Izhera I

Tattooed fingers caressed her face gently - her eyes, lips, cheeks... everything. Behind her, she could feel Izhetai vibrate with an almost audible rage; a welcome sound in the otherwise silent room, as still as her father's tomb.

This time there were only four battlemages in the chamber, tall and iron-faced figures partly swallowed by the semi-darkness of late dusk, mute sentinels of death and destruction that had painted these very walls red not even six moons ago.

Don't think about it, she said to herself, and tried to ignore the man standing before her, touching her. She focused on the walls, on the unlit lamps, on the elaborately carved xidze, the warm air wafting through the open windows, anything but the calloused hands taking a hold of her entire face and forcing her to look up.

Ages ago, she might've found this foreign priest handsome, molten silver eyes and all, not that she had the right to judge anyone by their looks. But the owner of said eyes had shoved his hand into the cavity that had been her father's chest and ripped out a surprisingly still beating heart. She'd fainted then, and she'd never forgotten those eyes either and the cruel, triumphant look they bore as the deed was done.

He smiled haughtily, and she wanted to spit at his face.

"She'll do."

Blood drained from her face. Oh, how she’d hoped. Had the Elders truly abandoned her so?

"She's a Paleblood." Her uncle said.

She remembered how much she'd hated that name, ironically now her only salvation from this madness. In her mind's eye, she could already see her chance of escape slipping through her fingers like sand.

"Hoshnu does as Hoshnu wills; and she shall be his bride."

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"His will, or yours?" Her only remaining male relative challenged and the smile slipped off the invader's face.

"It would be wise to not speak of matters you know nothing about, Izhetai." He remarked condescendingly, then lowered his eyes to look at the stump where half of her uncle's arm used to be.

He sneered, "Maybe your dead gods can give you the honor of wisdom to keep your tongue beneath your lips so that you may not lose it also."

Izhera saw red, and barely managed to smother the hot, ugly rage bubbling up inside her. Izhetai was the greatest warrior among the Xazade, and this creature had no right, no right at all, to mock him. What did this outsider know of the honor that he demanded for Izhetai's silence?

"She is of the Moon Maiden's seed, barbarian. Now, and forever." Her uncle insisted, and the battlemages stepped forward as one.

A spike of fear suddenly made itself known in Izhera's chest and her heart jumped to her mouth. They wouldn't. Would they?

Noni Xhabashe's screams as she ran her long nails along her cheeks till the soft flesh bled, her babe's decapitated head on the floor.

"Didn't you hear what I said, cripple? Your gods are dead." The priest was saying, "Your Moon Maiden, your Flame Father, the Wind Warden, your fucking Death Mother. Only Hoshnu rules now, and he has claimed a bride."

* ¤•¤•¤•

They left before dawn; a great procession laden with riches stolen from her father’s coffers, and she, the jewel in the crown, all for the Sun Emperor and his fucking war god.

Izhera had never stepped a foot outside of the palace. She'd never been out into the city, hells, she'd never even been thirty steps away from the Temple's doors until that fateful day. She was the Moon Maiden's vessel, and behind high walls was where she belonged.

It had been hammered into her head since the day she could walk, that it was all that she could amount to. 

She thought it was stupid that her appearance decided her fate.

Benne Golemei had slapped her for blasphemy.

The woman’s head was now adorning a spike atop the Temple’s outer walls and for all the hate she bore the Moonsinger she couldn’t find in her heart to be happy. The Midnight Temple was her home; it might’ve been a prison, but she preferred it to the one she was now exchanging it for.

Your gods are dead, the priest had said.

Izhetai had watched her go, mounted on a heavily bedecked jyati and heavily draped in white and red robes. There’d been no parting words exchanged. What could they say? He’d only put his hand above his heart and extended it to her when the convoy was far enough.

Zhaheri, the gesture said. Goodbye.

And Izhera knew she’d never see him again. Beneath her veil, she let the tears flow free.