The bird’s call shredded the air. I tucked my chin to my chest and pressed my palms over my ears. And still I could hear it. As if it came from my own mind. As if the screaming poured from my mouth and not the bird’s.
As if I were the one to call upon that great evil.
And while I fought against the terrible pain in my head, my father’s voice spoke above the screeching. He had never spoken to me before today. He had never done anything but die.
“It’s time,” he declared. His low, rumbling voice boomed through the room, drowning out the sound of the bird. “Tessana,” he demanded, “Come home.”
The screams from the raven grew louder and louder until even my father’s voice couldn’t be heard. I bent in half, pressing my hands against my ears as tightly as I could, but still the raven screeched and bellowed. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth through the pain, confident the horrific sound would make my head burst before I ever woke.
Just when the pressure behind my eyes became excruciating, the screeching stopped. The raven vanished. The images of my family’s bodies disappeared.
The darkness didn’t relent and I didn’t see my family again. I was finally left alone in the deep abyss of my subconscious. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I simply slept.
When I woke, I had a niggling feeling that I should be doing something.
My eyelids fluttered open and my burning lungs pulled in a breath. I blinked up at Father Garius who hovered over me with the root of a telly weed sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He chewed viciously, a nervous tick that signaled his anxiety.
It was in that moment I remembered. I felt the seedling grow stronger, louder, more purposeful… invincible.
“Home,” I croaked in a voice scraped raw.
Father Garius nodded once. He agreed.
An hour later, I’d bathed and changed into the warmest clothes I had. My fingers shook around the warm cup in my hand. The tea did nothing to banish the chill that had seeped into my bones and forced my toes to curl inside my wool slippers.
Father Garius perched upon the edge of his desk, watching me with gray eyes that saw more than they should.
I watched him back. Father Garius had seen me at my worst. He had dragged me to the Temple of Eternal Light against my will and forced me to stay all these years. He was as stubborn as I was and as determined to keep me alive.
I wasn’t a prisoner. He had saved my life, after all. But I wasn’t exactly free, either. His reasoning made sense and as I watched the political climate of the realm shift and change over my lifetime, I understood.
However, I grew tired of watching from my quaint prison. My bones were restless. My mind eager for responsibilities other than feeding chickens.
And my mouth desperate for conversation.
Besides Oliver.
Something else waited for me, beyond these walls. I felt it now more than ever.
“I need to go home.” I held my mentor’s gray gaze and spoke slowly so that my voice would not waver. The Brotherhood of Silence had done their best to raise me to be the woman they believed I should be. But they were not women. Nor did they possess the manners a noble of my standing should. So when I resolved to make my case today, I did so with the poise of someone I had nearly forgotten. I called upon the earliest memories of my schooling and the image of the woman my mother would have wanted me to be. “I have tarried long enough, Father Garius. And while I am thankful for your shelter, I am needed at home.”
He blinked at me. What is home to you, orphan? When I held my chin steady, one of his bushy eyebrows quirked with another silent question. How do you know?
My breath shook as it left my lungs in one long exhale. Wetting dry lips with the tip of my tongue, I told him the truth. “I’ve had dreams. Of my father.” Father Garius’s placid gray gaze turned as sharp as silver.
The Brotherhood of Silence did not believe in dreams from the dead. The idea was heresy to a man who believed his soul would leave his body and be absorbed into the Great Light in the sky. Most of the realm also believed this. It was my pagan mother who had taught me to whisper prayers to those that had died before me. To look for them in my dreams.
“He tells me to come home,” I finished. “He says that it is time.”
Father Garius glared at me. Was he angry that I had ignored eight years of his teaching? Or was it that I had kept my dreams from him for this long?
He would never explain, so I picked the third option. He was heartbroken that I could leave him after all this time.
It wasn’t my fault I’d left such a strong impression.
I took a sip of scalding hot tea to hide my smile.
Father Garius waved his hand in a circle, indicating that I should tell him more. I continued. “I dream about them nearly every night. But this afternoon was the first time my father spoke to me. And when he spoke, he told me to come home.”
Father Garius stood up and walked the length of his office. When he reached his bookshelf, he trailed his finger over the spines of leather-bound books along the bottom shelves.
When he found what he was looking for, he extracted it with an accompanying click of his tongue. He turned around, his robe billowing out. I felt the press of fear on my chest and an ominous prickling at the back of my neck.
When he set the book on the table in front of me, I recognized the text. An identical book had been hidden away in my mother’s chambers when I was a child. The pagan holy text,
