“I’ve brought water,” he said. “And everything else.”
He entered without needing permission, gliding into the room with the quiet grace they all seemed to have. He set down the wide basin and poured in fresh water, steam rising faintly from its surface. A folded towel followed, then a polished stone for the heels, a curved blade for the nails, a comb, a pot of scented oil. Scissors, slender and gleaming.
I didn’t ask. I sat.
I let him kneel at my feet, as though I were someone of worth. He worked without speaking, without rushing, as if this moment mattered.
He cleaned the dust from my soles, smoothed the rough skin from my heels. He trimmed the edges of my nails and filed them to soft arcs. He combed my hair with slow, deliberate strokes, then gathered the ends and cut just enough to shape it. The oil he used smelled of rose and something darker—amber, maybe. It clung to me in the air.
Through it all, I said nothing.
I thought:This is it.
I thought:This is how it begins.
I accepted everything.
When he finished, he stepped back and bowed gently. “There,” he said, as if we had both accomplished something sacred. “You are cared for.”
I sat straighter. My palms had begun to sweat.
“And the summons?” I asked quietly. Too quietly. “The ritual?”
I hated how the words sounded.
The attendant’s smile softened. It wasn’t mocking. It was kind.
“No summons tonight,” he said. “When the moment is right, and the gods favor it, you’ll know.”
He collected the basin and towel and turned to go.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
He bowed again, then disappeared into the corridor.
I waited for a long time after he left. Waiting, again, for something I didn’t want but feared not receiving.
But nothing came.
And for the first time that day, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
I was spared.
One more night.
As the sky deepened into night, the room began to change.
The lanterns on the walls, unlit all day, began to glow—soft at first, then steadier, the stones inside them casting a gentle, silvery light. No flame. No wick. Just the patient radiance of Eletherian moonstone, harvested from the island’s sacred interior, or so I’d been told.
They said such stones held the blessing of the gods. That in places favored by divinity, light did not yield to night.
I stood and walked to one of them, watching the glow shimmer against the inside of the glass like a living thing. I reached up and pulled the thick cover down over it. The light dimmed to a dull gleam.
One by one, I blanketed the lanterns, until theroom was touched only by the glow of moonlight filtering through the window, soft, pale, and distant.
I undressed slowly.
Not because I wished to prolong the moment, but because every motion felt strange. Theseretslid from my shoulders and pooled at my feet, and for a moment I simply stood there, naked in the semi-darkness, my skin prickling in the air.
