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She’s right. I nod, and Tira looks relieved. We slide down from our perch on the statue, and Tira grumbles about getting back to the kitchen. The air is crisp, but not quite cold, and I walk through the gardens, trying to absorb every leaf and flower, convincing myself that this is the last time I’ll look at them.

The gardens are beautiful, like everything else here. It really is a lovely cage. But what my parents can’t have understood is that no amount of beauty would save me, not without people surrounding me who truly care. Will cared, but he’s gone. Etusca cares, but she’s fading. Una and Tira care, but they’re largely powerless here.

My parents sent me here to keep me alive. But if this is all there is to living, how could it be worth it?

I watch a dark-tailed gallawing hop across the grass—the bird after which the manor is named. It tilts its head at me before it takes flight, sailing away with a freedom I’ve always envied.

Tonight, I’ll break free. If I have to stay in this prison another day, I’m not sure I’ll survive.

Chapter2

Leon

Flames lick their way along the whip as it whistles downward, slicing into the man’s back with a vicious crack. His scream pierces the air of the town square, but the crowd is silent. They’re not here to save him—they’re here to act as witnesses as he pays his “divine penance,” just as the Temple of Ethira commands.

I don’t have time for this. The crowd jostles me as I push through it, the humans barely glancing at me before their eyes turn back to the raised platform where the heretic is having the sin burned from his flesh. We were planning to stay the night in what was supposed to be a sleepy hamlet, only to find these wretched humans all gathered for this disgusting display of religious theatrics. It seems that nowhere in Trova is safe from the Temple’s reach.

But I have more important things to deal with than these aggravating humans and the atrocities they choose to visit on each other in the name of the gods.

I’m relieved to see Alastor pushing his own way through the crowd toward me, but my mood sours as he shakes his head. There’s a pause in the cracks of the whip, and I glance over to see the incendi who’d been doling out the punishment hand the whip over to another.Perhaps his arm got tired, I think bitterly.

“Please,” his victim moans in the brief respite. His voice is a ragged wheeze, as if he has barely enough air in his lungs to speak. “Please, I repent.”

Someone darts forward across the platform, a man whose gray beard marks him as one of the town elders. I hear muttering from two of the humans nearest me.

“What’s hedoing? He shouldn’t interfere. Does hewantus to get purged?” I can hear the terror in their voices as surely as if I had caused it myself. This crowd reeks of it, every one of them praying they won’t end up under that same whip. I sneer at their fear and the unchecked power they give to the Temple.

The heretic’s body is bowed over a block, his blood pooling around him, but the old man pays no mind to the crimson staining his cloak as he kneels before him. He’s carrying a cup, and as he leans forward to bring it to the heretic’s lips, I see he’s wearing an amulet bearing the symbol of the earth god Classitus—a tree with many branches.

The Temple of Ethira has sunk its claws deep into this kingdom—but it’s still a new religion, and people haven’t forgotten the old ways. Especially not here, in a town hundreds of miles from the holy city of Qimorna. The Temple’s clerics can’t keep watch over every Trovian citizen.

But they don’t have to, do they? That’s what rituals like this cleansing are for. It ensures these people keep watch over each other when the Temple can’t. Through fear and intimidation, the people of Trova do their job for them.

“Come,” I murmur to Alastor. “Let’s find the others. I’m sick of watching this nonsense.”

We push our way through to the edge of the square as the pair of incendi on the platform shoo the old man off the stage. Before we step down a side street, I see the new whip wielder stepping up, raising his weapon.

My other five soldiers are waiting for us, each one made short and round-eared by their glamour spells. But their human disguises don’t hide the air of danger about them as they lurk in the street like a pack of wolves.

“It’s no good,” Alastor mutters. “The town’s got a few decent inns, but they’re expecting a visit from the clerics any day now.”

A high, keening whine drifts over his words—then the crack of the whip sounds again.

So that’s why these fools are making such a spectacle. They can’t be caught sleeping on any blasphemers when the Temple’s monsters come calling.

“I heard some of them talking. They’re worried about a purge,” I say.

Alastor nods, “Terrified.”

I roll my eyes. These Trovians and their religion. It gets in the way of everything.

My oldest soldier, Eryx, spits on the ground through his thick red beard, clearly as unimpressed as I am. “I thought they only purged places hiding celestial casters?”

“They see anyone with celestial power as the worst type of sinner, of course,” Alastor says. “But apparently any place where heretics keep popping up will summon the Scarlet Order these days.”

I don’t doubt Alastor’s words; he’ll have heard it straight from the Trovians’ mouths, and people don’t lie to Alastor.

The heretic’s groans are fading now, almost outstripped by the sound of his own sizzling flesh as the scent of cooked meat reaches us and I take smaller breaths through my mouth.