A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-Six

I walk back to the tent after dry-heaving for fifteen minutes in a shrub by the side of the road. One I reach the sanctuary, I pour myself a generous helping of cider and down it in one swallow, letting it slide down my throat and settle in my stomach. My belly already feels like it's on fire with nerves. Despite all my training, I know that this is the first competition to properly deem me worthy. It's this, or I go back home to my father's eternal disappointment. He'd probably marry me off to one of my cousins, wishing desperately that I had been born a son.

            And there's still the mirror, itching above my breast, the reflection frozen. I fumble with it, the handle slipping and falling to the cushions on the ground. I take my dagger from my belt and the hilt is slick, the blade heavy against my skin. I peel off those sticky bandages, the dried blood crusted over my still-aching wounds. One little flick of the knife and then I'd have enough blood to feed my every-hungry ghouls.

            Yet do I really want to do this, to summon those monsters willingly? I'd never heard of a Diviner with the power to manipulate death. Wouldn't that mark me as an even greater outcast than before? One would think that it'd be better to be powerless than to be marked a dark witch.

            I drop the knife quickly as I hear somebody's footsteps coming up behind me. When I turn around, I see a handsome young man with a scar carved over his eye. He wears a general's beaten armor, and walks with a purpose, as though living on borrowed time. His skin is cold.

            I take in a breath and hold it, wondering if I'm hallucinating. It's a living corpse.

            "Hello, darling," the young dead man grins, rubbing his clean-shaven chin, "don't tell me you've already forgotten about me."

            "Aster..."

            I blink and he shifts into something different, a beautiful young maiden. The scar disappears, and she twirls her fingers around one of my curls, fallen loose from my braids. Her lips are near my ear, her breath a butterfly's kiss. "Or perhaps you remember me as I was in life, Astera the Beautiful. No?"

            She gasps, throwing her head back. When Astera looks back at me, she's transformed into the body of the madman priest, holding a rusty knife covered in honey cake crumbs. "No, this is the most recent form I saw you in, isn't it?" He chuckles and licks the knife, blood dribbling down his chin. I reach for the mirror behind me, but he whispers a word and it jerks out of my grip. "Now, now, darling. I'm here to help you."

            "I wasn't going for the mirror." I take the dagger and press it against his throat. "What kind of Diviner are you?"

            The madman chuckles, and in one fluid movement, takes me by my wrist and twists it so that my own dagger presses into my belly. Another word whispered beneath his breath, and his face changes for the final time...

            ...into that of a man towering over even Elio's stature. He's so tall that he nearly brushes the top of the tent, a giant come to life. I stare upwards into two swollen eyes without irises or whites in them, just black as obsidian, eyes that seem to see into my very soul despite seeing nothing. Eyes covered in horrible, puckered scars from where Cato the Elder pressed his long-nailed thumbs into the sockets, mutilating his own brother in vengeance. Skin that's like the night sky, embedded with pinpoints of stars. Hair that contrasts sharply against the darkness, hair like strands of moonlight, white hair like the fur of a desert fox, and ears that point like daggers. A face that every infant in Rahasia memorizes since childhood, a face that children learn to fear despite its terribly hypnotic veneer. The Divine trickster.

            I fall to my knees.

            "Perhaps you know me as the Betrayer, the Outcast, or the Evil One. Perhaps you've seen the portraits where my brother gouges out my eyes and pushes me from the heavens. Perhaps you're even a little afraid." He holds his large hand out to me. When I take it, a wave of cold rides my body, the power reaching to my very core. The taste of melancholy floods my mouth, of yearning for sunlight instead of blood and darkness. I tear up, my very heart crying from the amount of pain that washes over me, horrible, eviscerating loneliness. "I am the Blind God."

            When I speak his name, my heart trembles. "Kane..."

            He puts his thumb to my forehead, "for better or worse, I've chosen you as my champion, Lady Ode. I have a lot of plans for your future."  He presses the pad of his thumb down, and my mind goes blank. "But for now, I want you to destroy them. Destroy our enemies."

            When I come to, resurfacing from that soupy mess of unconsciousness, I'm standing in the arena, blood on my hands. A stranger is slumped in front of me, gasping for breath, a quiver of lightning-covered arrows is snapped in two. Splinters of wood lie beneath my fingernails. There are blackened imprints in the dust, indentations of skeletal bodies, of ghouls that have vanished back into the mirror that's pulsating back near my breast.

            "And the winner is Lady Ode of the House Ngayoh!"

            The dead, the dead, she summoned the dead...

            Nobody cheers, and when I turn to face some of the other Diviners, they avoid my gaze. When I look at Ryu, he's terrified, burying his face in Elio's shoulder. When the prince turns to me, he smiles.

            Oh, Ode, that knowing smile says, now you know what it's like to be Chosen, don't you?

***

Hello my Champions!

Introducing (drumroll, please) KANE THE BLIND GOD!

Kane: *nods silently*

Gods, so dramatic.

-Sophia