INTERLUDE
T
he blessed girl lived a blessed life in her new home. Sometimes she missed
things about her old life, but she had been so young when she lost it—it was
easy to replace those memories with new ones, little stone homes with grand monasteries, empty kitchen cupboards with banquet tables overflowing with fruit.
“She’s such an adaptable child,” she would hear her sister saying to the other adults, and the little girl did not know what adaptable meant, but she certainly recognized her sister’s tone of pride when she said it. It was easy to patch up any little pangs of homesickness with that pride, especially when her sister was just so happy here.
What was there to miss of their life before anyway? Only brief weeks or months of comfort carved out of farmer’s shacks and covered wagons before they were inevitably chased off again. Here, everyone was nice to them. They were not pests to be driven away. No one came in the middle of the night to tell them they had to leave. They even let the little girl eat all the apricots she wanted. And the girl’s sister smiled as she had never seen her smile before. She’d always been an attractive woman, but here, she was as effervescent as the dawn that had led them to the Citadel steps.
This, the little girl decided quickly, was a good place. She was so grateful to Atroxus for letting them stay.
The priests got very excited when Atroxus came to visit the girl, spending a long time fixing her dress or her hair and handing her bouquets of fresh flowers to hold when she met him. The little girl thought this was all a bit silly. When she used to see the stained glass portrayals of gods, she thought they looked terribly frightening. But Atroxus was not frightening at all. He was always kind to her. He laughed with her at her silly games and did not even mind at all if it messed up her hair or her dress. But the little girl let her sister fuss over her appearance anyway because she could tell it made her feel better.
Anyway, Atroxus didn’t come to visit that often, only on several sacred holy days per year. The rest of the time, the little girl slipped easily into life in the monastery.
She squirmed and struggled her way through the dull lectures in the libraries, but thrived under the priests’ magic instruction. Nothing made her feel more alive than wielding the power of the sun. It was carefree and joyful and fun. She studied all magics under Atroxus’s domain—magics that manipulated the light woven into the fabric of the world itself. She and her sister practiced endlessly, even after dark, when their lessons were long over.
On her free days, she would run in the forests with her best friend, a young boy around her age. She loved to watch the golden birds flit around in the trees. The first time she saw one, she’d breathlessly proclaimed it to be the most beautiful
creature she’d ever seen.
The groundskeeper had scoffed at that.
“Invasive buggers,” he’d grumbled. “Some priest five generations ago brought them over here as pets for his concubine. Set them out in the forest when she left him and they’ve been multiplying ever since. Won’t stop nesting in the rafters. I’ll have to cull them soon.”
It wasn’t the birds’ fault that their great-great-great-grandparents had been dragged here, the little girl wanted to say, but her sister told her to never argue with the priests, so she let it go. Besides, as much as the groundskeeper complained about the birds, he never harmed them, and she was content to watch them dance around the treetops to their dulcet songs.
The months slipped by like that—a blur of light and prayer and adoration.
The little girl had been at the Citadel for one full year the first time she saw one of the accursed—the first time she saw a vampire.
The girl knew that some priests of the Citadel were warriors. She saw the weapons hanging in the armory. She saw the scars on their faces. She was no stranger to violence, but she was content to let that ugliness exist out there, somewhere where the light did not touch.
The day it arrived at her doorstep, she was playing with her friend in the gardens near the front gate when a great calamity rose from the steps below. She and her friend ran to the doors just in time to see a gaggle of men dragging a figure inside. They watched around the doorframe as the crowd parted. They fought a man to the ground before Atroxus’s altar. The little girl recognized him; he was one of the younger warriors, and he always had a soft word and a sweet smile for her
sister. He had been handsome and kind.
Not now.
Now, his face was distorted in vicious snarls, his teeth bared and dripping red, skin pale and sweat-slicked. When the stream of sun through the stained glass fell across his face, he howled, the scent of burning flesh filling the air.
Shouts blurred together as more acolytes rushed into the chapel. The girl’s sister was among them. They had forced the man to his knees. Days ago, these men had been brothers. Now, they held him down as he screamed.
The girl’s sister spotted her across the room. She rushed to her.
“You shouldn’t see this,” she whispered, ready to usher the children away. But the head priest called out, “No. Let them stay. A future bride of the sun should witness the truth of the darkness.”
Her sister hesitated, but she was not one to disobey a command. And so the two children watched, unblinking, horrified, as the priests rolled the man over and pinned him down upon the mosaic floor. They splayed his limbs, aligning him to the perfect golden circle of the sun through the window. And then the girl’s sister had been handed the blade, and she had been the one to drive it through the center of his chest, black blood spewing over her face.
Afterward, the little girl ran to the gardens, hoping the fresh air might ease the nausea. She looked up into the trees at the firefinches playing in the leaves. She watched one land on a branch before her, tweeting a greeting. She let out an unsteady breath. Her heartbeat slowed a little. But then—
THUNK. The bird toppled to her feet, black eyes wide open and gold feathers smeared red. An arrow jutted from its chest.
“Good distraction, little priestess!” came the distant cry of the groundskeeper.
“One down, just a few hundred to go!”
The girl stared at the dead bird.
Then she fell to her knees and vomited in the rosebushes.
