Page 124 of The Lost Reliquary
Days go by with little water and less food. Nolan doesn’t return. No Caius, either. At least, not that I’m aware of. Consciousness becomes an unreliable thing. The swaying of the sea turns into the rattling of a windowless wagon. I don’t know when it happens. I don’t know where I am. I am cargo again, like the first time I was ferried to the Cathedral, and somehow even more doomed this time around.
Mother visits me in fevered, broken dreams. First my birth mother, and then my blood mother. Their voices sing, back and forth, tunes I never quite remember or hear the words to. When I’m awake, sometimes I can’t tell if its day or night. Dusk or dawn. And before I figure it out, the dreams come again, pulling me into a different fractured state.
Until.
I wake, clearheaded, enveloped in the softness of what can only be a proper bed. Briefly, I think I am already dead. Dead, laid out, and waiting for—well, whatever a traitor’s death gets me. But why make a corpse so comfortable? I test my appendages slowly—fingers, toes, arms, legs. Move my neck around a bit. Everything seems to be inworking order. I’m thirsty. And hungry. But even those sensations have regained a certain normalcy.
Gingerly, I roll over, find a table beside the bed bearing a jug of water and a bowl of soup. I drink the water in one go, then start in on the soup. They are the same temperature, left at my side for an indeterminate amount of time. The broth tastes wonderful, though, and vaguely familiar, as if my body already knows its flavor. Given that I’m no longer in the throes of dehydration and starvation, it probably does.
But who, exactly, has been tending to me?
The chamber I’m in now is small and neat, with plastered stone walls and—markedly—a line of iron bars bisecting it. I am on one side, the exit from the room is on the other. A jail, certainly, but for a certain kind of prisoner. Whatever kind of prisoner I am, apparently.
There’s a thin slit of a window above the bed, almost hidden behind the draping of its canopy. I get to my feet, wavering a little with dizziness. But as deprived as my body was, it recovers quickly. The window is high enough that I have to strain to see through it, but when I do…
It takes a minute. Countless times, I’ve gazed up at the Cathedral’s pointed tower. But I’ve never looked down at the delicate buttresses, at the roof scaled with slate, lightly touched by the glow of the eternal flame that burns above. A tremble starts in my gut and spreads outward. A cell I would understand, somewhere deep in some dungeon below the Cathedral. Not… whatever this is. Again: Why make a corpse comfortable?
I pace to one end of the room and then the other, searching for a way to escape. There’s a heavy lock on the cell door but nothing to pick it with, and the hinges are solid enough that no meddling of mine would damage them. Abandoning that idea, I stop and listen, letting minutes pass in pure silence, but there’s no new answers to be gleaned there either. Exhausted by the effort, there’s nothing for me to do but sit down on the bed and wait, with only thoughts of what is coming to keep me company.
Hours pass before something in me stirs. Something all too familiar. My heart pounds, ticking off the seconds before the door opens, and the full power of Tempestra-Innara’s divine light washes over me. The Goddess pauses as they enter, as if surprised to see me awake.
They carry a bowl of soup.
“Daughter.” Their voice is a caress, flower petals trailing lightly across my skin. I shudder. “Finally.”
Still as prey, I watch as the Goddess approaches the cell door. They move carefully, as if afraid to spill a single drop. One touch, and the lock clicks open.
“You ate. I’m sorry, it was probably cold. Here, this is fresh. Hot.”
They hand me the bowl. I take it because I have no damn idea what else to do. If this is an execution, it’s by far the strangest one I’ve ever experienced. I glance down into the steaming broth. Is that what it is? Mercy? Maybe the food is poisoned. Maybe I eat this and drift off into an endless sleep, forgiven by my blood mother for all my sins against them.
Or maybe it’s just soup.
Either way, I eat.
They stand nearby as I do, watching. Pleased. Despite the familiar aura of divinity, I take note of little things that weren’t there before: a webbing of wrinkles on their face; a slight fade of color, as if their skin is thinning; dark circles beneath their eyes. The wilting of their avatar, continuing even now, when the reliquary is no longer a threat. I can’t see the wounds inflicted during the assassination attempt, but I suspect they’re still there.
“How do you feel?” they ask, when I am done with my meal.
A single answer comes to mind. “Confused.”
The Goddess smiles. “Yes. My poor girl, my poor little Lys. You were in terrible shape when you arrived. But you are growing strong again.”
Because executing someone already half dead isn’t any fun?I resist asking that particular question, fingers clenching the bed linens as the Goddess glides over and places a hand on the side of my face. I can’t help it; I lean into that warm touch, pour myself into it, a desperate, aching shiver running through me. Shame floods my veins; sorrow sends tears to my eyes. I want to tell them how sorry I am, to throw myself at their feet—not to beg forgiveness, but to apologize, over and over and over.
And, broken as I am, I might have. If not for the last secret left to me: Osiron.
“May I ask you a question?” says Tempestra-Innara.
“Uh…” The unexpected inquiry thickens my tongue. “Sure.”
The Goddess’s gaze locks onto mine. Not a hard look, or angry. Soft. Smothering. Inescapable. “Why?”
Again, I freeze up. Not because I don’t know what to say. But because I didn’t think they’d care. What is a traitor’s motivation to the most powerful deity in existence? The shame deepens. But it is mine—for myself, for my failure.
“Because”—the word slips out, thin as a final breath—“I never wanted to be what I am. Who youforcedme to be. Because I… Ihatethe bloody deeds soaked into my skin and how much it pleases me that they please you.” I let years of repressed hate pour into the explanation, and yet cannot pull away from their touch. “Because I want nothing more than to be free of this riven existence, and ofyou.”
A moment passes before the Goddess speaks again. “Ah.”
