Page 127 of The Garnet Daughter
Thirty-Eight
Istep into the temple of Omnesis, still permitted into its invisible borders. The air smells like rain and the incense feeding the fire basins, which crackle in steady orange flames between the ornate pillars.
Omnesis stands with her regal back to me, wings tucked and gaze turned outward to the valley below her clifftop temple. I approach her slowly, taking measured steps as to not startle, but her ears twitch with each of my movements, likely alerted to my arrival the moment I folded here.
“How great the scales of the three worlds tipped when your name was called to be the next highest priestess,” she announces, still looking out into the darkness.
I carefully step to the ledge where her talons dig in and keep her balanced. “That is not my path.”
“What is your path?” Still, she does not meet my gaze as she addresses me, speaking in riddles and with condescension in her flat voice.
“Ferren is the second daughter . . . and I am the third,” I say without hesitation.
Her head finally tilts in my direction, her illuminated, floating eyes watching me, blinking and reflecting in the poolbelow them. “Is this the reason for your return? For worldly confirmation?”
“You said you could not tell me things that will tip the scales from the knowledge of knowing, but I am certain.”
“Before I do, tell me how you have come to this.”
“The voice I heard, Ferren has heard it too in a way, felt it. It is a god speaking. She does not know the language of the gods, but I do.”
“Rare among your kind.”
“I do not have a kind.”
“Humans,” she clarifies as if humoring me.
“I thought the voice was calling out to me on Frith, but it was luring me here, herding Ferren and me together.”
She sighs and looks back out at the vast, inky landscape. “You have your answer.”
It is the confirmation I require. I held a small hope that she would deny my claim, but it is undeniable. The restlessness I felt, the desperation to find purpose, to fill a need I did not know I had, those feelings were imprinted on me.
I wipe away tears. Suddenly, the words I said to make Ferren feel better about where she received her gifts fall to ashes at my feet.
“What now? Do I become something evil? A daughter in his image?” I plead over a gulping sob.
Omnesis observes me again with fascination. “There have been many daughters of First Son, as he tried during each conjunction, but none of them were evil. I have not met one touched by his darkness until this one, and you certainly are not. First Son needs his three daughters for a purpose, a way of life he and his followers believe in. Each side sees the other as evil. Truthfully, it means very little, fox and hare, dawn and dusk, both serving an opposing purpose.”
“You will not help us?” I set my jaw, hearing how apathetically she is speaking of both sides, to her we are drops in a bucket, sloshing back and forth.
“I cannot take a side, only right the tilted world after a war is over. I can only maintain the rhythmic ebb and flow.”
“And if it tilts too far in one direction, an irrevocable shift, what then?”
“Hear me, I do not desire peace. I am the push and pull between the balance and imbalance, the dance that sways between them, ever correcting its course. If peace fell upon the three worlds, I would have very little to do.”
“I freed you, Omnesis! Surely, you can aid me. Your own scales tilt inmyfavor.”
A slow smile slashes across her face, exposing sharp, amused teeth. Even if she agrees, I can’t trust her. The veil she walks behind does not work in my world.
“What does my liberator request?”
“For you to consider how imbalanced the world will be if an entire city is leveled because First Son’s regime is looking for his daughters.”
“Leave the human city. First Son needs two more daughters and is drawn to the signal you give off when you are united, just as the stones.”
“Separate,” I whisper.
