A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,93

Desolation? Where else is there?

Riv sighed, prodding her food with a knife. She knew what Estel and Adonai had done was wrong, an act that disobeyed the greatest of Elyon’s Lores that forbade the Great Transgression.

But they did not actually do that. What were they caught doing? Kissing, in an embrace? Flirting? Riv had seen them at Aphra’s table, thought they were too close, a touch lingering too long, and she’d felt the wrongness of it then.

But does that deserve so great a punishment? Adonai’s wings cut from his back. Estel exiled …

She felt confused, and guilty, too, for even questioning Israfil’s judgement.

She could still see the deep crimson of Adonai’s blood, dripping onto his severed wings as they lay in the dirt.

To have flight taken away from you. It must be like losing your legs.

I should have told Aphra, when I saw them. She would have known what to do.

‘Don’t want that? I’ll finish it for you,’ Vald said, eyeing up her plate while mopping up the last of his gravy with a thick slice of black bread. The wooden plate looked so clean, as if it hadn’t been eaten from.

‘Have it,’ Riv said, pushing her unfinished food towards Vald.

‘I’d have had that!’ Jost exclaimed, eyes bulging in his gaunt face. He ate almost as much as Vald, not that you’d know it to look at him, the two of them often arguing over food.

‘Too slow.’ Vald winked at Jost.

How can they joke at a time like this?

She spied her mam sitting in a shadowed corner of the feast-hall and stood.

‘Going to see my mam,’ she said to Jost and Vald, scooping up a skin of wine and two cups, and left them bickering over her half-eaten plate of food.

Riv had felt deeply moved by the judgement upon Adonai and Estel, still did, her feelings swinging from judgemental to pity every few heartbeats.

As her mam looked up at Riv she thought how much she looked like an older version of Aphra, creases around her eyes and mouth, the streaks of grey in her hair spreading – there was more than black, now. It struck her that she herself looked very little like them, her hair fair where theirs was dark, her features finer where her mam’s and Aphra’s were stronger.

Aphra is so like Mam. I must resemble our father, instead. I wish he were here, that I had known him. Is my temper his legacy, as well? Because I see none of it in Aphra or Mam.

Dalmae gave Riv a wan smile that shifted partway through into resolute, but couldn’t quite conceal the worry that lurked behind her eyes.

‘What is it, Mam? Upset about Adonai and Estel?’ Riv said as she sat, pulling the stopper from the wine skin with her teeth and pouring wine glugging into the two cups.

‘Aye,’ her mam said, ‘a terrible thing.’ She sighed. ‘And I am worried about Aphra,’ she added.

‘Worried about Aphra?’ Her sister was always so capable, the perfect disciple of Elyon’s Lore. Disciplined, calm, a consummate warrior and leader, and devout, embodying Riv’s idea of what Faith, Strength and Purity were in reality. And yet now she agreed with her mam. Aphra had been acting out of character, ever since the night Riv had seen her with Fia. ‘I was going to ask you about her. She’s been … strange, lately.’

‘You think so, too?’ Dalmae asked. ‘How so?’

‘Bad-tempered, not interested in anything I have to say to her.’

‘Leading is hard, sometimes,’ her mam said, squeezing Riv’s hand. ‘All the time,’ she corrected herself. ‘And these are dark days – the beacons, rumours of the Kadoshim moving. Estel.’

‘Aye,’ Riv said as she took a long sip from her cup.

Truth be told, Riv didn’t spend much time thinking about the difficulties and stresses of leading the hundred. Only the glory of it. The pride and respect she felt for her sister, and for her mam, who had accomplished the same task before Aphra. And an ever-growing pressure upon her own shoulders, made all the worse by the thought that she might not actually ever become a White-Wing, let alone rising through their ranks into a position of leadership.

‘What do you think Israfil’s meeting’s all about? It’s late to call it, eh?’ she asked her mam, wanting to steer herself away from that uncomfortable thought.

‘It is,’ Dalmae said with a slow, deliberate nod. ‘Whatever it is, it must be important.’

Riv’s mam had led the hundred for many years, only stepping down when the combined