“I’m going to relight supper,” Anariel said. Her nervous voice cracked the heavy silence, the kind of silence that always settled in the temple of Malhayar after it sat empty for a day. Her mouse-like steps shuffled over the stone tiles and Hania followed. Before Anariel disappeared down the long dark hall, she threw a worried glance at Teldris.

Teldris, having already taken her place in the center of the atrium, could only give her sister the comfort of a slight nod.

Berand, who had said nothing since picking up Alenna’s sleeping form from the cart and carrying her up all those flights of stairs, followed the two girls into the rest of the temple. Matthias had suggested at the base of the stairs that their father use his boon to alleviate the burden, but Berand’s sharp rejection had Matthias’ shoulders fold upon themselves. They remained scrunched that way as he and Teldris waited in the atrium for their father to return from Alenna’s bedroom.

The statue of Malhayar towered over the two of them, rising so high into a vaulted ceiling that it was hard to see her face through the shadows. The occasional burdened drops of rain water would plunk into the pool that surrounded the statue, sending soft ripples across the surface.

Matthias let out a sigh. It felt to Teldris like he hadn’t taken a breath since he entered the temple. She nudged him with her elbow and he looked at her as if he had just noticed she was there. He opened his mouth to speak but at the sight of their father looming beyond the doorway, his mouth clamped shut.

Berand stood at the door, blocking the hall in a way that said that their night was not quite over. He held his arms before him as he contemplated the room, one arm bracing the other as he stroked his beard.

“I need you two to explain yourselves,” he said quietly. So quietly that Teldris almost took a step closer to hear him better if not for Matthias’ grip on her arm.

“It was a long time coming, father,” Matthias said abruptly. Teldris looked at him in surprise. “There’s been tension between the two of us for some time and we never addressed it until now.”

Berand’s gaze flicked between the two of them as if he could catch something in their faces that would betray a lie. But there was nothing. It may have been one-sided but Matthias had certainly been aware that the two of them did not get along.

“What is the cause of this tension?” Berand asked.

Matthias remained silent. This he could not answer, for Teldris had harbored it within herself. Rumors brought to her on the mouths of sailors from the north and his sudden intrusion in her life made a toxic concoction in her heart. One that she didn’t dare expel because it felt ungraceful to do so.

Berand waited.

Teldris swallowed past the knot in her throat. Even though he was shorter than her, Berand held himself in a way that still made Teldris feel like a child of six summers. She lifted her chin, staring down her father. She found the nerve to speak, “Is it true that Matthias was paid to be here?”

A harsh wind whistled through the atrium from a door that joined Alenna's office. Matthias, in a most surreptitious manner, moved toward the doorway. Teldris was too slow to stop him. She wanted her so-called brother to stand and face his truth. His arm slipped just beyond her fingertips.

When Matthias disappeared beyond the threshold, Teldris turned to face Berand. Her father held a mask of calm, a penetrating gaze that reminded Teldris of distant times when she was smaller, sitting quietly beside him in the Hall of Protectorates while he spoke to foreign emissaries. As he weighed the worth of a man’s words and which of his own words he could use to leverage it.

“How could I have raised a girl so foolish,” Berand said slowly, shaking his head. “How could I have raised one so errant as to believe any muck-driven rumor that passes through her vacant brain?”

Teldris stood stiffly, biting back the anger that welled in her. They could have been rumors but they came from those she grew up with—those she trusted: from Old Nan and Josan and even their very own Eldar Rolan.

And these people, save for Old Nan, would not bear a rumor without a kernel of truth to it. She had seen the extra stipend Matthias received from their father. Had discovered the parcel her brother would drop off at the postmaster. She had even delivered a parcel herself to Thelos, its destination for far off Quendon and further north into its mountains. In the first months he had arrived, Matthias had eagerly told her enough to know that was where his family resided—where they still resided.

Teldris remained silent though she didn’t meet her father’s gaze, simply stared at the visage of Malhayar, night shadowing the goddess’ face, casting a warped silhouette across the dimly lit temple.

“What do you think you know, Teldris, that would allow you to lash out and risk your reputation—your brother’s reputation.” He gestured at the entirety of the temple, hand passing over the great Malhayar. “In fact, all of us. You made me and Alenna look like fools.” Berand threw up his hands in exasperation. “And you always pull your strikes! Matthias, I can understand, but this is something I taught you since before you’d so much as held a wooden stick in your hands. You callously endangered your lives. Made a mockery of your Order.”

