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

Chapter Thirty-Three

"I can make a fine dress for you, spun with threads as thin as a spirit's skin, woven from cloth made of moonlight. Anything for my wondrous champion." Kane grins at me, the smile disconcerting as he waves his long, skeletal fingers in the air. "Tonight's the night, the celebration where all the champions pledge themselves to their gods."

"Elio and Ryu will go wearing the Empire's finest armor. Why wear a dress when they don't have to?" I push the curtains back, ignoring the salt sprinkled all over the ground around Alef's tent, spread by superstitious men who believe I'm a witch and that salt will kill me. I glance at my reflection in the larger mirror Kane has brought, a mirror free of ghouls.

My hair is tied back with merciless twine until it pulls at my scalp. My breasts are bound, and I don my father's old armor, "borrowed" from his military collection before I left home. The armor's dented, having seen many years' worth of sandstorms, foreign blades, and arrow-nicks, but I've polished it the best I can. When I lift my chin, I almost look like a younger version of my father.

Warlord Serkan Ngayoh, the Cleaver of Men.

But there's some new softness in my features, something that's been progressing ever since I passed those treacherous first few moon cycles of bleeding and gory cloths, the womanly cycle. My face, it's still not my father's. I don't have enough battle scars, enough wrinkles etched into my skin. I don't have the tattoos like Elio, nor the brand of Ryu.

My skin is untouched. The color of earth without grass. The color of something barren.

You'll die a witch. No children. Barren. Without a legacy.

Kane walks around me, his hands clasped behind his back, his dark skin amplified by the more merciful candlelight, his eyes two gaping voids. His face, it's scarred, but even that tells a story, an ancient religious battle of good versus evil. All my skin tells is youth. Ignorance. Fear.

I shove the mirror in my frustration. It shatters on the ground. Kane's face remains passive, staring at me, but not.

"Yes, the true enemy of mankind. I forgot that it wasn't me." Kane rights the broken looking glass with a snap of the wrist, smiling down upon me from his great height, "it was mirrors."

I flex my fingers, feeling like I want to stab something, feeling helpless. I hate feeling vulnerable. It's what all women feel since they're born. "I bind my breasts. I go into battle and bleed and bruise and get generally pummeled. I gain scars and calluses and still..." I press my fingers against what remains of the glass, my splintered reflection, "this isn't me. This isn't what I'm supposed to look like."

Kane watches, patient as the moon floating over the heavens, waiting for the break of day. "And what are you supposed to look like?"

"A story," the words are soft, heavy on my tongue, my scarlet eyes flash, "in that cavern, my mother taunted me about legacies, about dying a witch without a name. But I don't want to be another woman forgotten in time. I want my story remembered. I want to be the main character of the legend, not the love interest or the mother or some other supporting role."

"You want to be remembered."

I think of them all. Astera. Ryu. My true mother. Dead or in hiding because their true natures threaten the so-called natural order of things. "I want to be heard."

"When I rebelled against the heavens," Kane begins, "they noticed me. But they noticed me only for infamy, a villain." He walks around me, and I feel my mind prodded again like it was in the cavern, an arachnid weaving a tangled web. "Would you do anything to be remembered, Ode, even play a villain, the one who rises against the Chosen One?"

In answer, I draw my dagger and make a slight incision against my thumb. Blood drips down, hot against my flesh. I hold my hand out as an oath, a promise. My ghouls hiss, yearning to drink. "I would rather reign over darkness than grovel as a servant to the light."

Kane grins, and for a split second, I imagine that his teeth are stained as red as my ghouls. He takes the rope of my hair in his hands, his touch surprisingly gentle. In one swift movement, he plucks a shard of the mirror and slices through the braid.

My hair falls to the ground with my blood. I press my uninjured hand against the cool air at the nape of my neck, glancing in the mirror to see my curls tight around my head. Apparently, I now have the same haircut as Ryu. Kane takes my hand in his and catches drops of blood in his open palm. When they fall into his hand, they turn into precious rubies with backings of gold.

"Can you wear earrings, Ode?"

I snort, refusing to flinch. "Just push the needles through."

He moves as gently as he can, puncturing the soft flesh of my ear. Now the rubies glint in the light as I examine myself in what remains of that splintered mirror. Kane towers behind me, so tall that all I can see is his chest in the reflection, his hands on my shoulders.

"Now you tell a story," Kane tells me as I see the blood trickle down from my ears, the short hair that curls around my head, and the newfound darkness in my blood-moon eyes. "Now they will remember your name, Ode the Cursed."

He lifts his hands, and a cape appears, the fastening a gemstone the color of night. The fabric thin as a spirit's skin and woven from moonlight. He clasps it around my shoulders.

"Now they'll truly think me a witch." I throw my head back, blood-moon eyes flashing, red trickling down my neck.

"They'll think you bewitching." Kane replies, a soft smirk on his lips.

His hand slides down to clasp mine, but I pull away.

"You've guided me thus far, Kane. Yet this path, I must walk alone."

Kane backs away, covering half his scarred face with his hands. "Yes, of course." His smile disappears, a frown shifting into place. "Forgive me."

I nod, slightly bewildered.

He bows as I walk out the tent. "They're waiting for you, champion."

How curious, I think, to have the god be the one bowing to me.

***

Hey there, Champions!

Has Ode turned into a villain, or something else entirely?

Best

Sophia Whittemore