crops. They might not want to join the movement if they know you’re—”
“Understandable.” I waved her off, but my inner guilt was more difficult to dismiss. “Good luck, Navara.”
She smiled warmly. “Blessings, Glisette.”
When she was gone, I looked up at the once-vibrant blue ceiling, painted with stars, curved into a dome like the sky above.
My heart felt as hollow as this forsaken temple, but I nudged my doubt aside and dropped to my knees. Looking up into the hard face of Atrelius, Holy of Courage, I decided he was the most rational choice.
I took up the knife. It would be foolish to slit my palm days before a battle. Then again, this seemed to be some version of a sacrifice. I had to actually sacrifice something.
Bracing myself, I rested the sharp point against my palm and dug in. A hiss of pain escaped through my teeth. A jewel-red stripe intersected the lines running across my flesh, and I closed my fist to trap the pooling blood.
“Atrelius,” I whispered. “God of Courage, or whatever you are. Ancient elicromancer, it seems. I, um…I offer myself as a vessel. The Fallen have begun to invade our world. We need your wrath and your might to drive them out, to banish them to darkness as you did once before.”
I let my bleeding hand drift toward the clay bowl holding the piece of metal, a steel chape from the tip of a scabbard. But as the blood drops grew ripe and ready to fall, I jerked my hand toward the bowl holding the feather. A few stray drops landed on the steel chape, but I let the rest fall before Eulippa.
Lovingkindness, the foil of Cruelty—the foil of Themera.
“Eulippa, I call you down in Perennia’s honor,” I said, my voice rising, strengthening in conviction. “She was the kindest soul I knew in this world. And she deserves to be avenged. Rip your enemy out of Ambrosine so that I can destroy her for the evils she has committed.”
My blood began to pool at the bottom of the bowl, staining the gray-brown feather. The birds outside whistled their tunes as the streaks of sunlight grew warmer, brighter. I laughed in disbelief.
Eulippa had heard me.
But clouds passed over the sun, stealing the warmth from the crown of my head and the tops of my shoulders. A cool wind blew, and with it came distant whispers that raised gooseflesh on my arms.
“Are you here, Eulippa?” I whispered as I looked up at the statue.
I felt the silence like the drop of a mighty hammer.
THIRTY-SIX
AMBROSINE
THREE DAYS AGO
DEATH had stolen the color in my sister’s cheeks, but her beauty endured.
Her honeyed tresses had been gingerly arranged to cascade over her shoulders. The butter-yellow dress I had commissioned from the clothier for her welcome banquet softened the scarlet of her painted lips.
Even under the sunrays falling through the windows in the throne room, Perennia’s hand felt as cold as her engraved stone bed. I had the instinct to try to warm her fingers with my own, just like when she used to tiptoe to my bedchamber, begging to climb into bed with her eldest sister. I had promised I would protect her from night beasties, such as the old hag who hid in the wardrobe, waiting to steal your youth and beauty while you slept. She would cut you and bleed you until she had enough blood to paint her skin. If the hag succeeded, she would host a ball and prance around in your clothes. You would then wake up as an old hag and haunt wardrobes until you managed to steal another girl’s youth and beauty.
I told Perennia I would stay awake and protect her from danger. But I never told her the danger wasn’t real, that I had invented the story myself. Glisette persistently tried to convince young Perennia it was fake. Perennia wanted to believe her, and in the daytime she always did.
But at night, she believed me.
She had outgrown her fear of the hag years ago. But sometimes I thought back to that story and wished I had been the kind of sister who lied to protect, never to harm.
The hand that rested over Perennia’s curled into a fist.
Glisette. Always making herself the arbiter of right and wrong, the voice of reason when a plot had gone too far. Glisette and I used to agree on almost everything, but there was an invisible line I could not cross without crossing her.
I never thought that line would become