“A mockery,” she said in disbelief. How could she make a mockery of the Order when she had been so obedient all her life? Where her eyes had widened at her father’s animated tirade, they now narrowed at him. And it wasn’t lost on her how high a standard she was held to whereas her brother’s expectations were more lenient. Teldris squared her shoulders. “You mock the Order buying wards off the street! What of wardens upholding integrity and honor?”

“What of temperance?” he snapped. “Which you’ve shown none of today.”

Her fingernails dug into her palms where she held them in fists at her side. “You can’t refute the fact that you’re paying Matthias to be here. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve delivered the gold with my own hands.”

Berand frowned. She could see the ire rise in him, inflating his chest like a primed bellow. He opened his mouth to speak but the dam that held Teldris’ frustrations broke and words spilled from her.

“Do not think to lie to me, father! I’m no longer a child. What is the gold for—if not to pay Matthias’ parents for his service as a ward?”

Her father spoke slowly, in deep breaths, nostrils flared. “Do you think I would be so foolish as to adopt a ward with a living parent? Why would I waste time and resources only for a life to be squandered upon his baptism?” He spoke softly with laboring words as if it pained him as they left his lips. “So cruel as to raise him and surrender him to be drowned by Malhayar?”

He paused to look behind Teldris and she glanced over her shoulder. There Matthias stood in the doorway, eyes downcast as he considered Berand’s words. His eyes flickered across the stone as if he read his future there.

In a temple as small as theirs, there were no secrets—no privacy. There should be nothing to hide. And yet—

Teldris turned back to Berand. Her father looked desolate.

It reminded her of a time when she was younger. She had only a vague memory of tumbling through an open space, a harsh line, first out of focus and fast approaching until it was thin and sharp in her vision—the corner of a wall. It split her forehead open, and her tiny hands came away from her face covered in blood.

Back then she was small and Berand was big, looming over her. She remembered the expression on his face as he swept her up. His eyes wide and reflective, her silhouette shaking within. He had the same eyes now in the atrium—looking at her.

Teldris didn’t want it to but the memory dampened any resentment she currently felt. The resentment she had harbored since he had left her and Alenna in Penth. Since he came back with Matthias. Her shoulders slumped as she met her father’s gaze, feeling the true weight of his disappointment. She felt small again. She felt helpless.

“Why are you sad, father?” Teldris asked. “Are you afraid that we won’t take?” For one reason or another, she thought. At the end of the year, would she and Matthias lay side by side in the sanctum only to be deemed unworthy and drown? She brushed her damp braid over her shoulder. Eighteen years in service of Malhayar only to be cast off.

“We have a lot to learn, don’t we,” Matthias said from behind her. Fat raindrops fell through the dark skylight, plinking into the brimming waters of the pool.

“You do,” their father said grimly. “More than we have time for as it was made clear today.”

A rustling from behind Berand had him turning to reveal a rumpled Anariel. Her eyes were red, errant strands of hair clinging to her wet cheeks. When everyone looked her way, her gaze fell to the floor. She wrung a rag between her hands as she spoke. “Supper is ready.”

Their father lowered himself to his haunches, spoke softly to Anariel, brushing a large hand across her hair to straighten it. She left at his dismissal with as much haste as before. When he rose to his feet, he let out a sigh.

“A year from now you will find yourself before Malhayar.” Berand’s eyes were deep, dark as the waters in the temple as he met Teldris’ gaze.

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With his departure, the room seemed darker. The silence louder. The atrium was designed to be vast and empty, and their father’s retreating footsteps echoed around the circular room. It never felt so cavernous when it was filled with village folk, kneeling on the floors, supplicant in their prayers.

Teldris stayed by the pool, near Malhayar, so she felt less alone. She studied her rippled reflection in the water. Soft ribbons of moonlight now streamed down through the skylight from behind the statue, and it seemed as if Malhayar’s visage looked back at Teldris over her shoulder. As Matthias crossed the atrium to join the rest of her family, his face appeared alongside her in the pool.

“I don’t understand you,” Matthias said softly. “For years I’ve tried to earn your trust. I want to belong here, Teldris. And do my part.”

Teldris didn’t know what to say to her brother. She didn’t want to talk to him. After a moment of thought she spoke: “Your allegiance lies elsewhere.”

“Just like your devotion would lie with our sisters?” he asked. His face disappeared from the pool.

She turned to him, indignation igniting a heat in her chest.

He paused at the doorway leading into the rest of the temple. “My allegiance is to my family, yes. But also to my country. My faith.” This time Matthias met her gaze. The room behind him was dark, threatening to swallow his slumping frame. “I am Kvash. Just like you.”

