Page 28 of Fated in A Time of War
Instead, Alice kneels before the cracked altar, rummages through the dust until she finds a votive lamp—miraculously unbroken, its clay chipped but intact. She cups it in her hands, strikes a spark from some hidden flint, and breathes life into the wick.
The flame sputters, then steadies.
One thin tongue of light, dancing in the dark.
It throws her face into gold and shadow, makes her eyes gleam like cold water catching firelight. She says nothing. Just places the lamp on the ruined altar and lets it burn.
The silence is a knife against my ears.
I pace. My boots grind shards of glass underfoot, the sound sharp and jagged. My breath comes rough. The pain in my side gnaws with every movement, but I keep moving, circling like a beast in a cage too small.
“Don’t play holy with me,” I snarl. My voice comes out harsh, guttural, echoing off the stone walls. “Don’t you dare. You think I haven’t seen what comes out of places like this? I’ve dragged charred bodies from beneath shrines just like it. I’ve watched men bleed out because they hesitated at your symbols. I’ve—” My throat tightens. The word tears itself out raw. “I’ve buried my brother because of this war. Because of you. Because of all of you.”
The lamp flickers. She stays silent.
My fists clench and unclench, nails biting into palms. “Say something! Anything! Don’t just sit there with that calm face like I’m some fool raving at shadows!”
But she doesn’t.
She just watches me, her hands folded in her lap now, the light of her tiny flame catching on the silver of that Ataxian acolyte necklace.
It makes me feel mocked, like every ounce of fury I spill is nothing more than smoke in her quiet.
I slam my hand against a wall. Stone dust rains down. My ribs scream, but I barely feel it. “Tell me why you wear it! If you’re not enemy, if you’re not like them—why wear their symbol around your neck? Why flaunt it?”
For a long moment, she says nothing. Just breathes. The flame between us wavers in the draft, making her shadow long and thin against the wall.
At last, she speaks.
“I was raised in it,” she says softly, voice steady, even. “The faith. The vows. The prayers. That necklace? It isn’t a banner. It’s not a battle cry. It’s who I was, once. Who I’m still learning to be without.”
I scoff, a harsh sound, bitter in my throat. “Convenient answer.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver.
“But I don’t fight for it,” she continues, tone sharpening just enough to cut through me. “I don’t fight for gods. Or symbols. Or power. I fight for people. For the ones abandoned in this ruin while soldiers like you and monsters like them burn the world around them.”
Her words fall heavy, like stones dropping into water.
I stare at her, my breath stuck halfway out.
She doesn’t stop.
“For the wounded who can’t walk. For the children choking on air their lungs can’t survive. For the ones the Alliance promised to protect… and left to rot in the dark.”
My chest aches, and it’s not just the wound.
Her calm voice cuts deeper than any scream could. She’s not defending herself. Not justifying or pleading. She’s just laying the truth bare in front of me, like a wound that can’t be stitched shut.
And it hits something raw.
Lakka’s face flashes in my mind. Lakka, who believed every line of Alliance doctrine, every oath of honor, every broadcast about liberation and salvation. Lakka, who died crawling through ash, whispering my name.
I drag my gaze away, cursing under my breath, pacing again just to keep from cracking open right there on the shrine floor.
Her flame burns on the altar, steady and small, and somehow it feels like it’s lighting up every place inside me I’d rather keep dark.
“People,” I mutter, almost spitting the word. “You talk about people like war’s that simple. Like you can pick them up and carry them out of this fire. You think hope’s enough to patch the holes in their bodies? You think?—”
