by Alia Luria
“Ah, yes, that is quite fortifying,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “We’d best begin this conversation anew.” He paused in thought, and Mia sat silently, allowing him the moment to ruminate. He took another sip of tea and cleared his throat. “Do you remember how you came to us, my child?”
“I was destined to serve with the Order, like my parents before me.”
The Dominus looked at her, his teacup perched below his mouth. “Ah, but that isn’t the whole of it, correct?”
“Well, when I first arrived, I thought Father had bargained my freedom for his life,” Mia said, “but that wasn’t really the way of it.”
“Was it not?” he said after a moment’s deliberation and took another sip of his tea, breathing deeply of the ginger-spiced aroma that floated around them.
Mia considered his words carefully before she spoke. It had all been a ruse to fulfill her mother’s wishes. There had been no bargain struck. And yet she truly had felt betrayed, used, and abandoned. And she supposed she had been all of those things. Father had made no effort to try to explain the situation to her. He hadn’t treated her as the independent adult she was but had tricked her as one does a child into eating a bitter root. And then she thought about Dominus Nikola’s words that cold morning upon her arrival. She recalled his piercing gaze and her own rage. It had seemed at the time to be a false decision presented her, one in name only.
“If I had turned and walked out the way I had arrived that first morning, would the Order have let me leave?” she asked.
“One always has a choice,” the Dominus said, smiling at her and taking another enthusiastic sip of his tea.
She sighed and sipped her own tea in response. “And what is my choice now?” she asked finally, sensing this conversation might finally get to the point the Dominus was dancing around.
“You can either take up your entitled position as a full cleric of the Order and the obligations and rights that are assumed and bestowed with that position, or you can watch from a withering tree branch as Lumin and the elders and fauna so precious to it are endangered by the Druids.”
Whatever Mia had been expecting Dominus Nikola to say, this wasn’t it. She sucked in a breath, her brow wrinkling.
“That’s rather dramatic and not much of a choice, if I do say.”
“Extinction is naturally a dramatic topic, I am afraid,” the Dominus said.
“Extinction?” she parroted the word, her brain not fully comprehending the Dominus’s meaning. For the first time since meeting Dominus Nikola, she considered whether he was going mad.
“There is much you still don’t understand about the Order and its inception. We were formed not only to protect the artifacts but also to restore society. Something, however, has gone terribly wrong. Gamma Protocol was supposed to terminate more than one hundred fifty cycles ago, but we can’t get into the Core.”
“Gamma Protocol?” Mia asked, raising her eyebrows.
“A great deal about the Great Fall remains unknown,” he continued, “but you’ll have to trust me on this. The Shillelagh has much more than just historical significance. It is the means to get to the Core.”
“Yes, I knew that,” she said. “Brother Cornelius mentioned it while I was…” In the dungeon. She finished the sentence in her head. “But what is Gamma Protocol specifically?”
“Gamma Protocol saved Lumin from extinction once,” Nikola said. His tea finished, he leaned back in the armchair and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But now we know for certain that the Druids are trying to get into the Core, and Rosewater will stop at nothing to put us back on the path.”
“To extinction?” she asked, her limbs growing numb and cold.
The Dominus nodded slowly and clasped his hands again. For a moment, he and Mia sat together in silence, each lost in thought. Mia’s mind roiled with many unanswered questions, but the gravity of the revelation left her thoughts watery and insubstantial.
“Why don’t we just go to the Core first?” Mia asked.
“Because we can’t find the key,” he said. He smiled ruefully. “So you see, the Order needs your skills and resourcefulness. Your abilities are integral to our survival.”
“But I let Compendium be destroyed,” she said. “I let Mallus die and the others be injured so we could get the Shillelagh back. I let Cedar be maimed.”
“It couldn’t be avoided,” the Dominus said contemplatively.
“I never should have trusted Taryn. I let myself be led astray. These are not the qualities of a cleric.”
“We can make decisions only with the information laid before us,” he replied. His eyes grew distant, a haunted look crossing their gray depths before they snapped back to their piercing gaze. “The capacity to trust in others is not a failing.” His tone brooked no argument.
“Even if that trust is abused?” Mia asked, disregarding his tone.
“Especially when it’s abused. You may not feel that you have earned your place among us, my child, but the practical lessons that you’ve learned in the past thirteen months more than make up for, ah, let us call it, your independent nature.” With that, he stood and stretched his back and grasped his cane from its resting place. Mia always wondered whether it served as more of an ornament than a support. “Now, my child”—he gestured his free hand toward the acolyte pin stuck to her sash—“will you be joining us then?”
“I suppose I don’t have a choice,” she said, sighing and rising to give him a bow and escort him to the doorway.
“Ah,” he said, “but one always has a choice.”
Mia peered through the large carved doors toward the assembly in the Great Hall. The last time she had entered here, it was to make amends. This time it was to be inducted as a cleric of the Order. Those gathered—which appeared to be almost everyone—chatted in hushed tones as they awaited the commencement of the ceremony. Mia’s fellow acolytes occupied the space closest to the door. Iris’s eyes were fixed upward as she pointed to the stonework and intricately carved skylights set into the ceiling. Another acolyte stared openmouthed at the delicately woven tapestries that hung along the walls of the chamber.
Where the floor was usually open and displaying the spectacularly inlaid design of an elder arboreal, today seats were arranged in neat rows facing the dais, with a central aisle between the rows. Gourds were placed all around, bathing the room in a soft, golden light, and bunches of curling vines bursting with flowering colors were placed along the dais and podium.