***

Teldris had once been a heavy sleeper, but she had grown attuned to one thing during the night and only one thing: Anariel’s breathing.

It had begun immediately, the very first night upon Anariel’s arrival, when Teldris had found herself awake in the dark to the sounds of squeaking. Then she’d heard the short wheezing breaths that had accompanied them. Anariel’s strained voice eked out in narrow whistles.

It was the fastest Teldris had ever found her feet, stumbling into familiar walls and stubbing her toes. She hadn’t known what to do with the strange girl whose face had grown clammy and had sweat dripping from her hair. So she had gone running for Alenna.

Breathing episodes, Alenna had told Teldris. Anariel’s lungs were weak. They did not acclimate well to the desert with its sand and dust and it had plagued Anariel for years. That first night, not even Alenna’s healing boon had been able to ease Anariel’s pain. Anariel wasn’t injured. She was just weak.

Teldris still recalled how panicked Alenna had seemed, helplessness a foreign feature on her face, carrying Anariel down their many flights of stairs. How she had taken off with her horse on a cloud of dust, leaving Teldris to watch from the temple landing. The night had been cold.

From then on, whenever Anariel so much as sighed, Teldris would stir awake. She hated it at first, having her sleep disrupted when she had to be up at first light for her training. She hated having to haul water from their stores into the kitchen, lighting the hearth, and waiting for the herbal concoction to boil. She hated sitting in the dark, waiting for Anariel to inhale the acrid vapors.

Now Teldris could name every herb in the mixture Callam gave them. She even knew the proportions well enough that she could make it herself if she needed to.

That night, even after the exhausting events of the Vaunt, Teldris wasn’t surprised when she woke to the sound of a harsh wheeze. It was barely noticeable beneath the heavy rain thumping on the carpet of grass outside.

But Anariel slept soundly beside her.

Teldris lay still, waiting for the shapes in the dark to settle. The first thing she could make out was Matthias’ back on the far side of the room, rising and falling with every slumbering breath. Then the long table where they would sit and study, stacks of books and scrolls making odd shapes on the flat surface. Beneath it lay trunks for their personal belongings. As her eyes focused, she noticed the lid of Anariel’s trunk remained cracked open in a black smile, a long sleeve hung over the lip like a lolling tongue.

Teldris was too awake to fall back asleep. She watched the clouds pass over the sky through their window. The rain had gone and luminous clouds revealed a sliver of the Celessim moon. The moon’s pale light slowly crept over the wooden frame to fill the room.

A chill had settled after the storm’s passing, chasing away the warmth of the day with a damp blanket of fog from the sea. Goosebumps rose on her exposed arms. As if Anariel knew, she burrowed closer toward Teldris. Hania, with a sleepy snort, did the same, clinging to Anariel’s back with her arms and legs like a silver-limbed monkey.

A comforting heat radiated from her pile of sisters. Her thoughts turned to Matthias who slept alone, furthest away from the window, but had only a thin woolen blanket to ward off the cold. She could just barely make out the jut of his shoulder from the shadows.

He told her that his allegiance was to his family. Which family, she should have asked. He had two now. She wondered if he meant his blood family.

Her stomach grumbled. Dawn was still quite far away. Teldris let out a short huff, regretting her insistence against sharing a dinner table with her brother and father. She had thought to take the food into their room, though her principles immediately rebelled against the idea.

Teldris slipped out from the blankets, careful not to wake her sisters. She walked barefoot over the cold stone floors, blind in the night as she made her way to the kitchen. Light filtered through gauzy white curtains, washing the kitchen in a slate grey. In the dark hollow of the hearth, the cast-iron vessel in which Alenna had cooked the curry hung cleaned and empty, but beneath it someone had nestled a clay pot into the dying embers.

The lid was warm when she lifted it, and wisps of steam rose from inside, carrying with it an aroma of spicy cinnamon and sweet anise. Teldris whispered a prayer of thanks before she carried the bowl from the hearth using the lower half of her nightshirt as a cradle.

Sitting in the dark kitchen, she pinched pieces of tender lamb and carrots with torn pieces of bread. It never occurred to her until now that she didn’t know what would become of Anariel and Hania once she and Matthias left Penth.

It had always been so difficult for Anariel to stand up for herself. She was meek, and though she had been quiet, Teldris knew that the other children in Penth did not treat her kindly. Anariel stood out among them, her red hair a swollen bump on an elbow that the others would poke and prod.

Hania was loud and rambunctious. The youngest of the wards forced her way into acceptance, kicking and biting, until the village respected her. Hania was more popular among the children her age, even those above, than Teldris ever was. And it occurred to her the reason Hania had taken to Matthias so easily.

