by Kenna Bardot
I nodded at her, my mind wondering how I would have to prove myself to Mother Caprice that I would be ready. She bowed low and stepped back, stepping in between Edlynne and Colm with a soft glide on her boots.
At her nod, Edlynne spoke up, "That means, my dear, that you will only see the men who have Declared for you when you witness how they fight for you in the Trials. Your presence there will hopefully influence you when the time comes that we need your opinion. Or should they all disappoint you, you may end the Trials and undertake it again at another time.” She ran fingers down her long silver curls, the glimmering length of them glinting under the lights of the room.
Colm reached out and squeezed Edlynne’s arm. “As you may know, Mireyah, the final decision is on Sylfeshire and the Core Gods. However, as we aspire to create partnerships that last long and enable strong procreation, we take yours into account. I think that goes without saying that while you can still go outside during Visitation hours, they will be, from this moment on, barred from Sylfeshire during times you go out. As it is your home and not theirs, your comfort is our top priority."
"Please do not circumvent these rules as we have laid them down to protect you and help you mentally and physically prepare for the time ahead," Edlynne added even as Colm nodded at her. "Do you have questions?"
I shook my head as I stood. “I will do my best to prepare for what is coming, but I will have faith in my journey.” My head whipped around to face Caprice, and I smiled. “Or I fight to carve out my own.”
Edlynne and Colm chuckled as Caprice threw me a wide smile. "Farewell and be well, Mireyah.”
And I walked out, glad I had five days before I had to see her again.
✽✽✽
Five days flew by. I distracted myself with spending time with Lysandra and looking for sweets. I read with Theo in the library whenever he didn’t spend time in the Visitation area or tried to convince Astraea that she needed to go out when Oryn did eventually come back.
I did anything that would help distract me from what was looming. I told them I would prepare myself, but the truth of the matter was, I did not understand how I would do that. All I knew was the fact that they would tell me to do so likely meant that it would not be a pleasant experience. In fact, I could already imagine my soul being torn in half.
But the same five days seemed to crawl by at the speed of a snail. Anytime I sat and thought about it, fear pierced my soul as I thought about how I could fail. I could fail myself, my guys, and everyone I cared for in Sylfeshire. The very few Gods I was friends with, the Sylfes who grounded me, and the family I had left behind.
The time I’d so far had in Sylfeshire had corrupted me with the luxury and comfort. I got too used to the freedom, the abundance, that I knew I was no longer a Mireyah I recognized. As I prepared for my time with Caprice, though, I was determined that I would be a Mireyah I could be proud of.
The room was dim, but I closed my eyes to whatever little light was in there. I allowed my thoughts to invade me, my fears and insecurities to rear their ugly heads. The door creaked open, but the sound was so slight, so imperceptible that I could convince myself that it was but my imagination.
"Mireyah. How pleased I am to see you’re early." I didn't react, but I moved my eyes enough that I could look at Caprice. Today, the youth was gone from her face, as though she had lived two centuries in the time that we had last seen each other. That she had experienced and suffered through the world's pain in the interim. "Or maybe I am late. Time is but a marvelously artificial concept, is it not?"
I raised my head up so that I could look at her more clearly. She waved a hand, and the door closed behind her, sealing itself shut so much that I could not even see the outline showing it was there. I allowed my gaze to rest on her and wait.
"Do you know why you are here?" she asked me with her tiny smile as she gestured for me to stand with her long fingers. I did so without preamble. I thought of her question, struggling to find an answer. I knew, practically, why I was there but something about the way she posed the question at me told me she meant it to be more of a general sense. And that was where I struggled to find an answer.
"I'm here because you told me to be here, Mother Caprice. Although I wasn’t particularly early today." I smiled even as my heart thudded in my chest. I tried to tell myself that I was fine, and that I was doing what needed to be done. But there lay the problem - I just didn't believe myself anymore.
So the simple answer was that I didn't really understand why I was there. Having been given time to prepare myself - that I was told to ready myself meant that I’d analyze myself far too much.
And I realized that in worrying over small things, I'd placed importance in things that shouldn't have been important and forgotten what was.
Caprice laughed at me, swiveling in place until her long black hair wound around her like dark, smooth ribbons. "And tell me, Mireyah, do you do everything that you are told?"
'I..." I hesitated because even I did not know anymore. Even having Lysandra to remind me of what my convictions were, I’d gotten caught up far too easily with my men and the others who had Declared for me, forgetting why I would want to be a God. "I try not to be contrary for the sake of being so. Five years has wrought that change in me."
"Yes, yes. I remember the old Mireyah as I told you already once before. She would have spat at my face even when I was the only thing that stood between her and death. Would you still do the same thing? Or have you, perhaps, turned and loved the Gods you have so professed to abhor?" Caprice stopped spinning around, her long hair freed from its braids wrapping around her like some strange smoke.
"I do not. Becoming a Sylfe was the only way I could escape death, and death was an option that was not welcome to me. That being said, life as a Sylfe has been a push and pull because it meant that I was stepping closer to being a God. Here in Sylfeshire, I'm not a third-class citizen as I had been. As an attendant, I had been better than a slave. There is value in us, but I always felt like value was equated to what I could be, the potential of me as a God. And somehow that made it worse." I expelled a breath. Had that been hiding there all along? Somehow, even I had hidden it from myself.
