The invite arrived at sundown.
Eirran knew, from the confrontation at the Council and from the look in Vareth’s eyes, that there would be retaliation. All that was left was to wonder when it would happen and what it would entail.
As days went by, he became restless, so when the moment finally came, he met it with equal parts horror and relief.
Eirran stood by the window, palm resting on cold stone, watching the copper strands of dying sunlight disappear beneath the horizon.
Three knocks.
“Come in,” Eirran said, not taking his gaze away from the window.
The door opened.
Keth slipped in and closed it gently, as if the doorframe had thorns. He waited one breath, then another.
“My lord.” The words were flat – a simple greeting more than reverence. From Keth, he didn’t expect anything else.
Eirran didn’t turn. From the subtle undertone in Keth’s voice, he guessed that what he had dreaded had arrived. Only the pressure of his fingers against the windowsill intensified, knuckles draining of color. “I’m listening.”
“The High Priest summons all members of the House to a special service.”
A pause that found edges. “Attendance from all household members of the High Houses in Astochia is required. No exceptions.”
Eirran laid another hand on the stone windowsill. The last of the light drained from the sky, draping the study in blue-grey shadows.
Keth’s eyes moved to the window, then to the parchment he held. He stepped closer and set it down. Dark ink bled through the vellum.
“I don’t think this is an ordinary service,” he murmured. “V’Lorath hands are in it. The new High Priest – Alerion – is kin to Vareth. They want you in the arena of their choice, forced to make a move everyone will witness.”
Eirran walked over to the table, took the parchment, and spread the sheet between elegant fingers. A vertical line formed between his eyebrows as he read. Wings stirred the air – a contained rage pulsing through him.
“They want you to hide her so they can claim cowardice,” Keth said, voice grave. “That, or bring her to the Ilari space and put the blade of the law under both your throats.”
“Vultures,” Eirran hissed and tore the parchment. He tossed the pieces over the table and shut his eyes. They drifted to the floor with a whisper. “She is a child, Keth.” Bitterness dripped from his lips. “She should have been learning and playing, not…” A heavy sigh. “Not having to endure this.”
Keth stood silent, steadily bathed in the soft orange light.
“I expected something vile from V’Lorath. How naive of me to think he wouldn’t involve her.” He shook his head.
“What are you going to do?” Keth asked, steady as an oak.
Eirran opened his eyes, a resolve taking place. “The one thing they don’t expect.” He looked up at Keth. “Call for Lily.”
Lily walked in like a pale ghost emerging from the shadows, her small frame delicate against the massive mahogany door.
“Keth said you called for me,” she said, her hand absentmindedly gripping at the knot at her wrist, sitting just above the thin bandage.
“Come. Sit,” he told her, showing her the chair and sitting too, opposite her. His fingertips rested on the wood, as if to keep him from taking flight.
“Do you suspect why I called you?”
“Keth mentioned something about the Temple service.”
“Yes.” He let the word rest between them. “The High Priest is… a kinsman of Lioran and his family.”
He didn’t miss the tiniest flinch at the mention of Lioran’s name. “He has issued a formal request for all noble households in Astochia to attend. Do you know what will happen there?”
She looked away, eyes unfocused. “Back in Ulm, Diachon Miron called me a ‘sin’.” She turned her gaze to him, but there was no shock there, only solemnity. “I suppose… they’ll talk about me. About you. That you… did wrong when you made me.”
A draft slid through the room, making the twin flames of the lamps shiver.
“Will they talk about Mother?” she asked suddenly.
She might have thrown a hot coal at him.
He closed his eyes and winced. Noemi pulsed inside him like a wound for a beat or two, then faded.
“I don’t know.” He exhaled, shoulders slumping for only a moment before resolve took back its place, his wings lifting and brushing at his back in agitation.
“They want me afraid,” he said. “They want me to hide you. I won’t.”
A small widening in her eyes; not surprise, but understanding.
“In the Temple there is an order,” he went on. “Humans stand on the floor. Ilari sit in the high niches. Do you understand?”
“I do.” Then, anyway: “And me? Where is my place?”
In her eyes, he saw she knew. She was making him say it.
He lowered himself to his knees to meet her at eye level. His wings spilled around him, clumsy, awkward.
“Lily,” he began, “they want me to bring you up there with me, to give them cause. To arm them. We will not give it to them.”
A breath. “Do you remember in tennat – when sometimes you have to sacrifice lesser pieces to save the queen?”
She nodded. His eyes in her face, steady and dark. Unflinching.
He rested his hand on top of hers, their knots touching. “I won’t force you to go. I won’t ask you to do anything that you don’t want to do.”
She frowned. “But if I don’t go, then Lioran wins.”
Eirran let the silence speak for him.
