Page 12 of The Gilded Ones

The elders bring out buckets, that gold-lust surfacing in their eyes.

“We’ll sell it in Norgorad. I know a merchant there who pays a fair price.”

“Nine times.” White Hands’s voice wrenches me from my turbulent memories. “You have died nine times and revived each time. That means you have already been proven. You are perfect for what the emperor wants.”

“He wants demons?” I ask.

“No, he wants warriors. An entire army of impure ones, fighting for the glory of the One Kingdom.”

My eyes widen. There are enough other girls like me to create an army? Of course there are. All those sisters and distant cousins taken over the years…

White Hands looks down at me. “Once every hundred years, deathshrieks migrate to the primal nesting ground, the place from which they all originate. This year begins a new migration, and Emperor Gezo has decided it is the perfect time to strike.

“In eight months precisely, when all the deathshrieks have fully gathered at the nesting ground, his armies will march on them and destroy them and their accursed home. We will obliterate them from the face of Otera.” Her eyes pin me in place. “Your kind will lead the charge.”

My kind… Foreboding shivers through me, mixing with a twinge of disappointment. For a moment, I hoped White Hands was an alaki too. I force myself to return her stare. “Even if that’s true, why should I agree?” I rasp. “What would I gain from it, other than an eternity of painful deaths on the battlefield?”

“Freedom from this farce.” She gestures around the cellar. “While you cower here in misery, those elders sell your gold to the highest bidder so nobles can make pretty trinkets from it. They enrich themselves off your suffering – parasites, quite literally draining the blood from you.”

Nausea swells my mouth and I struggle to swallow. I’ve known what the elders were doing, known that they were dismembering me for the gold. But I have to submit, have to pay the price for my impurity.

Oyomo, forgive me; Oyomo, grant me—

“Absolution.”

My heart nearly stops when White Hands utters this word.

“That’s the other thing you would gain.”

Everything is so quiet now, I barely hear her continue.

“Fight on behalf of Otera for a period of twenty years, and you will be absolved, your demonic nature cleansed. You will be pure again.”

“Pure?” I repeat, all other thoughts disappearing, chased away by those incredible words: pure. Absolved. Human again, just like everyone else…

No more tingling, ever again.

I look up at the ceiling, tears stinging my eyes.

You were listening. This whole time, you were listening. You heard me after all.

I barely notice White Hands as she nods in affirmation. “The emperor’s priests can ensure it, yes,” she replies.

By now, so many thoughts are whirling through my head, so many feelings – relief, joy – it’s all I can do to keep from jumping up in agreement.

Then I remember. “What about the elders? My father?” I ask.

White Hands shrugs. “What of them? I am an emissary of Emperor Gezo himself. A living embodiment of his will. To go against me is to go against Otera.”

Relief surges again, determination swift on its heels. I can be pure. I can find a place that accepts me, and even belong for the first time in my life. I can have a future – a normal life, a normal death…

He will finally allow me into His Afterlands.

“A word of warning, alaki.” White Hands’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “The training will be ten times more brutal than that of the regular soldiers.”

When I cower back in alarm, she shrugs. “You are an accursed demon, a despised abomination in the eyes of Oyomo, and they will treat you as such.” As I look down, ashamed, she adds a few more words. “However, given what you have endured here, I doubt there is anything you would encounter during training that will ever come close.”

She leans nearer, that seal dangles from her hands. An invitation. A warning. “Well, have you decided?”

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