The Blood Witch

Threats

So surprisingly touched by awe at the holy mountain's beauty, I'm jolted by surprise to find we're not alone in the chapel. Ash's mother herself is nowhere in sight, but seated in a gilded throne at the far end of the chapel is an elderly man in shimmering white robes. He croons scripture to a dozen cross-legged children sitting at his feet.

"And so the Father drifted through the endless night before creation and was dismal,
For though His light burned fiercer than His brothers in the sky, He possessed no other to share it with, not the warmth of His touch.
Until after countless years of desolation and sorrow, He found our Mother, alone and barren in the void of night."

The children around him look as bored and restless as I remember being every breakfast as the camp missionaries forced hymns down the throats of witches. A boy idly picks at a scabbed knee while two others torment a captured beetle, all far too young to understand half the words of our creation story. I interrupt the priest's slow and monotonous chant to spare them the further torture.

"-And in wonder He reached out to Her and She to Him, and from where they touched spread life and warmth and goodness. So born was Agea and all those upon her. The Father vowed ever to stay by Her in the sky above, casting eternal fair weather over their children below. And the site of this coupling a symbol of their love remained- Mount Ignatia's eternal flame," I finish hurriedly, watching him keenly.

The Grand Cardinal of the Sacred Flame looks a sight more comely than when I last saw him, upon my capture two weeks past. Devoid of his mountainous and jewel encrusted mitre, his appearance is almost kind and grandfatherly in comparison to that of when he sentenced me to starve in iron pending my execution.

It's not hard to look past the sweet smile he gives me and see the sickness of greed behind his pale and watery eyes.

"Your Highness," he acknowledges curtly. "We've been waiting for you."

"So I've heard." I'm try not to clench my fists as he softly dismisses his underage audience, the children eagerly sprinting past me to the freedom of play. Emity gently touches my shoulder from behind, a fit of foolish optimism that my temper can be checked. "May I enquire as to why?"

"You have a visitor," A smooth voice calls from behind me. The sound of her footsteps muffled by the thick veil I wear, I turn in surprise as Queen Ilyana Avamere enters.

The impressively tall woman heralds the Cirilean heritage behind Ash's browned skin and arcing bone structure. Despite her dimming age, Ilyana's magnificent braid of black hair is barely touched by grey and proud eyes glance at me imperiously over high cheekbones as she sweeps into the chapel. Clothed in a trailing gown of rich purple silk, she cuts an imposing figure.

"Mother," I greet carefully, rolling each syllable off my tongue in true high-born form. Then I catch sight of the man who follows her into the room and barely stop myself following it with the first thought to jump to my lips. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

The Queen, the Grand Cardinal and even the servants that fill the halls of Castle Avamere are all snakes, human pitfalls waiting to trip me into losing my cover and being returned to the executioner's block. But at least they're foreign enemies. The face that glowers at me from the Queen's side is all too familiar.

General Kellan Blackfyre, head of the entire northern division of Pyrthia's forces and regular feature of my nightmares stares across at me with the same hawkish expression of dissatisfaction as he has since his appointment three years previous. His deceivingly short and paunchy figure moves with a predatory grace beside the Queen, grey moustache bristling as though it already detects the lies I'm about to spin.

My stomach plummets and I glance at the door behind him, mercifully unguarded. Even weighed down as I am with heavy skirts, I could make the distance before Emity can catch me.