“No progress comes without a cost.”
My temper had been short lately. Too short. Especially with Asha. Sometimes, when I heard her voice, I could only hear how it had sounded as she commanded me to stand down.
I could have taken the shot. These seats would not be empty.
And yet, I knew that she was right. Nyaxia, the mother of vampires, was an enemy of the White Pantheon of human gods. Two thousand years ago, when she was just a young, lesser god, she had fallen in love with and married Alarus, the God of Death. But their relationship was forbidden by the rest of the White Pantheon, ultimately resulting in Alarus’s execution. Enraged and grieving, Nyaxia had broken away from the other gods and created vampires—a society to rule all on her own. Now, the gods of the White Pantheon despised her. Acaeja was the only exception—the only god who tolerated Nyaxia and the vampire society she had created.
It was not up to us to judge our conqueror.
But I wanted to. I wanted to judge him. I wanted to judge anyone who made a city look like that, feel like that, just as my own home had felt so many years ago.
That made me a poor Sister. I was, at least, self-aware.
It would be one thing to control a facial expression. But like sight, facial expressions were shallow indicators of the truth. I could control every muscle in my body, including those on my face—it was much harder to control the shifts of my aura, more visible than ever here before my Sisters.
Right now, it seethed with anger. Anger at our conqueror. Anger at Asha for daring to claim his killing could be for the greater good.
And—who was I kidding?—anger at Asha for not letting me take that shot.
{Is there something more you want to say, Sylina?} Asha Threadwhispered, and I was so close to snapping back—
{Enough!}
“Enough!”
The Sightmother spoke in both places simultaneously—her voice ripping through the air and the threads.
We all went silent. I collected myself.
The Sightmother said, “Sylina is right.”
Beneath my blindfold, my brows twitched in surprise.
And satisfaction.
“We know better than any that evil can wear many different faces,” she went on. “Yes, the Pythora King is our enemy. But that doesn’t mean that all his enemies must be our friends. This conqueror is troubling indeed.”
Troubling might seem, to any other, to be a mild word. Coming from the Sightmother, it might as well be damnation.
“Has the Weaver spoken to you, Sightmother?” Yylene asked tentatively.
The Sightmother did not answer for a long moment. Then she rose, her palms pressed to the salt. “It is too early to say what the Weaver believes. But we all must be ready for dark times ahead. That, daughters, is true. We must look inward. So go now and prepare for evening recitations.”
In unified movements, we each drew our flattened hands in a single sweep across the table before us, scattering the salt. Then we rose. I went to follow my Sisters from the room, but the Sightmother said, {Not you, Sylina. You’re coming with me.}
3
The Salt Keep earned its name due to its location in the mountains of eastern Glaea, a notoriously inaccessible piece of land. The mountains that surrounded the Keep were tall, treacherous, dense, and incredibly effective at keeping outsiders away. Even if one managed to locate the Keep—difficult on its own, given the Arachassen’s unmatched ability to keep secrets—the journey over the mountains on foot would be almost certain death. The mountain range was so dense that even most magical travel—already very rare—was impossible over such a distance, and dangerous. Unless your coordinates were very, very accurate, you had a significant chance of throwing yourself into a ravine. Which did indeed happen once, about a century back, when some poor lovestruck sorcerer tried to follow the object of his affections back to the Keep.
Yes, there were many practical reasons why the Salt Keep was built here, right where the mountains met the sea, isolated from the rest of the world. None of them were its aesthetics.
Still, it was beautiful.
When I saw it for the first time as a child, I’d never felt smaller in my life—like I was caught between two godly realms, the mountains to one side and the sea to the other, massive forces that rendered me nothing but inconsequential flesh and bones. It cemented the Arachessen in my mind as a power greater than the sum of its members—something greater than all of us. Of course, I reasoned, the Salt Keep would be the only thing that could exist here, at the apex of these two worlds.
I no longer could see the view as I did then, of course. Not that I didn’t see it in my own way—not that I didn’t still experience it, maybe even more deeply than I did that day. I now felt the world around me in every sense, the presence of the world wrapping me up from all angles. Every jagged plane of the rocky cliffs—grey—the roll of the surf—green—the dusty, dry, shin-tickling grass—dim gold.
I had nothing to mourn. I had gained more than I had lost. This is what I would tell anyone who asked me.
But secretly, in a part of myself I tried not to acknowledge, I missed being able to see it. Sometimes, when I’d come out here, I’d try to conjure that memory—the memory of sight, from when I was ten years old.
“You’re distracted, Sylina,” the Sightmother said, and I snapped my head forward. We walked through the rocky paths along the cliffs, pulling our cloaks tight against the salty wind that stung our cheeks.
She was right. I was distracted.
“I apologize.”
I heard the warm smile in her voice. “You don’t need to apologize. Ascensions are difficult. And I know Raeth’s has been especially so for you.”
This was what I had always appreciated about the Sightmother, from the time I was a child. She was foreboding, powerful, strict—yes. But she was also kind, warm, present. I had so needed that when I met her. I still felt that I needed it.
For this reason, I didn’t bother trying to lie to her.
“I’ve struggled with it,” I admitted.
“Raeth is more alive than she has ever been. But I know that you know that.”
“Yes.”
Ascension, not death. Never death. Arachessen didn’t believe in death, only change. Just as the loss of our eyes didn’t mean the loss of sight, the loss of a heartbeat didn’t mean the loss of life.
Still, it was hard not to mourn someone who existed now only as air and earth and water, which had no room for the memories or thoughts or experiences that made a human a human.
“What’s so troubling to you, Sylina?” the Sightmother asked.
I didn’t answer, and she laughed softly. “You were always ever the mysterious one. Even when we found you.”
“I—” I chose my words carefully. “I felt that Raeth’s fate was avoidable, and I’ve carried bitterness about that. That is my weight to carry, not Asha’s.”
“It isn’t just about Raeth.”