the ceiling.
“Perhaps we could have smuggled you out,” Bree says, and Mirabella chuckles.
“Bree, they put bells on my ankles. Large, rattling bells, like I was a cat. Like they thought I was going to sneak off.”
“It is not like you have not disappeared before,” Bree says, and grins.
“Never for anything so important!” Mirabella protests. “I have always been dutiful, when it matters. But they always like to know where I am. What I am doing. What I am thinking.”
“They will come down on you even harder now that the Ascension Year approaches,” says Bree. “Rho and those priestess guards.” She rolls over onto her stomach. “Mira, will you ever be free?”
Mirabella looks at her slantways.
“Do not be so dramatic,” Mirabella says. “Now, you ought to go get cleaned up. We have a dress fitting this afternoon.”
The loose stair on the staircase creaks six times, and moments later, six tall priestesses file into the room. Bree makes a displeased face and stretches languorously.
“My queen,” says the nearest girl. “High Priestess Luca wishes to see you.”
“Very well.” Mirabella stands. She thought it would be some less-pleasant errand. But it is always good to visit Luca.
“Be sure to have her back for her fitting this afternoon,” Bree says, and waggles her fingers in a lazy good-bye.
Mirabella doubts she will see Bree for the rest of the day. Dress fitting or no, nothing much can keep Bree from doing exactly what she wants, and as the beloved only daughter of Sara Westwood, no one has ever much bothered to try. It would be easy to resent Bree for her freedom if Mirabella did not love her so dearly.
Outside, Mirabella keeps a brisk pace, her subtle jab at the priestesses who guard her so closely. Most of them are as hung-over from her birthday as Sara, and the jarring walk turns them slightly green.
But it is not terribly cruel. Westwood House is close to the temple. When Mirabella was younger, and more able to slip her guard, she would sometimes sneak out to visit Luca alone, or to run along the temple grounds out to the dark basalt cliffs of Shannon’s Blackway. She misses that space. That privacy. When she could walk with a slouch or kick stones aimed at trees. When she could be wild as an elemental queen is meant to be.
Now, she is surrounded by white robes. She has to crane her neck over the shoulder of the nearest just to catch a glimpse of the city below. Rolanth. The elementals’ city, a sprawling center of stone and water running fast from the evergreen hills. Channels run between buildings like arteries to ferry people and cargo inland from the sea through a system of locks. From this height, the buildings look proud and white. The channels nearly blue. She can easily imagine the way the city once shone, when it was rich and fortified. Before the poisoners took the throne and the council and refused to let go.
“It is a lovely day,” Mirabella says to break the monotony.
“It is, my queen,” says one of the priestesses. “The Goddess provides.”
They say no more. Mirabella knows not a one of her escorts by name. So many priestesses have come to Rolanth Temple of late that she cannot keep up with the new ones. Luca says that temples across the island are experiencing the same bounty. The strength of Mirabella’s gift has renewed the island’s faith. Sometimes, Mirabella wishes that Luca would attribute fewer things to the strength of her gift.
Luca meets her in the temple proper rather than upstairs in her rooms. The old woman opens her arms. She takes Mirabella from the priestesses and kisses her cheek.
“You do not look so very tired,” she says. “Perhaps I should have made you work the water last night, after all.”
“If you had, you would have seen nothing,” Mirabella replies. “Or I may have drenched someone by accident.”
“By accident,” Luca says wryly. When she first met Luca, Mirabella tried to drown her by summoning a water elemental out of Starfall Lake and sending it down the High Priestess’s throat. But that was a long time ago.
Luca slips her hands back beneath her layers of robes and fur. Mirabella does not know what gift Luca had before she became a priestess, but it was not the elemental gift. She is far too vulnerable to the cold.
A priestess passing by nearly stumbles, and Luca’s arm shoots out fast to steady her.
“Be careful, child,” Luca says, and the girl