Oleander

XII. Submission (part one)

The still solitude of night breathed life into troublesome thoughts. From the confines of the cypress chest, those pages Thais had written whispered until the dawn. Her chamber touched with weak light, unable to stand the turbulent company of paranoia and doubt, Yalira dressed and called to be taken to the new altar.

She carried the heavy box in her arms, Thais's pages absent. She had tucked them away beneath her bed cushions and then scrubbed her hands clean. Invisible, the stain of truth still marked the pink skin.

One betrayal at a time, Yalira decided. Surrounded by the pieces of her own shattered heart and the ghost of spent tears, she would not destroy each one of her priestesses's. Like forming a callus, she would inoculate them with each new heartbreak, piece by piece.

For the pain would be inevitable. Yalira wrested with the words and her own bleeding spirit through the night. Though she had tried to convince herself that this truth was forgery, logic smothered the sparks of her hopefulness.

Seductive denial tempted with suffocating waters. Perhaps the show of dragging the chest to Semyra was manufactured, perhaps Andar had taken the time to create these elaborate forgeries and seal them away, perhaps he had planted the seeds of doubt early. One more deception to add to the ever growing number that polluted Semyra.

Icy-breathed truth stung but kept her from sinking. Thais's spirit seared from the pages, her anger and strength. Even if Yalira pretended that Andar forged the papers written by her mentor, the pages and pages of scripted prophecies would not be denied. Their secret words burned into her memory—a throbbing brand—no outsider would have been able to know them so intimately.

The hand that inked each prophecy differed. Sloped, hasty letters. Cramped scribbles. Straight and careful. Bold with ink splatters. Different hands from different priestesses, she had decided before drifting into uneasy dreams.

It was that realization that spurred Yalira to the new altar with the first breath of dawn. Her feet were swift in the early light, even with the heavy load. As blasphemous as the chest felt in her arms, as much as the truth would wound her sisters, she knew the pages belonged to Antala. Only her priestesses could guard their goddess's wisdom. Or at least what the world would think was the goddess's wisdom.

Except for the one that bears my name. Those words are my own, even if they're not Antala's.

Voicing the thought, in the privacy of the silent cart ride into the slums, gave them a wicked life. The doubt and guilt and self-loathing surged and retreated, ebbed and escaped. Yalira had prayed the secrets of the cypress chest would give her a path toward redemption, toward freedom, toward Antalis.

Liar. Doubter. Murderer.

As the wheels slowed before her destination, only questions remained, new threads to unravel. Why had this generation of priestesses been left illiterate? What was the ugly history of Antalis? Why had she not been included in the subterfuge?

I am not an herb-addled girl. The fierceness of her thoughts, that fleeting roar of her own spirit, surprised Yalira. She had not learned the twisting-tongue of the old language, not bled herself in moonlight, not crawled into the depths of the earth to be thrown aside as a puppet oracle. Her pride refused to kneel before the hideous truth she'd unburied.

Drawing herself up, balancing the chest in her arms, Yalira nodded to the guard posted at the door. Young, just like Cato and his friends. The morning sunlight, gray in its youth, cast his bronze armor with a dull sheen. The earthiness of it made him seem softer. A defender with spindly limbs, new guardian of Antalis.

She gifted him with a soft smile. The same that had won over the warriors on the journey from Antalis. He slid the door open for her, but did not return the greeting, blushingly refusing to meet her eyes.