Page 10 of The Curse of Golden Blood
The moment it touched me, lightning shot through my entire body. The feeling spread through every inch of me, warming me, filling me with light. An unfamiliar calm settled over me.
"Do you feel the light?" Ciradyl spoke up. "In your blood and bones, do you feel it burning?"
"What? I don't understand—"
The light in me began to rise like a tide.
"Oh, Summerchild, you do."
A burst of golden light flooded my vision as I awoke and found myself in a grand room, surrounded by stone walls draped in rich blue tapestries. The sheets underneath me were softer than anything I had ever slept on, and the pillows smelled like cinnamon and pine. I rubbed my eyes, trying to recall where I was.
The Thunder Court. I was in the Thunder Court. And this was the bedchamber they'd given me for the night.
Pelbie lay beside me, still sleeping, her dark curls spread like a halo around her head. Her chest rose and fell with even breaths. She looked peaceful, safe. I didn't want to wake her.
But then I remembered where we were, what they planned for us, and I reached over to shake her shoulder. "Pelbie? Wake up."
She opened her eyes slowly. "Mira?"
"I had another strange dream," I told her, uncertain of myself. In the world of the fae, you could never trust anything. "I saw my sister again. Ciradyl. We were hunting together."
Pelbie squinted at me, growing more alert. "What kind of vision?"
"We found this creature—an emberhart. When it touched me, I felt..." I searched for words. "I felt light. Like fire in my blood."
Sometimes the details shifted in these visions—had Ciradyl's hair been golden like mine, or darker? Had the emberhart's antlers been red or silver? The images came in fragments, like pieces of a broken mirror, and I couldn't tell if they were true memories or dreams my mind conjured in this strange realm.
Before Pelbie could respond, the door swung open.
There stood Karys. When she spotted us, her dark blue eyes narrowed.
"Rise and dress yourselves quickly. And wipe those miserable expressions off your faces. This is not a cage, my little ones. But how you behave will decide how free you feel inside it." She waved her hand and the fireplace in the wall opposite lit up with a blaze of white flames.
"There." She pointed at the dresses waiting in front of it. "Wear those when you come down to break your fast."
"What of our training?" Pelbie asked.
"You will begin tomorrow morning. Today, you will rest, and our healers will examine you. I trust there are no objections to that?"
"No, my lady," Pelbie said, lowering her eyes. She was always so polite. Always the model of perfect obedience. It irked me, seeing how easily she acquiesced to the fae.
"Will we have any say in who trains us?" I asked.
Karys’s lips peeled back just enough to show teeth. "None at all. You will be assigned a master and you will obey their every command."
"Who will that be?" Pelbie's voice shook slightly.
"You shall find out soon enough." Karys's smile grew wider, showing her teeth. "Now, hurry along, little ones. We haven't all day. The breakfast hall is downstairs, take the main passage to the left."
With that, she left the room.
We rose and dressed in the soft, gray robes we'd been provided. The lighter the robe, the lower the status. Karys and her peers all wore deep blue robes of a thicker material.
We walked down the main passage to the left, as instructed. As we descended the spiral staircase, the sound of laughter and voices washed over us. Hundreds of Vessels were already seated around the tables in the spacious hall.
The interior was enormous, easily able to fit the entire village of Erram. The ceilings stretched on, dozens of feet high, held aloft by arches studded with large veins of amethyst. On either side of us, dozens of enormous windows stood, sunlight spilling inside.
The breakfast tables had all been set up with steaming plates and bowls of food and flasks filled with what I suspected was wine. There were piles of cheese, of fruits, of cured meats, of toasted bread. It all smelled delicious, and the savory scentswafted to my nose, tickling my appetite and stirring my stomach to life.
