“I am afraid it has grown rather late,” Tressa said. She dropped Anastasi’s shoulder and smiled at the scandal-thrilled onlookers. “Please, take some cake and my apologies for such a spectacle.”
Jerroth offered to escort me to my rooms. I shrugged him from my arm, afraid to speak a single word. I needed to get away, and as I slipped past bodies and chairs, Tressa grabbed me at the door.
“Next time you have Game-changing news, tell me beforehand so I can help you with your presentation,” she said in a low whisper. Her tone lightened, but it stayed strained. “I forgive you this time, but my! So much turmoil in your wake.”
“I am sorry,” I whispered back. “I didn’t mean to ruin your party—”
“Why didn’t you tell me—” She caught sight of an older woman striding toward us. “That old bat. Flee before you blunder beyond all repair.”
Tressa released me to turn a smile at the woman. One step, and I was in the hallway; another and I was a safe blur. I went straight to my rooms, braced the door with my desk chair, and ripped off the clothing I hated. Then I crawled into bed, determined never to leave.
Until I dreamed.
In my sleep, I attended Tressa’s party once more. This time, Tressa sided with Anastasi and demanded to see my Gift. As I failed, they called me a peasant as an insult, and then understanding dawned on their faces…
I jolted awake, clutching my sheets. I lit a candle to ward off other bad dreams.
It didn’t work. Instead of blissful darkness, I slipped not into dreams but visions. One by one, I relived them all: the sapphire, the black mage attacking me, the blood-red dragon and its rider. None of them were as bad as the last.
I kneel in a pool of red. My hands press against a man’s chest, his blood slicks over my fingers. I cry in agony and bend so that my forehead almost touches him. I want to die with him. It isn’t fair, I cry over and over. “Please don’t die. Please, First One, help me!”
When I woke, tears and sweat soaked the sheets.
In Stoneyfield, I often visited the village’s altar to ask the First One for help. It didn’t matter that I babbled to Him all the time in my head. Something about kneeling before stone and offering a sacrifice made prayer more real. More serious.
I’d gone to ask for adoption right before my manifestation. Before everything changed.
I needed everything to change again.
As soon as it opened, I ate breakfast in the dining hall and asked a commoner where I could pray. She directed me to a place called the Devotarium, located in Mountain One. I’d actually memorized the waypoint, but I hadn’t known what the word meant.
The Devotarium was nothing like Stoneyfield’s lonely, weatherworn altar.
The door to the Devotarium revealed a room large enough to fit two dragons. Row after row of tables filled the room, all empty. The walls—the walls.
They’re Illusioned, I marveled. I drifted to the center of the room to take it all in. One moving scene after another blended together. Dragons so real I saw their scales. Battles with weapons glinting. Maps changing, boys growing into men, crowns forming on women’s brows. People bathing in colored fire and calling lightning down on dark shapes.
“Can I help you?”
With great reluctance I tore my gaze from the Illusions. The man approaching me wore white, like a healer, except golden threads decorated every inch of his robes. Sunbursts melded into dragons that breathed sunbursts again.
“I…” I didn’t recognize the robe, but I’d seen the hairstyle before. A series of braids woven together, reaching to his hips. Both the female and male Speakers who’d visited Stoneyfield had worn their hair that way. “Is there an altar?”
A smile ghosted his lips. “This way.”
I sent one last look at the beautiful walls before following him through a golden door. Real gold. So much gold, I couldn’t begin to guess the cost, with sunbursts beaten into the metal. The door led to a hallway lined with small rooms. Each of those doors had a single small window with clear, flawless glass.
The Speaker splayed his hand before his face. “May you leave with a mind full of peace and a heart full of flame.”
“Thank you?” I guessed. The Speaker didn’t budge. I darted into the room he’d opened before it got too awkward, and he closed the door gently behind me.
“Blessed rain,” I breathed. There was an altar, but it wasn’t the worn stone I’d grown up with. Black marble, with threads of gold like flame, stood at the room’s end. A white candle sat upon it, and veins of gold in the rock sparkled under the single Light floating at the ceiling. Around the Light, crystals dangled, casting rainbows on the white fabric draped over the stone walls. In front of the altar sat a bench padded with black velvet.
I pulled my only gold dragon from my pocket, along with a cherished possession—the chocolate Shamino had given me. I started to place them on the altar when I paused.
There were no other offerings.
Not one.
Do they take them? Food, bits of cloth, the odd copper commoner—all were strewn about Stoneyfield’s altar. The Speakers who visited the village always urged us to make a sacrifice for serious petitions. Surely the nobles gave something?
My coin clinked on the marble. It sounded… lonely. The chocolate went beside it. I found some flint and tinder on a tiny shelf behind the altar and lit the unburned candle. Then I sat on the bench, but sitting seemed strange so I knelt on the stone floor instead.
Why? Why, why, why?
I licked my lips. “I am sorry I’ve avoided you. I’m… angry, a little, but grateful. And scared.” I laughed. “I’m everything, I guess.”
Was it right to bother a deity with every little thing? Tressa and Anastasi, my false identity, the endless studying, Merram and Thorkel, the flutters from Shamino’s smile, the visions,