"Are you trying to convince me, Mireyah? Or convince yourself?" Caprice eyed me with such deep sorrow and understanding that I felt it deep in my bones.
"Why would I need to convince myself when it is something that I own?" I shook my head at her, ignoring the niggling feeling at the back of my neck that there was truth in what she said.
Her eyes widened, darkened, and her smile stretched until it was no longer human. "Perhaps it is better to show you, since you seem so deeply rooted in your denial."
The room darkened, all the light snuffed out in the blink of an eye. I felt the room shift; myself move until I felt nauseous from the spinning movement before it stopped and I fell onto my side. In mere moments, it was the cold that hit me first. Five years in Sylfeshire and in the perfect climate didn't mean that I had forgotten how the cold could lick deep in the bones, freeze the extremities and cause fog to escape with every blow of the breath.
Winter, the glorious feeling of winter and with it, home.
I opened my eyes, struggling to get on my feet, and felt the tears sting at the corners. But from the cold, it was from sentiment. Right ahead of me was a sight I thought I would never see again - my childhood home in Wintercairn. Perhaps strangely, I knew that none of my family was there and I felt a slight tinge when I realized that I could not bring to mind what any of them looked like.
I turned away from that thought because something else waited for me. Something urgent.
I took a step forward, my feet crunching against the freshly fallen snow. My sheer purple gown plastered itself against my skin, already soaked from the snow. It had served its purpose well in Sylfeshire, but in the low temperatures of the village I had grown up in, it was as useful as paper.
I heard the footsteps - no - sensed them and I turned to see
myself as I had been when I had lived in that village and before going to Srieburgh, where Lathyn and all the other Gods he’d been with had irrevocably changed my life. Feeling the sentiment, I reached out, craving that human contact, but I sprang back a moment later. I did not want to see how real it could feel like when I could comfort myself knowing that it was a construct by Caprice.
"Oh Zeevar," the voice spoke, and it was as cool and distant as anything else in Wintercairn was.
"Hello," I replied, even as my voice cracked from the cold. I expelled a breath and brought my hands together to rub them for warmth. "Hello," I repeated because I had no words to say to a version of me that would have hated everything I now stood for.
"You're me, but older," she declared with a look of disgust on her face. "What happened to you?"
"Life happened to me, Mireyah. Survival despite the anger and eventually the desire to bring a better life not just to the family we love and cherish but to the world of humans we care for so deeply that it sometimes hurts." I sighed it all out, hating myself because it all came out as an apology. I did not want to apologize for doing what I thought to be right.
"You’re not even human anymore. No, I can see that your hair and eyes are a nauseating shade of pink, making it rather obvious that you’re a Sylfe. Or at least you fit the disgusting descriptions they have for female Sylfes in the books.” She took a step back and tilted her head. I could feel her eyes raking over me in judgment. “I question the judgment that had you coming in subzero temperatures in sheer, filmy clothing. But I’m not too surprised that you’ve lost all discernment when you allowed yourself to become a Sylfe. Tell me, for how many dicks did you spread your legs wide? For how many more are you willing to do so to become a God?”
I raised an eyebrow, telling myself that I needed to be patient. This was someone I’d once understood completely. Values and opinions that had once sat comfortably with my own. “You don’t understand that it’s not as black and white as you seem to think it to be. It’s far more nuanced than that.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can align yourself with the very beings that don’t care about the pain they cause. How you can imagine yourself in your cushy seat in Demiorgo, looking down on humans and watching in amusement as they suffer and die." She bent forward and spat at my feet.
I stepped back in shock at what she had done and considered what she’d done. This Mireyah had been brave enough to do what I’d always threatened to do. Perhaps because she faced a future I would have been horrified to face. I could not say if, at that age, I would not have been tempted to react as she had.
"No, that's not what I want. I have gone through this," I said as I swept a hand down my gown, now soaked through and causing my body to go into extreme shakes. I waved a hand at the earcuff that was bejeweled in different colors, still adorning my left ear with a dramatic flourish as I continued, "all this because I wanted to be the change that we so desperately want. There came a point that I understood that anarchic behavior was not the smartest thing to trap oneself in. Anger feels like the most potent weapon when, in fact, it is the most ineffective. It blinds us to what is stopping us until it is too late. Until all we can do is watch as whatever we've built tumbles to the ground in broken and unsalvageable pieces and all you're left with is your despair as you can never ever do anything ever again."
"I would rather die than sell myself out as you seem to have comfortably done so." Mireyah, the Mireyah who stood before me crossed her arms over her chest and bared her teeth at me in anger.
"Then you would have lived for nothing but your convictions, achieved nothing but become a martyr in your right. And a worthy cause that truly is. I'm sure the world you love and care for so deeply can survive and sustain themselves on your misplaced pride and vanity. At least you would not have compromised the values you hold so dear when you do." My chests heaved from the anger but also the fear. There had been a time that I would have gladly died, just as she seemed willing to do.
