I wrap my arms around Syra as if to embrace her and use all my strength to shove her back into Nadine. With a firm grip, Nadine begins hauling her back toward the chamber door.
“Wait,” Syra says, eyes growing wide as she realizes our intention. My stomach gutters. “Wait, no— no, no, you can’t, please!” She thrashes, and I start forward to help Nadine wrangle her. “Please!” She claws at me, clamping her hands tight around my arms. Her cries grow more shrill as I pry them off.
The small amount of her face I can see behind the Shroud turns splotchy with her desperate wails. Noises I’ve never heard pass from her lips before. For once, you’d think it is she and not I who carries the daemon. Thankfully, Nadine is a good head taller than Syra and holds her firm despite her wild bucking. I reach forward to pull the door shut, and Syra lets out a last blood-curdling shriek that trills through me, hammering the blood in my veins, the daemon with it.
I slam the door shut, muffling the sounds of her screams behind it. I need to be quick in case she escapes Nadine’s clutches, or someone hears her and comes to investigate. I throw myself down the stairs in a flurry, legs carrying me faster and faster with the forward momentum, matching the furious beating of my heart.
The daemon swells and expels, fissuring a nearby wall.
Shit.I clamp my will around it, struggling to keep it contained. I come to a sliding halt when I see the Grand Prioress and the Priest waiting for me in the foyer. Sucking in a sharp breath, I arrange my face into my best impersonation of Syra’s typical mannerisms, imagining the emotion falling from my eyes like sand in an hourglass.
Sweet. Calm. Passive.
“Syra,” the Grand Prioress says sternly. “Why are you running, and what’s all that racket?” Her beady eyes turn shrewd amidst the wrinkled plains of her face, and my heart flutters in terror that she’ll recognize me.
“I-it’s Pandora.” I suck in a breath, waiting for her to call me on my lie. She only nods as if that’s not surprising to her.
“Where is Nadine? She was supposed to bring you down.”
“She’s handling Pandora.”
The Grand Prioress grimaces. “Your father and his men are waiting in the courtyard.”
My body stiffens as she advances on me, reaches forward and stuffs something cold and hard into my palm. I look down to find a plain silver locket.
“Hide it,” she hisses. I quickly stuff it in the pocket of my gown. “For your protection. I have sent a bag with your horse, but this you should keep on your person.”
My brows shoot up. The Shrouded are not to claim ownership of material possessions, and the Grand Prioress is hardly one to bend the rules. I imagine it has much more to do with her abhorrence ofthemand what my father is risking than it does for her love of my sister or any of her charges, for that matter. She sends me a final scrutinizing look before she turns away without saying goodbye, and the Priest ushers me out the doors.
My father’s icy blue gaze pierces into me, and the daemon pangs in response. The deep indent of his brow is his only acknowledgment of my arrival. I’ve seen him only occasionally since being sentenced to a life behind the Shroud, so it’s not surprising when there’s no suspicion there. Yet, I still feel a twinge of irritation that he doesn’t recognize the differences between his own daughters.
A white mare is awaiting me. I mount it and adjust my skirts around the saddle as the Priest mounts the horse next to me. Accompanying me as a chaperon, I suppose, since he's the only man I'm allowed to speak to besides my father. And to perform the ceremony. After all, it would be improper not to have an ordained priest officiate the wedding, even if they are marrying me off to one of the devil worshipers themselves.
Many of the accompanying soldiers’ gazes flicker over me. They quickly turn away, all too aware of the punishment for so much as interacting with one of the Shrouded—death by stoning.
My father loses no time urging his horse forward, and I grab my reins to follow suit. Falling in line among the river of silver-armored soldiers as we make our way around the shrine of Hises, the Holy Mother of God the Shrouded are fashioned after. We filter out the rampart gates.
Our horses’ hooves litter the dry, dusty streets with noise. The Wall looms on the horizon, the impenetrable shield between us and everything beyond. The sun is just beginning to rise. Most of the kingdom is still tucked safely away in their beds, but a few come out to watch our departure, wearing sharp cheekbones and hungry eyes.
Their eyes find me and linger. What do they see? A person under these chains or merely a sacred symbol? A most deserved sacrifice for failing to keep the vitality and sanctity of this kingdom alive.
Syra’s blood-curdling shrieks echo in my mind until the daemon is white, hot, and boiling under the surface, snaking through my limbs like streaks of lightning. I should’ve said something, comforted her in some way before fleeing.
It blazes down my right arm and jumps to my third finger before sprouting up my left wrist and scorching near my navel. Searing pain, so intense that I’m surprised it doesn’t burst me right open. I want toscream. It sends a sharp shock through my sternum and sucks the breath from my chest. I want towrithe. It festers in my right thigh and springs forth in my left ankle.
And it wants toruin.
It pounds from my calf up to my collarbone as I eye the silver-armored soldiers and the people gathered. Do they all feel like this? Like they’re barely keeping the fire in them contained?
Or is that just me?
My knuckles tighten against the reins with the effort it takes to keep it controlled. Despite the storm raging within me, the journey through our kingdom is a somber affair. Besides a few coughs and quiet murmurs, the soldiers don’t engage each other in conversation. I’m not certain if it’s always like this with them or if it’s an artifact of the occasion.
The Wall grows larger as we inch closer until craning my neck to find its end feels like a daunting task. Even the daemon quiets. Like it knows that it cannot compete with the Walls’ formidable presence.
“Open the gates,” someone calls in the distance.
“Opening the gates!” Soldiers scramble to the hulking, rusted pulley. The gates groan and creak complaints as they’re heaved open.