“Then I will go.” Her chin jutted forward.
Eirran closed his eyes for a beat, briefly squeezed her fingers, then let go.
“Alright. You will go,” he said. “You will stand on the ground with the humans, because those are the rules. And you will do it knowing that it is us sacrificing something lesser to preserve something more important. We won’t let them win.”
A pause. “Do you know the Fifth House motto, Lily?”
She blinked. “Through fire… Unbroken?” Her voice was thin, confused.
He crossed his fingers in the old House sigil – two crossed flaming arrows. “Wherever you stand and whatever they say, remember what runs in your veins. V’Asanii blood. My blood. We do not break. You and I – we will walk through this fire, together.”
She looked at him a long time. Then her eyes hardened, her chin dipped.
“If they call me a sin?”
“They will say many things,” he said, harmonies steady and flat. “You know what is true.”
“What?”
“That you are not a mistake. That you are not a sin. That you are my daughter. And nothing on heaven or earth can unmake that.”
Her mouth tipped, eyes brightened for a moment. “Aunt Mirna says priests are like pigeons. Many kinds, but all of them release the same dung from high perches.”
A bark of laughter escaped him, for a brief moment harmonies spilling and clattering like fallen silverware. “Mirna is as wise as ever.”
Her jaw tightened, shoulders set straight. “I won’t show fear.”
He took hold of her hand. “I know.” He held back a wince.
She is a child. What have I brought her into?
She squeezed his hand back. “Father.”
He froze. She actually called him…
Her voice was steady, gaze clear. “Don’t worry. I won’t cry.”
That tore him: a child walking toward her own humiliation, comforting him.
He turned his face to the west, where the Temple stood waiting, and he knew: he would never forgive them for forcing her into bravery beyond her years.
Never.
The Temple of Ellevath’s Light was a monument to cold stone and height. Ilari perched in carved niches, wings half-open, stained glass bleeding color into white. Down below, humans stood in sifted dust.
Lily stood among them, a patch of sky-blue in the sea of murky greys and browns, eyes fixed on her father who sat in his niche, taut like a live wire hidden beneath porcelain.
The service opened with the High Hymn. Ilari voices bloomed from the niches in layered syllables, each throat carrying too many sounds. It wasn’t a melody, but a geometry of sound. Tones branched, circled, collided: crystalline, then dense, compressing the air tight against the eardrums.
Human faces blanched. Mouths pressed tight; eyes dropped; teeth bit lips to cage the buzz sawing at the inner ear. Lily felt the vibration rattling her bones and coiling around her spine – an odd feeling: an almost-recognition crashing against nausea.
The voices sprang higher, the flames of the candles surging after them.
Every hair on her arms lifted. Sweat beaded her palms. For a heartbeat, the net of sound cinched her heart. For a heartbeat, it made sense.
Above her, Eirran leaned – a short breath from breaking rank and diving to her – but she looked up, dark and clear, fist and jaw set, and touched the knot on her wrist. I can bear it.
He stopped. His wings trembled. Knuckles paled to white from pressing against the stone. The hymn finally quieted, trailing away. She was still upright.
High Priest Alerion V’Lorath flew down from the hidden niche onto the gilt pulpit, a balcony thrust into emptiness like a tongue, an altar shining behind him like a judgment.
“Hear the word of the Book of the Condemned!”
Candles shivered.
“Blessed are those born in the Light and of the Light; they are the children of Heaven. Blessed are also those born of earth, with their eyes kept low and their minds on their labor – never reaching toward skies not given to them. For the sky is the sanctum of the Covenant between Ellevath and those spun of His hair alone.”
Lily stood straight, small hands gripping at the cotton fabric of her blue dress – not House indigo, but sky. It was Eirran’s suggestion, and she agreed. Not enough to provoke, but enough for everyone to read the message.
“And Ellevath said,” the priest’s harmonies opened low, “the Ilar shall not lie with a human; for it is an abomination in the Eyes of Ellevath. If fruit from such sin comes forth, let the mud quench the Ilar’s light without mercy; thus it will be born wingless – so all may know the wrath of the Light is eternal and the renunciation complete.”
He paused; his voice softened to a poisonous tenderness. “I take from them all that is Mine – apart from their eyes. Let each eye mirror the sin of those who bore them – an eternal testament of their Condemnation in the Sight.”
Silence fell thick and sharp. Ilari children rustled in the niches, sniggering behind hands. Lioran smiled a fine, triumphant line and looked down.
Alerion lifted his gaze to the niche where Eirran gripped the stone. “Some think they can hide shame behind power and old glory. But the Light sees all. Even those who once wore golden armor of the Seraphim now hide mud in their palaces.”
A dozen looks lanced Lily. She did not move. They pierced Eirran; he did not notice.
