Page 104 of The Gilded Ones

And that’s when White Hands sent those deathshrieks to Irfut.

The irony of it stings. Those deathshrieks did everything they could to rescue me, but I commanded them to leave, thereby dooming myself to that cellar. I was the agent of my own suffering.

But perhaps it is better I experienced that pain. Being raised in Irfut taught me what it meant to be a human girl – to believe so deeply in the Infinite Wisdoms only to eventually be caged in by its never-ending commandments and finally betrayed by the horrors of the Death Mandate.

If I am to fight for women – all women – I have to understand how human girls think, have to have experienced the same pain that they did.

I keep that in mind as I nod at White Hands. “More than ready,” I say.

“Then it is time,” she says, gesturing.

A pair of the elder alaki walk forwards, shimmering white armour in their hands. It’s infernal armour, I know, but this is a type I’ve never felt before. If regular infernal armour tingles, this one explodes like fireworks. A thousand colours ripple across it, like a rainbow reflecting in a lake.

“A gift from our mothers,” White Hands explains, “celestial armour – a worthy addition to your first gift.”

She points to Ixa, who’s waiting at the side of the cave, covered in the same armour as mine. He has wings now – beautiful blue wings that glisten with feathers and scales, just like the rest of him.

“The goddesses gave me Ixa?” I gasp, shocked.

White Hands nods. “Every child needs a pet, and what better pet than one that changes form and can protect you when you’re vulnerable.”

Ixa is undoubtedly all these things and more.

I knew you were mine, I whisper to him.

De…ka, he agrees happily.

Once I am completely armoured, I turn to the water, gazing at my reflection. I barely recognize myself, barely recognize this girl wearing winged armour and carrying shimmering double swords. My eyes peer back at me, a distracting grey in the brown of my face.

The same grey of my father’s eyes as he beheaded me. The thought fills me with anger, regret.

The man I left in Irfut was never truly my father – none of his blood runs in my veins. Perhaps that’s why he abandoned me so easily to the Death Mandate. Even though he always claimed me as his own, something deep inside him must have whispered I wasn’t his. That I shared none of his flesh, none of his blood. Like the goddesses who created me, I am completely divine – a creature neither deathshriek nor human, with the ability to mimic both. I can be whatever I want to be.

And I no longer want to be anything like that man.

Even as I think this, my eyes are changing, darkening. When I look in the water again, they are the same black of White Hands’s eyes – of the elder alaki’s. They are the eyes that truly belong to me, the eyes that have always belonged to me.

They’re the eyes that show I have matured into my power.

Smiling now, I put on the war mask that comes with my armour, then turn to White Hands and Katya, who will be accompanying me on a gryph of her own. It rumbles when she pets it with an armoured hand.

“I am ready,” I say.

White Hands smiles, strokes my cheek fondly. “Remember, you are of the divine. You cannot be killed by mortal means. The only thing humans can hope to do is imprison you, as they did our mothers.”

“I will.” I nod.

“Then let us go.”

We fly out of our mountain cavern to the roar of battle. Below us, armies crash into each other, alaki and humans fighting deathshrieks, red and gold blood against a sea of blue. The metallic smell rises into the air, accompanied by the earthier smells of piss and vomit. Battle smells. The smell of death and dying. My stomach clenches. Now that I know what the deathshrieks are, I cannot bear to see my bloodsisters raising their arms against them, unknowingly raising arms against their own kind. I cannot bear to watch them kill each other. My friends’ faces flash before my eyes – Britta, Keita, Belcalis, the twins, the other uruni. If something happens to them during this senseless battle, I don’t know what I would do.

I try to force back my fear as I stand on Ixa’s back, mimicking White Hands and Katya, who are standing on their gryphs. The armies don’t notice us yet – they’re too busy fighting each other, too busy killing each other. They don’t notice the army of alaki marching towards them, swords at the ready.

Now I know the reason the deathshrieks kept attacking the villages, the reason their captives were always young and always female, the reason I saw that little girl running away in the jungle during that long-ago raid. Deathshrieks can smell girls on the cusp of turning into alaki, smell the gold running in their veins. All this time, deathshrieks have been rescuing their alaki sisters, training them in the wilds for this very moment – the moment we free our mothers. It’s a thought that fills me with hope, determination.

I will wake the goddesses.

Already, I can feel the power welling up inside me. I don’t have to flow into the combat state to summon it, don’t have to sink into the dark ocean of my subconscious. It’s always been there, a wave waiting to rise in my veins.

---