"The worst thing would be to let a God touch me, and not even for Utopia would I ever let that happen." Her mouth twisted into a sneer. Those gray eyes that I'd not seen in so long were full of such hatred and contempt.
"Then that is not bravery but selfishness. And I am glad that I am rid of you. All of you. And I am, for all that I have changed and evolved, satisfied with the way I am right now." I took a step back and eyed my past self. I stared at her until she stood in front of me as a separate entity, someone I understood helped mold but was no longer a part of who I was.
The world winked out, and I collapsed to the floor of the room in Sylfeshire, shivering and weak because as much as I knew that Mireyah had been in my imagination, everything else had not been.
"Now do you know why you are here, Mireyah?" Caprice spoke up, softly, even as her voice echoed in the entire room.
I stared up at her, tears streaking down her face that I knew instinctively mirrored mine. I reached up to touch my cheek - cold and wet and not just from snow. "I do. I'm here because I killed a part of myself. Not for me, but because I believed that there could be a future."
"Then you are ready for them to fight for you. I will see you then." And without warning, Caprice was gone from the room and the door reappeared, slightly ajar.
"Farewell and be well," echoed in the room even as I rested my head on my arm and passed out.
Chapter 18
Mireyah
Walking through the woods with Caprice at my right and Colm at my left felt like walking to my execution. There was nothing but foreboding inside me, the thought I might not even speak to the guys before they started their first Trial making me nauseous.
"What will happen?" I asked, and Caprice ignored me, though her lips tipped up in a smirk.
"You'll see shortly enough," Colm grunted, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. When we stopped at the edge of a hill, I looked down into a clearing below us. Sure enough, the seven who would compete for me all stood in the clearing, waiting for us. Or so I gathered from the colors that I could see.
We walked closer and Tate's head was the first to tip up, as if he could sense my erratic thoughts even from such a distance. When Tate signaled the others, their heads turned in our direction as I let Colm guide me down into the chasm. With his hand holding mine, the other had to work to hoist up the delicate fabric of my dress that would snag on every twig and tear on the ground. While I hated the dress, I had to admit it stunned. I hadn't understood the significance, why they would waste such a magnificent creation when only the men who competed for me would see me in it. It was a contrasting combination of blush and navy; the fabric stretched and crossed in an intricate pattern over my torso, leaving strategic patches of skin revealed before it gathered at the waist and fell to the ground in a pool of sheer fabric.
But when I saw the six chairs at the side of the clearing, I knew it had significance. The center three chairs were vacant, the others occupied by the three remaining Core Gods who waited for our arrival. There was no doubt who the central chairs were meant for.
I was the trophy, the prize at the end, and I was meant to be on full display.
Weapons lined the makeshift arena, a variety the likes of which I'd never seen, and I fought the urge to scream. The thought of them fighting, of my men being injured, was abhorrent to me. Colm met my eyes, giving me a subtle shake of the head, and I knew to keep quiet. While I might have spoken against the Core Gods in the past, it would not do to make them dislike me, not when they could easily gift me to Ashric out of spite.
He escorted me straight for the chairs on the raised dais, giving me a hand up and guiding me past Zeevar and Rhiannon where they sat on one side as he followed Caprice where she took her place next to Anselm.
Anselm stood when Caprice turned to him and nodded.
"Mireyah has proven herself in my first Judgment!" she announced. "And you will need to prove you are worthy of being her Sire in the next two trials
." She turned that intense gaze to me, tucking a thumb and finger under my chin to make me meet her eyes.
"Sit, my dear. Sit and watch how they bleed for you." I did as commanded, perching on the edge of my golden chair and staring at all the men who watched our interaction with interest.
"Was there ever any doubt she would prove worthy?" Lathyn teased, far more comfortable in the presence of the Core Gods than my men or Ashric could be. After all, he was as close to being a Core God as one could get without actually being one, such was the reputation and respect he'd earned on Demiorgo.
Caprice smirked at him cruelly. "Not particularly, no." She took her seat, and I rested my hands in my lap as she did, resisting the urge to reach out for Colm. The last thing I needed was to drive Shephard into a jealous rage because I sought comfort from a friendly presence.
Anselm stepped down off the dais to address the males waiting, "Given the rather unnatural circumstances of having an entire group Declare as a team, we've had to alter this test to suit all fairness. Instead of competing individually, it will be a tag team challenge instead. The group of five against the pair made up of Lathyn and Ashric. Now I know that those numbers are still not fair, thus we've handicapped each of the larger team by tying one arm behind your back. You may compete in whatever order you choose, but when I call out that it is time to switch, you switch. No exceptions. Weapons of your choice are permitted, but your powers will continue to be nulled." It was only after his words I saw the Vide leaning against a tree in the distance.
The Gods nodded, each moving to collect a weapon of their choice. My men seemed limited, given that they couldn't wield anything that might require two hands, but there weren't actually many options for two-handed wielding. Lathyn and Ashric accounted for it by each grabbing a second weapon.
Lathyn took a long, curved blade, with a handle that was shielded by a blade as well. His other hand grasped a short dagger, and the sight of those weapons made my heart clench. Ryle's muscular arm was already tied behind his back when he hefted up an axe.