“Estrella,” he scolded, utter disbelief filling his expression as I took a step back.
“Your children were never going to love you the way I loved my father. Do you know why, my Lord?” I asked, letting the hatred I felt for him show in a rare moment of honesty. I couldn’t do much to hurt him, not with the pyre calling me, but I could strip away the motivation for everything he’d spent over a decade working toward.
“Why?” he asked, his throat moving with his swallow.
He glanced over his shoulder at the figure lurking at my back. I didn’t need to look to know who waited for me if I only turned, instead blasting Byron with the full force of my glare. “Because you will never be worthy of that kind of love.”
“I won’t intervene once you make this choice. You understand that?” he asked.
“I do,” I said simply, lifting my chin higher as I stared back at him. I didn’t expect him to, didn’t even want him to; not when survival was tied to his bed and his sadistic pleasures.
Lord Byron’s nostrils flared as he glared down at me, nodding briskly to the man behind me. I turned to the High Priest, finding his soft gaze on mine as he said, “You’ve been informed?”
“Can I say goodbye first?” I looked over his shoulder to where my mother and Brann approached the Veil. He heaved her wheeled chair over the raised rows of dirt in the enormous garden bed, pushing her forward as her body jostled.
“Of course,” the High Priest answered, his words solemn as I stepped away from him and walked over to my family. I helped Brann, turning my back to the Veil and grabbing my mother’s chair by the wheels and hauling it toward the shimmering white boundary.
Toward the place where she would have to sit and watch me die.
My one regret.
I smiled. The people around us faded into a haze until there was only my mother’s eyes on mine, her sad expression filling her face as she undoubtedly remembered the times we’d made this journey in the past. She remembered my father pulling her to watch his sacrifice, Brann and I trailing behind them with tear-streaked faces.
We finally stopped moving, settling into a space that was as good as any. It was toward the back of the crowd, and I had to hope that would shield them from the worst of the details.
I lowered myself to a squat in front of her, taking her trembling hands in mine and pressing a kiss to the top of them. “I love you,” I said softly, smiling through the burn in my throat. I shoved back the tears that threatened, memorizing her features for one last time.
Her brow furrowed as she gazed back at me, removing her hand from my grip to touch my cheek softly. “I love you too, my girl. It will all be over soon,” she said, assuming the sadness in my eyes was due to the torment I felt on this day every year.
I pushed to my feet, stepping around the edge of her chair to draw Brann into a hug. I squeezed him too tightly, savoring the moment his arms wrapped around me. “Estrella, what’s going on?” he asked, pulling back to look down into my face.
“Take care of each other,” I said, staring at him meaningfully.
The High Priest’s voice interrupted whatever he might have said next, arrowing through the garden like the crack of a whip as everyone fell silent. “Would the chosen please step forward?”
I pulled out of Brann’s embrace, turning slowly and drawing a deep breath. Facing the Veil ahead of me, my eyes landed on where the High Priest waited with the ceremonial dagger clutched in his grip. It was the same blade that had parted the flesh of my father’s throat fourteen years prior.
I chanced a glance over to where Lord Byron waited at the High Priest’s side, his face closed off and expression reserved. There was nothing to be seen of his frustration on his stoic face—only the hands clenched at his side.
Another breath, and I took my first step forward toward my death.
“Estrella,” Brann said, his voice oddly calm as he began to understand my movements. Another step, and the eyes of the villagers focused on me as whispers broke out. It was unheard of for two generations of one family line to be chosen by The Father. “Estrella!” my brother repeated as I took the third step.
I moved through the people gathered, allowing them to part and reveal a direct path for me to approach the Veil. No one wanted to get in the way of the sacrifice. No one wanted to risk drawing attention to themselves.
“No! Not my baby girl!” my mother cried out behind me. Her voice trembled, her words shaking just like her hands as I squeezed my eyes closed and kept walking forward. This was never the fate any of us had seen in store for me, but as I moved through the foggy details of the crowd surrounding, my father’s last words to me rang in my ears.
Fly free, Little Bird.
I never had. I’d never escaped the life that he’d hated with every part of his being, but something in me felt freedom waiting just beyond.
I stepped in front of the High Priest, bowing my head forward in submission as my mother sobbed behind me. Her wails echoed through the gardens, each one striking against my heart.
“Kneel,” the High Priest said, the order a murmur between the two of us as he guided me forward. The Veil swayed just in front of me, close enough to touch, and for just one moment I pictured reaching out to touch it.
I wondered what would happen if I did, then watched my fingers stretching forward as if compelled. The magic pulsing off of it touched my skin, sliding over my fingers as the curtain swayed toward me in perfect unison. The High Priest pressed his hand to the top of my shoulder, guiding me to my knees. The movement pulled my hand away from the magic that covered my skin before I could touch the Veil itself, tearing away the warmth I’d almost known.
In a world filled with nothing but cold, bitter half-truths, the Veil beckoned like a warm embrace, welcoming me into a place where I would be protected at all costs.
My hands dropped to my thighs as my knees hit the sandy soil beneath me, my palms facing the sky as I tipped my head up to stare into the eyes of the High Priest. He stood just to the side of me, his body close enough that he could stop me from falling into the Veil itself when I died, but out of the way so that my blood would stain the soil and not him.
“We thank you for your sacrifice, Estrella Barlowe of Mistfell. May you find peace in your next existence, wrapped in the arms of The Mother.” He sank his hand into the hair at the back of my head, gripping the strands tightly to pull me to the angle he needed. The tip of that dagger pressed into the side of my throat, digging into the flesh as the warmth of blood trickled down my skin. “Close your eyes now, child.”