Oleander

XII. Submission (part three)

Yalira snorted because her tongue was too thick to make words. If only leaving were that easy.

"If you bed him, Valen will—"

"Valen will what? Put scorpions in her soup?" Rishi materialized out of the crowd and singed Alleta with scowling irritation. The bright gold, her scathing dislike, serpent-Rishi wilted the lioness into silent, mousy retreat.

"How annoying," Rishi grumbled as the queen disappeared. "Did she threaten you?"

Yalira shook her head. "You scared her off before she could finish on Valen's behalf."

"I'm sure you would have handled her without my rescue." Rishi's frown disappeared in sudden, cheerful appraisal. "Look at you! Drunk as a Lytvian bricklayer and twice as steady on your feet!"

"Why does Valen care so much?" Yalira asked, ignoring the compliment. "The man has an army of wives, surely you can't all still be jealous at this point."

A smile followed her shrug. "Jealousy doesn't begin to describe it."

"Not you, too?"

"We all want different things from him. The other wives complicate that," Rishi explained, waving her hand. "Valen wants Andar to suffer, but Alleta thinks she loves him. Dezma wants liberty for Kythis, but that would hurt trade to Crosao."

"And what do you want?" In the turbulence of the question, the room seemed to spin, unsteady as storm clouds where Rishi's whisper was the only anchor.

The gold-painted queen wove their arms together, leading Yalira into the crisp night. Away from the noise and heat, the air breathed with stillness. A held breath kept, a tense longing. In the empty courtyard, the lunar smile fell upon them in full glow.

"I want what all women want." Her light eyes burned for the space between breaths and she leaned forward. The answer faded into her secretive grin. "But you, Yalira, you might have so much more."

"I want nothing," she protested. "Except to leave Semyra."

In a mocking scoff, tone misleadingly pleasant, Rishi challenged, "Don't you?

"You could be the Queen. Not another foreign prize, not a peace treaty. Divine-touched! Beloved by Andar!" Outlined by the glow of the party, Rishi burned. "You want to save you people? You want to change the world? You cannot do anything sitting in a temple at the edge of a mountain."

Yalira flinched and rubbed at her bare arms. The words sang to that wicked shade of her rebellious spirit. Not the sequestered life of a High Priestess, not sentenced to obey and observe, but something more. Behind the walls of Antalis, it was not purpose, not power, she lacked, but autonomy.

Her mouth filled with the taste of sand.

"Are you going to lie to me—to yourself—and say you're fine with the way the world is?"

The stuttering struggle to build a justification, an acceptable answer, grew Rishi's smile. Yalira's heart broke for every suffering she'd seen in life, each dark prophecy that'd passed her lips. 

But heartbreak was not enough. 

It was no better than clean dressings to hide a festering wound—a gesture that eased her spirit but changed nothing. Yalira's slowed mind, thick tongue, could not find the words to absolve her.

"Sweet priestess, I had no idea Antala was so cruel."

Shame flooded her cheeks and burned at her eyes. Yalira the Loved. The reaching hands, the thrown flowers—how foolishly they had misplaced their affection. No longer High Priestess of a sprawling temple-city. Barely the High Priestess of a crumbling altar.