“Guard the Light from spilling into Clay! It is a curse to those born of Earth as much as to those born of Light!” His harmonies cracked open. “Let the sinners repent – or dissolve into the dust.”
He left them a last look – threat folded into invitation – and withdrew.
Lily turned her face up to her father. Eyes full of unspilled tears; mouth set. She nodded once, hard, and crossed her fingers.
Through fire, unbroken.
Around them, wings rustled, voices whispered, eyes stung like thorns. It did not matter. They could speak, they could laugh, but they couldn’t touch them.
Neither of them have seen how Vareth’s smile drained from his lips, how Vhanna snapped open her fan or how Lioran’s glee had faded from his eyes. Old rage ignited anew and he didn’t realize he was biting his lip until he tasted the copper on his tongue.
The pawns had fallen, but the queen was left standing.
Something in Eirran broke and healed at once as he watched the whole world around her vibrant blue fade into shades of grey.
When it was finally over, after the crowd left and the hymn bled from the walls, Eirran dropped from his niche to the floor. Lily waited in a patch of candlelight pooling on the ground. The Temple rang with silence and burned with the smell of incense.
She didn’t move. She stood, grounded, her dark eyes glistening with something beyond tears. He came close and took her hand without asking, turned it over, thumb brushing a soft caress across the knot at her wrist.
“You did it,” he spoke, voice thick with pride.
A small nod. “We did it,” she corrected. “Did it hurt you,” she asked suddenly, her small brow frowning, “when they called you a sinner?”
He didn’t answer at once. Far in the Temple, a censer met stone with the smallest clink.
He squeezed her hand just a little, once.
“No,” he said, honestly. “No, it didn’t hurt me. Perhaps it only made me feel a bit lonely.”
“You weren’t alone,” she objected, tugging at his hand.
“No.” He looked at her, and a small smile curved the corner of his lips. “I don’t think I really am… anymore.”
Her chin trembled once. She breathed it down. “When he spoke about eyes,” she whispered, “I wanted to shut mine. But I didn’t. Because I felt if I closed them, it would only make him say it louder.”
He almost laughed, and didn’t. “Mirna would call that spite.”
“She’d say it’s the stubbornness I got from you.”
Silence settled between them like a blanket.
Then Lily spoke, small and fierce: “Would you be angry if I told you I wanted to throw an egg at him and spit on the floor?”
He barked a laugh – heartfelt and three-tonal, with the echo of two other undertones breaking against the stone.
The smile that lit up her face made the lights of the Temple candles shy away.
Even the twin lamps in Eirran’s study seemed to glow brighter when Keth entered it that evening.
“Have the stonesmith carve a bench,” Eirran said instead of greeting, reaching for the quill and a piece of parchment.
Keth frowned. “A bench.”
“Yes. White marble of the highest quality. Unadorned, marked only with the Fifth sigil. Then have it delivered at the Temple. It will stand exactly where she stood today.”
Keth, who had thought the night’s boldness spent, blinked. He began a word, caught it; began another; let both fall.
“Sir…” The silence that followed had sharp edges. “The Temple will call it heresy.”
“They can call it any way they please,” Eirran said, signing the arrow-cross at the foot of the order. “They won’t be able to do anything about it. It is just a bench, Keth.”
Keth opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the window. The door. The letter. His lord.
“The law won’t allow her in the niche – fine.” Said Eirran. “But I will make sure they see her placed above the ground.”
“This will…” Keth searched for the right word. “…enrage them.”
“Good.” The old fire rose from the ashes and burned behind Eirran’s eyes with new flame – . “Let’s see what they can do about it.”
Keth held the quiet a little longer, as if weighing it for both of them. “Will the Council of Eight Towers make trouble?” he asked at last, voice low – a warning.
“Not so long as I don’t break the law.” He dipped the quill into the ink. “The law doesn’t forbid me to have a child.” A beat. “Only to give her my name.”
The quill rasped against parchment as he wrote.
“Faith doesn’t always care about the law.” Keth’s voice spread thin.
Eirran’s hand paused; his eyes met Keth’s. “Perhaps. But the tools they have aren’t many, and I know them all.” He finished writing and laid the quill to rest.
“And if by any chance they try to take the sword instead of quills,” he continued, pressing his seal against the hot wax, “they’ll learn that the Sword of Ellevath can cut through feathers just as well as flesh.”
He set the order aside.
Keth took it, doubt giving way to confidence “I will make sure it’s done.”
Outside, the Temple bell tolled once and stopped – as if it had thought better of it. Priests’ power was words in the air; V’Lorath’s power was ink on parchment. Neither survived the fire through which they had passed… unbroken.
Next chapter:
Earthborn ‐ Chapter 30: Against Nature and Faith
Leave a Reply