All's Fair in Revenge

Chapter 5: The Vow

The next morning, I found myself in a domed room in the citadel. The last rays of sunlight filtered through arched, stained-glass windows as I helped dress my sister's body in a gold tunic that had once provoked a month's worth of sisterly ire.

It had been Arin's favorite, typically reserved for solstices and rites, but I had dared to borrow it without her permission. I planned on seducing Bröd for the first time that night and I needed to wear it. All was well until, on my way home, I accidentally angered a thorn bush, and it tore the dress' hem to my knee. I swore the entire way home knowing exactly how the conversation would go. I woke her and owned up to the mistake. I promised to make it right, though we both knew my sewing skills were about as good as my literacy, which was to say, awful. Arin didn't speak to me for weeks.

At Arin's body, I touched the soft fabric of the tunic, feeling for the tear that was once there, now cleverly hidden by a series of stitches crafted by our father, Sune. Before I'd arrived, the priestesses had begun the arduous process of cleaning Arin's body washing away the stains of her murder as candlelight danced in sea glass sconces fixed against wide columns. Her ax was positioned on her chest; more than just a display of honor but the hope for a second chance Eyr occasionally granted to the most courageous of her warriors. Or so the tomes told. Not that a person alive had ever witnessed it.

Sometime after I helped the acolytes chalk prayer symbols along my sister's arms and legs, down her forehead, nose and chin, her neck and sternum. Then, as we finished, I asked for a moment alone and they obliged, filing out of the stone archways in practiced lines. Despite death, Arin looked radiant. So radiant I almost forgot she wasn't asleep. My breathy sobs ricocheted off the tall stone walls and snarled in its ivy vines. Ripples of agony ripped from my chest and my breaths came quick and hard.

No one was around. I didn't try to control it. I didn't care that my eyes felt like they might pop or that my lungs might puncture. I didn't even care that my legs threatened to give. None of it felt real anyway: I wasn't on the verge of passing out and Arin wasn't lying there, dead.

Except she was.

Her murder played over and over in my mind. Her last moments seared into my memory. And I, who wanted so badly to be a warrior, to renounce my healing energy and join the Heerth, had simply stood there watching those Dorsi bastards spill my sister's blood into the sand; too scared and too weak to do anything about it.

"You're right, Arin," I said between heaves. I brushed a loose strand away from her face and squeezed her firm forearm. "I am a Nynth." A fresh curtain of tears rolled down my cheeks and my ribs expanded with grief. "You're always right." I took another breath, placed a kiss to my fingers, pressed it to her heart. "...were right, I suppose."

Blinking salty tears, I stared about the room trying to gather some semblance of composure. Long tapestries graced the cold walls, fluttering in a breeze that did not reach me. Each woven thread depicted a story about the goddesses. Some weavers, some time ago, had pulled their stories right from the ancient tomes Sybil forced me to read. I'd always preferred paintings and pictures.

One of them showed Eyr with her hands upon a child's forehead, healing the girl of blindness. Its strands of gold glittered even in the dark. Another, in browns and greens, depicted Idyr bringing two lovers' souls together after years apart. And the third, and most detailed, told of Hella creating Helheim. One half of her body was soft and proportionate, but the other was burned in wisps of blue-black smoke. Droplets of shimmering black blood dripped from her palm. A figure kneeled before her. In the background, her shadows gathered.

The stories felt so far away, yet they whirled around me in a carrousel of dizziness as I stared at my own hands, at the energy I both loathed and craved.