Page 111 of A Tribute of Fire

She nodded, satisfied. Did she know what it meant? Or was she just as mystified as I was and wanting someone to commiserate with?

Like Kunguru, Suri was someone I could confide in. I knew she wouldn’t share my secrets. Her allegiance was to the temple and her sisters, but her silence made her an ally.

“Do you have vivid dreams?” I asked her.

Yes.

“Do you dream of your former life?”

No.

Given what I suspected she’d gone through, I wasn’t going to ask her if she dreamed about kissing anyone. I settled on, “What about the goddess? Do you dream of her?”

Yes.

My heart thumped loudly. “Does she speak to you?”

Yes.

“What does she say?” I realized a beat too late that Suri couldn’t answer that question. “Did you dream of her last night?”

Yes.

Just as I had. I wasn’t the only one. Did she appear to everyone in the temple? Was this something that happened regularly and I was just unaware of it?

Why hadn’t anyone said anything to me about it?

Was that my fault? I was the one keeping everyone at arm’s length, not sharing all of myself with them, not opening up about why I was really here. I didn’t invite their confidences.

The goddess’s words repeated in my head.Time for things to change.

Had she meant my relationships with my sisters?

The rest of our adelphia approached, laughing over something Io had said. It must have been time for lunch, and then we would go to our afternoon class. Several butterflies were fluttering around Ahyana’s head and she grinned up at them, holding out her finger. A bright orange one landed, gently flapping her tiny wings.

Suri tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to look at her. Then she did something utterly shocking. She opened her mouth slightly, as if to speak, and then touched her lips with her fingers. She moved her hand to gesture at our sisters.

It took me a moment to understand what she was trying to communicate. “Tell them?” I asked.

Yes.

Suri had never signed like that with me before. She had pointed, moved her head to indicate yes or no, but not this. It felt important and significant.

What had the goddess told her?

It was difficult to listen in our afternoon class, with both the goddess’s words and Suri’s unspoken ones running around in my mind, and the only reason Maia managed to grab my focus was because she said, “Jason.”

“That got Lia to pay attention,” Zalira said with a grin.

“Did they say Jason?” Ahyana whispered. “I’m fairly certain I heard the name Jason.”

“Stop it,” I told them under my breath, but this seemed to make things worse.

Io leaned forward and I expected her to tell us to be quiet. Instead she said, “I thought we’d decided Jason was stupid.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“You talk in your dreams, but you always say the same two words. ‘Jason’ and ‘stupid,’” Io said. “What did he do to make you call him names?”

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