Page 21 of A Dance With Fire
She held her breath, counting at least three different sets of feet. Eyes downcast, her whole body shook when the fluttering of white cloth snagged her attention. Her gaze darted up discreetly, and her throat tightened at what she saw.
Six figures encircled around her. Six human figures, males with bald heads that shone in the flickering candlelight. They were visible from the neck up.
Because from the neck down, they each wore long robes.
Robes in white and red.
Shula swallowed as they moved, the ends of their robes rustling like parchment. She could feel their gazes on her body, felt the demand in their intensity. It frightened her.
“The Brotherhood welcomes you, Fae.”
Shula couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye.
“I am Brother Bastien. These are Brother Lara, Brother Sarahias, Brother Lincoln, Brother Mathew, and Brother Malcolm.” He was silent a moment as he let her process this. “Let us begin.”
Before Shula even had a chance to react, they surrounded her from all sides, just like the Fae women had. But these men, they pulled her head back so she was glaring at the ceiling. Tears prickled the backs of her eyelids and she tried to shove them away, she tried to focus on anything else other than the pain they were causing.
Another man stepped before her, his robes drowning her in a sea of blinding white. Spots of crimson besmeared the cloth of his robes, and it took Shula but a moment to realize it was blood.
Bile burned in the back of her throat as he gripped her chin and shoved his thumb past her closed lips. She gagged as he forced her mouth open. She tried to bite down, but his grip was forceful and demanding. Another one of the human priest’s went forward, a vial full of clear liquid in his hand. Shula struggled then as he uncorked it, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull away as he forced the contents down her throat.
A calloused hand covered her nose and mouth, making her swallow the contents. They burned on the way down, choking her with fire down her throat.
I see you, choking on water that burns like fire.
Just another one of Davina’s predictions that had come true. Shula thought that as whatever unholy liquid burned and scraped down her throat. She gurgled, feeling her stomach lurch. It tasted like poison and felt like death. Sweeter than candy and hotter than fire. It closed her airway entirely until she couldn’t suck in breaths, couldn’t breathe.
Her knees slammed onto marble, pain ricocheted up her body as she writhed, convulsing while at the same time trying to keep herself upright.
Voices sounded around her, but she couldn’t make out the words when her choking drowned out everything else. When it finally, slowly, abated, she wanted to lower herself to the ground, but felt the slightest jerk of her restricting chains.
Weakly, she lifted her head. The movement made her neck hurt, everything ached, but she managed to look up into Brother Bastien’s eyes. He held the end of her chain in his long, wrinkled fingers and tugged again, harder so her hands slid across marble and she fell forward.
Right onto the symbol of flames carved into the floor.
“Stay,” he ordered in a voice bereft of warmth. “The trials have not concluded.”
Her palms scraped over the carved symbol, chipped edges of marble digging into her skin. She let that pain ground her. She wanted to move from the symbol, just because he’d ordered her to stay like a dog, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Not when tremors tried to take over from the inside. Her teeth clattered together, jarring her pounding skull. The pain was prevalent throughout her body, that all she wanted to do was vomit.
Each brother stepped back, taking a point on the circle, with Brother Bastien in the center. Captivated by their movements, Shula could do little more than whimper as they lifted their hands in unison and chanted. They were words she didn’t understand, words in some ancient language, and yet she felt the magic in them as they rose to crescendos like a dangerous song. Humans couldn’t wield magic, and yet this moment was magical. It leaked through the words, more ancient it seemed than the Fae themselves. She didn’t know how she knew, but the language tugged something inside her. Her own magic, the thick threads of Mana that made her what she was.
The circle lit up. A soft glow that spread like glittering wine dripping down the creases in a table, sliding like the flow of a river. It slipped through the cracks and spread until it was beneath her, and the symbols of flames lit up, brightly, blindingly. Red flared beneath her fingertips and roared, enveloping her in preternatural light.
The ominous chanting stopped, and the echoes of gasps rang out.
“So it is true,” one of the brother’s said, she wasn’t sure which. “She is an Elemental.”
Her nails cracked as she dug them into the floor.
“The circle confirms it. Look at how it glows.”
The light pulsed brightly like the flickering orange and red of an inferno. Something that no man-made fire could ever be. Ethereal.
She wondered why it was so important, there was so much she didn’t understand.
“The emperor will wish to see her.”
“We must take her to him.”
