Midnight Moon (The Bleeding Crown Book 1)

Chapter 26 - Legacy

"It's seen better days," Neyerith observed drily.

The path under Veanna's feet was carpeted with fallen leaves sinking into the mud, the sky had been consumed by unbroken grey, and winter had closed its hold on the land. An archway soared overhead, several times taller than her, but standing alone amongst the weeds, crumbling and fading.

Veanna sighed patiently. "It's an ancient temple. It would be creepier if it was pristine."

He pulled a face and warily poked the arch, retracting his hand quickly as though the stone might bite him. "What did the Order build a temple for, anyway? I thought they ran a school, not a religion."

"It's to Ren," Calu answered quietly, his head dipped. He seemed to be at least as apprehensive as Veanna for what was to come, and the dark looks Tia kept shooting him weren't helping. He had been pale and trembling after her questioning that morning, and had said very little since.

Neyerith frowned. "Wasn't he just one of their mages?"

"He was incredibly powerful." Calu chewed his lip, raising his dread-filled eyes to the ruins. "The Order are priests to magic, and there are a lot of old bases in areas with a strong magical connection - anywhere with large madavite veins underground. The stone channels magic well; it's used in our - I mean their - construction a lot, especially for ritual sites." He cleared his throat, catching himself as Tia glared through his rambling. "A lot of the temples were turned into shrines to Ren when he was in charge."

"How modest," Neyerith muttered.

"He was called the All-Powerful and the God King," Veanna said, and shrugged at the looks of surprise. "I know there was a King called Ren in the Levean royal line. I just didn't learn about any of... this." She gestured to the temple, her lips pressed together. "I didn't even know he was a mage."

"Well, have fun channelling a god again." Neyerith clapped her on the shoulder. She rolled her eyes, trying to push away thoughts of reencountering that awful, malevolent power.

"Anyone can be worshipped, but that does not mean they are a god," Tia muttered. Drawing her sword, she was the first to venture under the archway and across the threshold into the temple. Despite the grim set of her expression, a shudder passed through her body and her free hand clenched, but her step didn't falter.

Veanna followed in her wake, a similar shiver passing through her body as she entered the temple's grounds. It may just have been a chill, or the dread of what was to come, but she could have sworn residual power lingered in the air.

What level of power must Ren have wielded, with the influence of a crown behind him and the force of magic in his grasp? She had thought she knew power, but that intangible role, that empty throne, paled in comparison to the awesome, terrifying majesty that had driven the building of this place of worship and others like it. The grandeur of her palace was nothing to the fanaticism that had gone into this, and she was but a fleeting presence within its walls, a blink in its existence.

Her only power came from her ancestors' victories, from the common delusion the continent shared that there was something special about her to rally behind. It was a lie everyone pretended to believe until it was convenient to gift the lie to another.

What did her title even mean now? She had no crown, no throne, no palace. Her courtiers had been replaced with an Outlander, an exile, and a mage, none of whom swore fealty to her. She may have the best bloodline in the kingdom, but that was nothing to temples, nothing to magic, nothing to death. She was no God Queen; she was barely a princess.

The grass under Veanna's feet turned to half-sunken stone slabs, and a wall rose from the earth on their left to tower over them. The foundations of a second wall undulated to their right, and they had to watch their footing over the weeds that sprang up around the intermittent paving. Ahead, the face of the temple loomed amongst trees, pale against the grey sky. The back wall was mostly intact up to where a roof would have been, dropping away quickly on one side and forming the shape of a window on the other before falling into vegetation again.