Chapter 68 Seventy one
“Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll sleep.”
“You’re not wrong,” the High Priestess said, stepping out from the moon garden’s cypress shadows, her voice a silk thread pulled through dark cloth. “That is why I asked you to come when the flowers keep their secrets.”
The garden was a bowl of pale fragrance. Night-bloom lilies opened like quiet mouths. The gravel paths shone faintly where dew had silvered each stone. Above, the sky was a torn veil; the moon’s ragged edge leaked ghostlight that lay across leaves and skin in a soft, cold wash.
Sienna didn’t sit. The bench was a slab of white stone warmed by daylight, cool now, expectant. She stood with hands loosely at her sides, head high, as if refusing chairs could delay decisions. Her hair caught the light and threw it back in a tired halo. The mark on her wrist, thinned, stubborn, pulsed once and settled, as though it disliked this place and wanted to say so without being rude.
“Say it,” she told the Priestess. “I want the terrible without the lace.”
The High Priestess stepped into the open. She was not young, and so her beauty had learned patience. Ash-gray hair braided thick at the nape. Cheeks hollowed by years of fasting and rules. Eyes the blue of cracked ice; they looked at Sienna as a teacher looks at a pupil she loves and intends to test. The black silk of her robe drank moonlight greedily; the bone-white cords at her waist glowed faint. She wore no rings. Her hands were clean and bare.
“You and the cursed one,” she said, making no attempt to soften titles, “are no longer bound by choice. You are braided. When you touch, you trade breath, power, life. He grows; you fade. If this continues, ”
“I know,” Sienna cut in softly. “My body knows. It counts without asking me.”
The Priestess inclined her head. “I can separate you.”
“Cost,” Sienna said at the same moment, a dry, old word.
“Cost,” the Priestess agreed. She looked up at the moon and then down, as if asking permission from a scorned mother. “We will perform the Severing at the Temple of Balance. You will stand in the center ring while I call the lines. When the moon breaks the third time, you will give blood. Not a cut. A letting. The bowl must hold enough to trick the cords into believing you are empty.”
“And him?” Sienna’s throat worked.
“He will be kept at the door,” the Priestess said, “by men brave enough to die and polite enough to do it quietly.”
“Don’t ask them for politeness,” Sienna murmured. “Ask them to hold.”
The Priestess allowed a quick, winter smile. “As you wish. When the moon bleeds,” she continued, “you will speak his name into the bowl. Only once. Then you will speak your own name, three times, as if you mean to teach it to the world again. If the goddess is merciful, the cords will recoil and choose the stronger vessel.”
“And if she is herself,” Sienna said.
“Then the cords will tighten,” the Priestess said. “And you will not be walking when dawn comes.”
Sienna let the words strike the places inside her where fear lives and then move on. A sparrow hopped once on the gravel and thought better of this company and flew. The night-blooms inhaled and exhaled their faint intoxication. Somewhere beyond the high wall, a drunk sang a wordless tune and forgot the words again.
“How many have done it,” Sienna asked. “And lived.”
The Priestess’s eyes did not flicker. “Two.”
“Names,” Sienna said, voice low.
“A queen who lied to her own heart,” the Priestess said. “And a farmer’s daughter who did not.”
“Which am I?”
“You are neither,” said the Priestess, and made it a strange blessing.
Sienna finally sat. The stone took her weight with the small groan of material that has been asked to hold too many choices. She let her hands rest on her knees, palms up, as if she were ready to receive either forgiveness or a blade.
“If we do nothing,” she said, thinking aloud the way exhausted women confess to ceiling beams, “I will bleed to him by inches. If we do this, I bleed at once. One is quieter. The other is cleaner.”
“The other is sovereign,” the Priestess said gently.
“I’ve never liked clean endings,” Sienna answered, and she almost smiled, but the face felt dangerous; she let it pass.
The Priestess watched the moon. “The fractured light makes men brave in odd directions,” she said. “Tonight the council will sleep badly and wake mean. Tomorrow their fear will have verbs.”