Page 4 of Ashborne Phoenix

I knew what I’d find when those voices stopped calling on my behalf. And I didn’t want it. I wanted the power, but I’d never wanted to do what it took to receive it.

I had begged God to save me from this. He hadn’t listened.

And then I heard it—a hiccup in the sliver of silence as the voices around us took a breath. The garbled voice that was smothered, but perceptible now that I listened for it. And the soft sighs of fabric against stone.

I knew the altar, with its white marble eschara, the stone slab stained by blood, and smoke, that dominated this space—not by its size, but because it lay, white as bone, at the center of this space, its intricate carvings barely discernible in the looming darkness.

When my knees and thighs came up against the cold stone I almost cried out in fear. Mother stopped pressing me forward, and my heartbeat matched the increasing pace of the voices, rising faster, the esoteric words enunciated carefully, punctuated now by small sobs and coughs that didn’t only come from the altar’s surface.

I yearned to be away from here, to throw myself into my mother’s chest and beg her to run me back upstairs. I could stay nine for another year.

But even as the thought bloomed in my mind, I pushed it aside and swallowed the salty tears now coursing down my cheeks.

My father would never accept it.

At least I wouldn’t have to see, I told myself.

Then my mother raised our gripped hands high, and the voices stopped. The echo of the final chant faded, bouncing from the cavernous ceiling of this space—and the silence in its wake was broken only by three sounds.

My heart.

My mother’s rasping breath.

And small cries, like an animal in pain, muffled under a blanket.

I couldn’t breathe. Mother’s voice rose, high and shrill, filling every corner and bouncing from the stone.

“Audi me, cruor antiquus! Os antiquum. Scintilla antiqua. Te ipsum da! Hear me, ancient blood! Ancient bone. Ancient spark. Give yourself!”

I opened my mouth to protest, but only found a throatful of empty air as Mother drove our twined fists down.

I felt the resistance, and then the give, and the sickening slide, heard a muffled squeal, then screamed when something hot and wet splattered on my skin—but no one heard me because the chanting began the moment our fists were halted, and the chamber vibrated with their ecstatic cries.

“Sanguis antiquus canit! Sanguis Cruoris vivit!” The Old Blood is alive! The Cruor blood lives!

Then, like smoke filling the air, I felt the power, the presence sucking into me. And no matter how I shook my head, sobbing, pleading with my mother, there was no space, no flight.

Something curled claws into the back of my neck, and crawled down my throat.

I choked, panicking, certain I would suffocate. But the sound of my pain was drowned out by the chants raised in zealous joy.

For a time I was aware of nothing but the sense of struggle—until my mother’s voice drowned them all, ragged, heavy with gravitas, and brimming with ecstatic fervor. And with her words, the weight was lifted from my chest.

“Sanguis antiquus canit. Heres honoris antiqui vivit!” The Old Blood is alive. The Heir of Ancient Honor lives!

I sucked in to scream in protest, but no one heard me. My mother whipped my blindfold off, still shouting the words over and over, while I was frozen, gaping in horror at the bloodied body in front of me.

A body no larger than mine. Wide eyes white and filled with tears, chest heaving, blood spattered on a white dress.

It was a girl.

It was just a girl.

“NOOOOOO!” I screamed, instinctively yanking the knife out of her chest.

My mother laughed when the bloodied knife rose over our heads again, and the watching circle of Cruor Adherents lifted their voices in cheers.

The body in front of me recoiled, then jerked, those eyes seeping terrified tears, mouth wide over a thick, smooth rod of wood wrapped in red linen.