Page 65 of The Blood Rites

The Overseers are all around, hands raised to the sky. Their voices unify as they announce: "Our Great Mother has seen enough!”

Atheron spits on the floor, looking directly at me. “Tomorrow,” he sneers, “you’ll have nothing and no one to hide behind.”

He stalks away, dragging Serraith behind him. Maleiros follows, sheepishly.

The Dome empties and it’s just me, Marissa and the three Shadowborn who remain.

Marissa pulls me close.

“Luceris…” she whispers. “You ran straight into the fire.”

She presses her lips to my cheek, a fleeting warmth I’ve rarely known. With a gentle smile, she turns and walks towards the exit, her footsteps echoing softly as she goes.

I don’t feel brave. I feel hollowed out.

Kael stands, steadying himself and brushing off the dust. He turns to me, placing both hands on my cheeks. Shocked at the sudden closeness, I startle.

His voice is rough but steady. “Stop putting yourself in harm’s way,” he demands. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

I stare at him for a second too long before forcing myself to look away.

“I guess you thought wrong.”

I don’t miss the flicker of disappointment in his eyes as his hands fall back to his sides.

That night I lie awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching them as they branch and glow.

Tomorrow, the Blood Rites begin.

And nothing about me feels hidden anymore.

Ten

There is no sleep, not really, but eventually the world turns inside out and I’m gone.

There is a vision. It feels like the splitting of my skull. It starts as a pinprick of white splitting the dark. The white becomes glass. Then the glass splinters into shards that slice the perfect black sky to ribbons.

I fall, not down, but somehow through—into the jaws of the void. Every fragment slices me, cold and burning, each one cutting off a piece of my identity. I can’t tell if I’m being devoured or remade.

Somewhere above or below I hear the echo of a voice. No, not a voice. It’s like music but it hurts. Like someone plucking at my nerves.

“What is this...?” the familiar voice of the Mother Shard sings out, in harmony with the music.

I try to answer but I no longer feel whole. Every part of me drifts separately through the dark. Sometimes they form into the fractured silhouette of a young boy.

“What have you done? Why can’t I see? Where have you gone?”

A wind rips through the pieces, shattering the boy. There is a hunger in the air, clawing at my skin, tearing me to shreds. It begins as the hunger of a predator, then twists into something worse: the hunger of a mother who cannot remember her child’s face. The hunger turns towards me. And somewhere deep inside myself, I understand why.

“What are you? What are you?”

I am nothing, I want to answer, but in this place my thoughts are not private. My mind feels picked clean, like dry bones on the road. My words are picked apart before they even form.

“You are not nothing. You are...” The Mother Shard’s voice breaks, before remaking itself. “You are holy fire. Not a bridge. Not a true child. Mistake.”

A face appears in the shards, or rather, the suggestion of one. A complex layering of distorted reflections that look like the face of a woman, cracked down the centre and stitched together with threads of radiant blue. The mouth moves.

Son.