Page 71 of The Shuddering City

She slowly peeled back the layers to reveal the coiled chazissa inside, the white charms nesting against each other as if the miniature goddesses were whispering secrets in each other’s tiny ears. She caught her breath and stilled her hands and sat there absolutely motionless, transfixed.

The silence stretched on too long for Brandon. “It’s a cycle chazissa,” he said anxiously. “Twelve pendants, each one made of cherloshe. I thought—I don’t know how often you need to eat one—but this would last you a year, maybe.”

“Brandon,” she breathed, staring down at her lap. She still hadn’t looked at him or even moved. “I can’t tell you—this isamazing.”

“But then I started to worry,” he said. He could tell he was talking too much, too fast. “Does the maid search your room? Do the priests? Is there somewhere you can hide it? Because it won’t do you much good if there isn’t.”

Villette nodded slowly. “There is. In the bedroom down the hall from mine, behind an old armoire. They searchmyroom on a regular basis, but never that one.”

“That’s good, then,” was all he could think to say.

She lifted the cord by two fingers and held the necklace up to examine it by starlight. The twelve white charms seemed to generate their own luminescence, as if they really might harbor divinity. “Butthisis so precious I might have to divide it into parts and hide it in several spots. In the spare bedroom. In the garden. In a little glass jar that I drop into the fish pond.”

“Don’t get any of the charms wet,” he said instantly. “They’ll dissolve.”

She laughed, still admiring the chazissa as it dangled from her fingertips. “Maybe that’s what I’ll try next time,” she said. “Melting one in a glass of water first.”

“Tastes terrible.”

“I promise I won’t mind.”

He wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so he just said, “Well, good.”

A moment more she studied the charms, then she slipped the chazissa over her head and tucked it under her clothing. “Help me up,” she said.

Brandon scrambled to his feet. Despite her obvious pleasure, he felt obscurely disappointed, as if he had expected her to show more emotion, more relief, more gratitude. As if he had expected her to look at him as her defender. Her savior. The most important person in her world.

To cover his uncharitable thoughts, he extended a hand and said, “I thought you were going to have another drink of wine.”

“Oh, I am.” With one hand, she grasped the neck of the bottle, and with the other, she took hold of Brandon and let him pull her to her feet. Her fingers were cool against his warm palm. Without releasing him, she raised her eyes to his and took a long slow pull from the bottle.

“Careful,” he said, using his free hand to take the wine away from her. “You’ll be sick.”

Her fingers clung to his; she came one dizzying step closer. He was enveloped in a heady mix of seagrass and honeysuckle scents. “I can’t be sick,” she whispered. “I amsaved.I am ecstatic. I am glorious.”

And she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

It was the end of one life as he had known it and the beginning of another. She tasted like desperation and euphoria, starlight and fire, mystery and cruelty and defiance and hope. Still holding the bottle in one hand, he crushed her close, feeling the heat of her skin and the soft curves of her body. He kissed her again and again, but every time he pulled back, she lifted her face for more.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” he whispered gathering her even tighter, staring down at her with a madman’s conviction. “But I’m going to get you free of this place.”

She kissed him one more time. “I know you are.”

A week later, a delegation from the temple arrived. Brandon had been sleeping during the high divine’s previous visits, but this time he was determined to be standing guard when the cleric was on the premises. He knew he couldn’t protect Villette from the high divine’s machinations, but he thought she might feel better if she could see that Brandon was present—unable to help her, maybe, but watching over her nonetheless.

So he’d told Finley to wake him as soon as the head priest arrived. “I’ve never seen him close up,” he told her. “I’m curious.”

“He’s just an old Cordelano man.”

“Apowerfulold Cordelano man,” Brandon corrected. “That makes him special.”

She’d shrugged, but promised. Nonetheless, Brandon slept lightly in case she was too careless to keep her word. He had just stirred on his bed, wondering if he had heard the sound of new arrivals, when someone pounded on his door.

“Wake up—he’s here,” Finley called. Less than two minutes later, he was in the hallway with Finley and Nadder when Abe opened the doors to the arriving delegation.

Three figures swept in with ceremonial pomp. Two—a man and a woman—were dressed in the dark livery of temple guards. The third wore an ivory robe heavily embroidered with stylized quatrefoils, and glanced around with an air of supercilious command. But he was neither old nor Cordelano. Brandon would have put him down as a mixed-blood Chibani who was about forty years of age. He had very blue eyes in a very pale face and a smile that suggested he enjoyed seeing people in pain.

“That’s not the high divine,” whispered Finley, who waited between Brandon and Nadder as they stood at strict attention.

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