sewing stitches with a shaky hand. She didn’t know. She had no idea how she was now limited when facing the world with blood that turned once it hit oxygen.
Allienna heated a bowl of water over the fireplace and then gently removed the drying blood from her skin. She only had one job to do now.
She would count the days after she stopped bleeding, and then she would love Arryn so hard and so often that he would release himself again and again and again. She could take the pain, the touch all day if, for once, she got something real in return. Something her need burned bright for: an unconditional love.
That fire has to come from somewhere.
She was immensely grateful that he had left to release his power, creating storms and weather patterns, as neither of them could take Arryn’s continually intensified burning. Allienna could easily see wanting to throw something at his big head if he showed his faceright now. It didn’t seem fair that she had to go through all of this while he simply got to exist. He got to play creator, and she had always just been his servant. Today that felt more unfair than it did before.
She pulled out white rice, butter, and a thick red pepper curry from bamboo containers in the small ice box that pulled out from underneath the counter. Just in case she had more butter than rice, she found a soft baguette and added it to her small countertop feast, slicing through the crust as the smell of fresh bread wafted through the temple.
Eating suddenly seemed to be the only thing that mattered, the only thing Allienna could think about. She stuffed herself with more food than she ever had consumed at one time and loved herself for it. Every bit felt like a comfort, a power. Soon the feeling of her full belly set in, prompting her to take a nap and watch snow fall from the skylights above her bed.
Allienna tore off a small piece of the bedsheet, folding it and placing it in between her thighs to soak up the flowing blood. She let her eyes close and over the next three days followed a strict pattern of more eating, more sleeping, and enjoying the ache in her lower belly. It was her pain, no one else’s. She could marvel at her own feelings, her own sensations, having had so little time in her life to be able to sit with them without focusing on Arryn.
The temple was so quiet that she heard the latch on the door lift, followed by the groan of the hinges fighting to open against any settled snow. The pattern of footsteps softly thudded down the hall. There was an odd sticking, emphasizing a pop of the heel. That wasn’t Arryn. Someone else was in her home, uninvited.
Moments later, a face came into view. A child, smiling from ear to ear.
“Tristan,” Allienna said in disbelief. The child that stood before her looked no different from a nine-year-old mortal boy with curly brown hair that swayed below his jawline. He wore a long-sleeved, plain black shirt with knee-length black shorts.
This boy, the eighth original Kinnari, had been dead for a millennium.
“Is this real?” she asked him, reaching out her hand. “I thought you were . . .”
“Dead?” he interrupted. “The first victim of the Vrae?”
She wished that time would make her forget, but Tristan was murdered right in front of her when she too was a child. She could never forget.
They hadn’t yet grown into their wings, their magic still developing, still learning. The original eight Kinnari were sitting ducks when the Vrae were first released into the Earth realm, into the temple.
Allienna remembered the sharp white fangs inches from her face, about to bite down while the others screamed and ran from its multiples. Her life, never having begun, was about to end. Then, it all stopped, they were gone. All that remained was the mangled, feasted-upon body of their eighth, of the boy who stood before her.
They all barely even knew each other at that point. Suddenly, they all just existed, with no answers to who they were. Most living things had grown from infancy, the Kinnari appeared in bodies of ten-year-olds and then were mostly left on their own to learn about their gifts and responsibilities to the Earth realm.
After the Vrae attack, no one mourned, and no one wept. They just sat there staring in horror, while Djoser ran out into the snow, his back towards the temple and his hands holding his head.
“I was made for death,” he cried solemnly, discovering his magic only because of the threat.
She remembered not knowing what he meant. She remembered everyone else brushing over it. Djoser was the last to be attuned with his abilities and once he was, he would get orders from the Life Gifter to eliminate entire species, to kill kings and leaders, to bring other magical beings into extinction.
“Allienna, you’re not paying attention to me,” Tristan said in a sing-song voice. “I came here with a warning.”
The Kinnari female let her feet hit the floor and slid off the bed,her wings out behind her. She looked at the child, her eyes reflecting a mixture of sorrow and suspicion.
“I wish we got to know who you were to become. I wondered what this world, this realm missed out on after your murder, what your talents were.”
“Thisis my . . . talent, Allienna. I am real.”