Page 19 of Summer of Sacrifice

The little girl turned to Seleste instead, whispering, “I can still stand up for myself and be beautiful on the inside?”

Seleste risked a glance at the scowling lord. “Quite,” she confirmed. “But mind your facial expression and unclench your fists.” She smiled at the girl encouragingly.

Elsie did as she was instructed, relaxing, but she still lifted her chin. “There is nothing wrong with speaking to the staff. Mademoiselle Seleste is kind and taught me to be kind, too. She even said I should mind stinky Mademoiselle Becky sometimes.” Elsie made a gagging noise, then flushed, turning to Seleste with an apologetic grimace.

But Seleste’s heart was in the process of enlarging two sizes because she hadn’t told the little girl her name. She had learned it somewhere—and remembered it—of her own accord.

Elsie’s brother harrumphed. “Then run along and find Mademoiselle Becky.”

The little girl gave Seleste one last bashful grin and a small wave, darting past her brother as she bounded out into the hall, her skirts hiked up in her fists.

“My lord—” Seleste started, but he waved a hand of dismissal and pushed off the doorframe, headed into the corridor behind his sister.

Chapter

Four

SELESTE

“Do you have some ceremonial blood sacrifice dagger to do this with?” Sorscha drawled.

Grimm snorted at her question that was directed at Asa, who, in turn, stood still as a statue. They were all crowded around the door to the catacombs of Araignée, a heavy anticipation hanging in the air.

Sorscha was, as expected, covering her nerves with wry, inappropriate humour. Aggie was poised on the balls of her feet, moments from intervening—ever the leader she didn’t want to be nor saw herself as. Winnie rubbed at her temples, but Seleste knew her Sister Winter’s pulse was beating as quickly as the rest of theirs.

Asa regarded Sorscha with what, most likely, everyone else thought was mild disdain, but it was fabricated. He harboured a deep connection to her Sister Spring. If she were to hazard a hypothesis, it was so deep that it frightened the powerful general. Seleste watched as his hand curled into a fist, the strong muscles of his forearm and bicep tightening. She rather liked his sarong—it reminded her of her own isle clothing—and the crawling ink on his arms. Given the chance, it was the first thing she would ask him about.

Speaking of ink…

Asa finally said something to Sorscha, but Seleste’s attention had slid from him to the Prince of Bone. There were slashes of ink on his forearm, just at the crook of his elbow, that had not been there before he was taken hostage by Chresedia and The Order. She’d noticed that his other hand absently came up to graze the marks often. Each time, his eyes would flick to Aggie as he did so. At present, Grimm worried his lip between his teeth, attention seemingly fixed on the small crowd in the corridor, but there was a glaze over him. As if he was somewhere else.

Agatha spoke, some simple statement of let’s get on with it, and Seleste watched as her Sister’s voice pulled Grimm back from wherever it was he had been. She made a mental note to have Aggie brew him a ginkgo biloba potion…

Asa unsheathed a dagger from his hip, the lamplight glinting off the blade, and handed it to Sorscha. “Please go first if it will shut you up.”

Gaius snickered next to Arielle, the sweet but hiddenly fierce girl Seleste could not wait to get to know.

“Hilarious,” Sorscha uttered, taking the knife. Watching Asa defiantly, she held his gaze as she slid the sharp edge across her palm, cutting far too deep. With rebellious dawdling, she smeared her blood on the door. The Araignée General’s jaw tightened just before he lashed out and yanked the dagger from her grip.

“You’re such a child,” he scolded as he sheathed the dagger, quickly ripping off a piece of his sarong. Winding it around her hand, he failed to notice how Sorscha preened beneath his attention.

Seleste hid her smile by tucking her lips into her teeth. Aggie stifled a laugh, and Winnie rolled her eyes.

Grimm stepped forward and clapped Asa on the back. “I’m afraid you played right into her hand, General.” He beckoned for Aggie, hand outstretched. “Your turn, little witch.”

Aggie elected for a less dramatic measure of drawing her blood, using the tip of a sharp fingernail and a whispered spell to prick her thumb. A plump, red droplet welled on the pad of her finger, and she pressed it against the door. “I like my blood right where it’s supposed to be.” She looked Sorscha up and down haughtily, doing nothing to hide the twitch of her lips.

Winnie went next, using her bejewelled dagger to draw a crimson droplet from her finger. She ran the tip of the bloodied dagger against the door, cutting into the wood.

Seleste chuckled inwardly at her Sisters’ need to be different from one another as if they weren’t the perfect conundrum of entirely unique, yet the same in their stubborn desire to be unique.

There were only so many ways to cut a hand for this type of spell. With little fanfare, Seleste made a small cut in her palm with her own ivory dagger and approached the door. Just before she placed her hand there, she noticed a brown stain ingrained in the wood, presumably where Sorscha had previously tried to open it on her own. Or, perhaps, where others had tried before her.

When Seleste’s palm made contact with the rough wood, the outline of the entire door illuminated in a glowing purple light, similar to the shimmering barrier at Araignée’s cavemouth. Before Seleste could take a full step back to view what was happening, the door vanished completely, leaving only a dark descent yawning open before their feet.

With a shrug at the others, Seleste went through the opening first, calling forth a golden orb of light to illuminate the way. Aggie came in behind her, her own orb of stormy grey light bouncing along. Winnie’s pearlescent orb and Sorscha’s red followed suit. The descent was not overly long, and none were prepared for the magnitude of artefacts that met them as they all spilled out into the musty, cavernous space.

Instantly, a headache began forming at Seleste’s temples. Some days, her altered vision with only one seeing eye was still difficult to manage, but she suspected her headache would only grow worse as her cunning began to take in every iota of detail concerning the many objects in the catacombs.

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