The clerics obviously had taken pains to arrange this ceremony. Cedar’s thick hair and brown skin caught Mia’s eye from a distance, and her breath caught in her chest at the patch strapped over his ruined eye. Part of her wanted to run to him and throw her arms around him, while another part wanted to run from him and hide from the damage she had wrought. He sat stiffly and nodded occasionally as others spoke to him. Mia looked away lest he feel her eyes boring a hole in the back of his head.
The Order wasn’t an organization to make merry with music and dancing, and this event was no different. Dominus Nikola, Brother Cornelius, and Brother SainClair assumed their positions on the dais as a signal that the proceedings were about to begin. The other senior clerics seated themselves behind them. Mia cleared her throat nervously and wrung her hands in her robes. Sister Valencia had dropped off the darker, softer robes of a full cleric for her to wear to the ceremony, but Mia was currently without a sash or pin. She fingered the heavy egg shape of her mother’s locket, turned the little tab at the top to expose the sigil within, and peered at the somber owl springing forth from the lotus flower. With Compendium gone, this was her only rendering of the SainClair family crest. She twisted the locket closed, tucked the delicate leafy chain back into her tunic, and patted it against her chest.
“Good morning to you all,” Dominus Nikola called out to the assembly. “I trust we’re all in good spirits as we welcome into our ranks a new cleric of the Order. We’re gathered this morning to bestow upon Mia Jayne SainClair the rank of cle
ric. Is Ms. SainClair present among you?”
Mia entered the room upon this cue and stood at the threshold. This part of the ceremony was scripted.
“I, Mia Jayne SainClair, am present to receive the honor bestowed upon me,” she said, wrestling with her voice to keep it steady and natural sounding.
“Then come forward, Ms. SainClair, to make your vow and take your place among us,” the Dominus said.
His face appeared serious, but his gray eyes held a spark of warmth deep within. Mia straightened her back and walked deliberately and proudly to the front of the room. Any residual guilt that struggled to well up as she passed the faces staring intently at her was pushed into the depths. She would make this vow and do her part. The past was the past. When she arrived at the base of the dais, she turned.
“I have come now to make this vow to all of you,” Mia stated.
Sitting in the front row, Cedar lifted his head, his face still ashen beneath his light-brown skin. His remaining eye, large and dark, was fixed on her, but his face was stony and unreadable. Her heart withered at the sight. She turned and climbed the stairs of the dais to stand before Dominus Nikola. He placed his hand on her right shoulder, where her sash and pin would lay.
“Do you, Mia Jayne SainClair, vow to serve the Order in all things from this moment until your last breath?”
“I do,” she stated.
“And will you treat those here as your own brothers and sisters, your family for life, from this moment until your last breath?”
“I will.”
“And do you now accept the responsibility to spend your life and time in this world in the preservation of Lumin and its flora through study, scholarship, reflection, ingenuity, and combat, if necessary?”
“I do.”
“Now,” he said, “will Brother Thaddeus SainClair step forward?”
SainClair rose from his chair to the left of Dominus Nikola’s and proceeded to a nearby table. On the table was laid a sash and pin. Mia hadn’t noticed it from the back of the room. SainClair lifted the sash and pin and strode over to stand next to the Dominus.
“Thaddeus SainClair, are you willing to vouch for this acolyte’s character and fitness to ascend to the rank of full cleric among us?” Dominus Nikola asked.
“I am,” replied SainClair, his icy-blue eyes resting on Mia’s aqua ones. The corner of his mouth curved into a small smile, although he remained largely motionless before the Dominus.
“You may now bestow upon her the rank.” Dominus Nikola took his hand from Mia’s shoulder and gestured to the sash.
SainClair held up the sash and draped it around Mia’s hip and up over her right shoulder. She was reminded of her first day here when Cedar similarly draped her sash for the first time. She stood motionless as he held the fabric in place with his right hand and deftly pinned it to the tunic with his left. Mia let her eyes wander to her shoulder even as her head pointed forward. Her acolyte pin had been replaced with a shiny gold pin bearing an elder tree filled with fruit.
“I had this one made specially for you,” SainClair whispered near her ear. “Look.”
Mia turned her head and looked down at her shoulder. Her uncle grasped the pin and tugged gently. The center, where the tree resided, flipped in an outer ring in which it was set. The other side was an engraving of the SainClair sigil, the owl and lotus gleaming in gold. Mia’s eyes watered, and she took a deep breath, determined not to cry. She gave her uncle a tremulous smile, and he winked at her as he grasped his own pin and flipped it similarly.
“I love you,” she mouthed silently. He winked again and stepped back next to Dominus Nikola.
“And so, Sister SainClair, you’ve made your vows and assumed your obligations to us, your family, and so we now vow to you as follows.”
Then the whole room spoke as one, their voices resonating along the walls and filling Mia’s ears and her heart.
“As you have given your vow to serve us, we vow to serve you. As you are now linked to us as family, we are now your family. As you now dedicate your life to service of the realm, you add your voice to ours, and we are one. Welcome, Sister SainClair!”
The room applauded and cheered. Hoots filled the air, and Mia broke out into a huge smile and blinked back the tears that continued to threaten. SainClair stepped forward and embraced her in a hug, and the warmth of his arms enclosed her. Dominus Nikola and Brother Cornelius clapped behind him, and the voices of the others clamored their congratulations. Mia was finally home among family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alia Luria lives in Orlando, Florida, with her partner and their two Pembroke Welsh Corgis, neither of which is named Hamish. When she isn’t writing far-flung tales, she practices corporate and privacy law.
Visit alialuria.com or follow @alia on Twitter for information on and excerpts from Ocularum, the next book in the Artifacts of Lumin series.
If you enjoyed this novel, please leave a review at Amazon or Goodreads.