Back home, on Earth, they call midnight the witching hour. But here, inside the walls of the clerical order, it’s more like the chanting hour. In almost every room up and down the long hallways there is a gathering of clerics—either in training or not—chanting. They just didn’t shut up. And when they did, the meditating started. Clerics stayed up late, their bodies somehow becoming in tune to the shimmering glow of moonlight on the Aleran flowers that grew outside the citadel. It was all very communal and hippie-like. Irritating as all hell for those of us who didn’t do very much communing in life. They had more patience in a pinky finger than I did in my entire body.
But since Faith had announced herself to the world, there had been less chanting and more gossiping, and that was just what I’d hoped for. A bunch of introvertsfinally letting it all out. Discussing the miraculous return of the royal princesses Trinity and Faith, and speculating about the third newly lit spire and the location of their queen.
What was actually bonkers was that the third princess they were all gabbing about was me. If I were caught right now, I’d be in their dungeon before I was given a chance to explain. Or dead. It was possible they’d just kill me on sight.
Breaking into the elder cleric’s office was strictly forbidden.
I’d heard—again from all that pent-up gossip—that a few hundreds years ago, the offense was punishable by death. Since no one had been caught since, I had no way of knowing whether they’d updated their policy or if no one had ever tried.
“Guess I’ll just have to be very, very careful.” I whispered the words to no one in particular as I clung to the vines that grew along the tallest tower within the fortress walls. I was like Romeo seeking his Juliet in the high school play.
Glancing left and right to make sure no one saw me… or for maybe one last moment before I did something execution-worthy, I opened a window and pulled myself up, slung my leg, then knee, then the rest of me, through the opening. The office was at least three stories off the ground, but the vines were thick, and I was small. They almost made it too easy.
I landed with barely a sound on the thin carpeting and noticed the room was still nice and warm. The old woman who ran the show had old bones, and she did not like the cold up here in the mountains that surrounded the royal city. But then, with the fortress built eons ago, she didn’t have much of a choice but to deal with the weather. The clerical order had formed when the royal bloodline did. The first queen recognized by the citadel had accepted the oath of the first cleric, and so it had begun. Generation after generation, the clerics had served Alera in the matters of law and protection for the realm. They were the scribes and record keepers, and trusted with knowledge known only to a few. Both the clerical order and the royal bloodline were linked to the citadel somehow, but each chose to keep their secrets. The clerics had served the royal family—my family—for millennia.
“Bunch of fucking traitors.” Notall of them were bad. I’d been training with them, eating with them, pretending to be one of them for two weeks now. I was a novice. A new initiate. And they’d welcomed me into the fold. Most of them were good, solid people. Kind. Friendly. Supportive.
But not all of them. No, someone—orsomeones—withi