Hania and Matthias were the bright energy that everyone was drawn to. The sun over a cool reef. The bonfire beneath a night sky.

Teldris was more worried about what trouble Hania would get into with Alenna’s lone set of eyes to keep watch of her little sister. She would have to ask Josan to be more vigilant while she was gone. And Sasha, who had a tendency to catch Hania after she had stolen rolls of colorful fabric to unravel.

Sometime after helping Old Nan and finishing her courier duties, Teldris would need to see Sasha to get measurements for her warden uniform. There were other garments Alenna had mentioned, but Teldris paid no mind to them. It was the uniform that excited her.

And the things she would bring with her like the sword Berand gifted her even though it was shorter than standard longswords. It would make a great arming sword, Teldris decided, that she could wear at her hip. It would be worn alongside the knife Alenna had pressed into her hands during her fourteenth summer after catching the way sailors from the north leered at Teldris on the docks. There were also her prayer books that she had partially memorized only because she hated reading them.

A soft scraping sound broke Teldris’ thoughts. She paused, the curry-soaked bread hovering over the earthen pot. Still as the night was, it was almost like she could feel the disturbance of something sliding over the temple earth.

It came from outside, along the wall that her bedroom window shared. The very window where Teldris had lain and watched the moon and clouds pass from the futon she shared with her sisters. The thumping she had thought was rain on the grass—did she not see a clear sky as she was lying there? She cursed herself for being so inattentive.

The familiarity that came with living in one place for twelve years played in her mind as she crept across the kitchen: the wash bucket whose handle stuck out too far out from beneath the counter, the utensils and pots that hung still against the back wall, and the sagging iron hinges that would grind their teeth if she didn’t lift the door as she swung it.

Cold night air and windswept grass that rippled silver and green, greeted Teldris. She carefully closed the door, and hopped down the side of the stone steps leading down from the kitchen. The earth was moist beneath her bare feet as she snuck along the back wall to the side that faced the ocean. The grass muffled her footsteps, brushing drops of dew against her ankles. The breeze raised goosebumps up her exposed legs and along her arms.

This side of the temple held all the training equipment they had accumulated over the years. A half shed, that she had to peer around, was built along the side to shelter items from the salty air that came up from the bluffs below. Eventually they gave up trying to fit everything into the modest storage. Deep shadows intimated at the various items left exposed to the weather: barrels and stacks of small crates, weapon racks in rows parallel to the walls, a square board for target practice. A bench sat in a small open space, a gap in all the fray of equipment, flanked by two windows. The first window was the kitchen while the further window was to her bedroom.

At the far end of the wall, where the narrow stretch of land opened up to the spacious yard before the temple stairs, Teldris could make out the tapered back of a man. He was uncannily still, focused on something at the front landing of the temple. No indication that he was aware of her presence.

Teldris eased around the shed. She drew a quarterstaff from its resting place among the shadows of the other polearms, hoping that the wood would not betray her in the moonlight.

A strong wind picked up and her unkempt hair whipped across her cheeks. She ignored it, moving quickly for the figure before he could be alerted. Clouds shrouded the moon and the shadows shifted wildly.

Teldris had almost bound past the bench when she froze in the open space. The clouds had passed and the shadows settled along the spiraling wood grains of a cylindrical head. She let out an angry huff of breath.

A training dummy.

She had gotten worked up over the training dummy. It stood there among its shorter friends, three of them in all, making the slightest and softest creak under the force of the wind, shifting in their wooden stands. Standing by the bedroom window, Teldris could see into the room. She cast a long shadow over the sleeping forms of her sisters, Matthias’ just out of reach of the soft moonlight.

The night grew quiet. Just the gentle crash and lull of the surf where it hugged the base of the cliffs. Teldris walked over to the short retaining wall and looked out at the dark water.

The ocean brought Matthias.

Her father’s visits were usually heralded by a procession of flame-colored birds, coming from the west. But that day, a large ship eased into the docks from the north. The first thing Teldris spotted on the deck from her place on the temple stairs was her father’s bright white cape fluttering in the wind. Next was a mop of yellow hair on a short and gangly figure, arms too long for its torso, legs too short, a craning head on a neck that wanted to stretch completely off its body. The voyage from Avera Bay in northern Kvashine to Tualakh Bay had to have taken a whole week. A whole week with her father.

The first thing Matthias said upon meeting her was that he came from a family of shepherds, deep in the Appellate peaks.

The second was that the sea was a large and fearsome thing.