Sunlight filtered through the shuttered window as morning rose. Sahora was still asleep. I lay there with my arms around her. The smell of night orchids and rain filled my senses.
A knock pounded on the door. Hard and loud. Sahora jolted, moving quickly out of my arms, already bracing for a fight.
“It is time for your first trial,” someone yelled from the other side of the door.
I walked to the door and opened it. Gart, the guard from yesterday, stood there. His gaze flicked to Sahora behind me, wary.
“We’ll be right out,” I told him.
“Best make sure she’s on a leash,” he said. “Maybe in a dress. And shoes. This is a ritual, after all.”
“Watch your mouth,” I told him. “If you want to keep breathing.”
“She’s turned you into a monster,” he said. Then he turned and walked down the hall.
I closed the door and turned to Sahora. Her face had gone red, her fists clenched at her sides.
“I will not wear shoes,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.” I crossed to the small armoire and pulled out the ritual clothes they had already laid out for me, a white tunic and white trousers threaded with gold that caught the light. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to have to change.”
She nodded and stepped out into the corridor.
When I joined her, she was waiting with Castor.
“This trial is uncommon,” I said quietly. “Most oathbreakers would already be dead. But my father is the sovereign Banthys priest. He decides how I die. When.”
Sahora bristled.
“He won’t decide shit,” she said.
“Sahora.” I looked at her. “We need to play the game.”
She crossed her arms. “I’ll play nice,” she huffed. “Until someone crosses a line.”
The guards near us exchanged looks.
We walked down the corridor, following Gart as he led us toward the ritual chamber.
The golden doors seemed to curve inward the closer we got. Panic rose in my chest. Then I felt it. Sahora slid her hand into mine, her presence steady as she sent the thought through the bond.
Whatever happens. We face it together.
My heart still thudded as we stopped before the doors. When they opened, the floor felt unsteady beneath my feet, as if it might give way.
But through it all, I held on to her. Sahora’s steady heartbeat. The calm she offered without effort. It flooded through me, anchoring me where I stood.
We walked into the ritual chamber. The smell of floral incense filled my senses. Candles burned along the walls, and as we moved toward the center of the room, the statue of Banthys stood before us. We were surrounded by priests and priestesses of Banthys.
He was carved from brass, his face eternally severe. I remembered being a child. Looking into his eyes had always made me uneasy, like something was looking back.
Castor followed close behind, scanning the room for every possible exit. When I glanced at Sahora, she was doing the same. Her gaze moved in quick, precise sweeps, and I could almost hear her counting in her head.
Counting exits.
Counting people.
The steps it would take to get us out of here.
Then her eyes found my father.
Something in her shifted. She straightened her shoulders and put on a smile I hadn’t seen before.
It was warm. Polite. Almost disarming.
The kind of smile meant to put people at ease.
Calculated.
Controlled.
My father cleared his throat, his gaze dropping to our clasped hands. I tightened my grip around hers.
“We will begin the first of three trials,” he said. “Judgment will be delivered on the fourth day.”
His eyes met mine, unblinking.
“After each trial, you will be released to do as you please,” he continued, “but you are not to leave the village grounds. Any of you.”
His gaze shifted briefly, deliberate, settling first on Sahora and then on Castor.
“First, you stand accused of oathbreaking. Do you deny it?”
“No,” I said clearly, lifting my chin as gasps rippled through the room.
“Why did you break your oath to Kathera, made in the name of Banthys?” he asked. “Your instructions were clear. You were to dismantle the group that threatens to bring Kathera back.”
He paused.
“Instead, you joined their ranks,” he continued, “and broke the natural order of life and death by restoring a soul that should have remained lost.”
“I broke my oath because Sahora is my Soulfated.”
Cries rose from the crowd.
“I could not kill her, and I would not,” I continued. More gasps followed. “I broke my oath when I brought her back, because I cannot live without her by my side.”
My father did not raise his voice.
That was what frightened me.
“The bond you name,” he said, “does not excuse oathbreaking.”
The room had gone very quiet. Even the incense seemed to hang, unmoving.
“Souls are not meant to be reclaimed once released,” he continued. “To do so is to challenge the will of Banthys himself. To bind yourself to such a soul is not devotion. It is defiance.”
His gaze shifted to Sahora again.
She stood still, her hand still in mine. Her expression remained composed, that same polite calm resting on her face, but I felt the change in her through the bond. Her focus sharpened. Every line drawn tighter.
“A useless soul,” someone murmured from the crowd.
I tightened my grip on her hand before she could move.
“She is not useless,” I said. My voice did not shake. “She is mine.”
A ripple moved through the gathered priests. Disapproval. Fear. Something like curiosity.
My father’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You presume to redefine life,” he said. “You presume to decide which souls are worth the cost.”
“I presume nothing,” I replied. “I chose.”
The word echoed louder than I expected.
Silence followed.
For a long moment, my father studied me as if I were no longer his son, but a problem to be solved.
“Very well,” he said at last. “The first trial will begin.”
The air shifted. Candles flared brighter along the walls, their flames bending inward toward the center of the chamber.
“This trial will measure judgment,” he said. “Not strength. Not loyalty. Judgment.”
His eyes flicked once to Sahora.
“Let us see,” he said, “what you are willing to sacrifice.”
As he said it, five priests carried forward, a large black stone basin. I recognized it immediately. The waters it held revealed memories, painful ones.
Castor made a sound behind me, barely more than a breath. When I glanced back, his face had gone still in a way that didn’t look like calm. It looked like someone had just opened a door he’d spent years keeping shut.
His hand hovered near his ribs, fingers flexing once like he was fighting the urge to reach for something that wasn’t there anymore.
Then his eyes met mine.
Not warning.
Recognition.
Like he knew exactly what it cost to love someone loudly in a room built to punish it.
“You will place your hands in the basin so we may see what transpired for you to defy your oath,” my father said. His voice rang in my ears.
Gently, through the bond, I told Sahora, I will be back. I squeezed her hand once, then let go and walked toward the basin.
I peered into the water and took a deep breath, then placed my hands in the bowl.
My vision fogged. The chamber vanished.
Suddenly I was back there.
Standing at the top of the waterfall.
Then I felt it.
Goodbye. Her thought she had sent to me.
No.
I ran after her as if I could catch her before she fell. Without a second thought, I dove.
The impact hit hard, a violent slap of cold that shuddered through my bones. I snatched one sharp breath and plunged beneath the surface, swimming so hard my heartbeat felt like it might crack my ribs from the inside.
I have to get to her.
She cannot leave me.
Darkness swallowed everything. Then I saw her outline, the red glow pulsing around her like a heartbeat trapped underwater.
Then pain punched my chest.
Pain that was not mine.
A breath taken that was not mine.
Water burned down my throat, salty and cold, but my own lungs were still full.
I felt her drowning.
Her last breath echoed inside me.
No.
No.
They cannot take her.
I swam faster.
The water thickened, as if it wanted to hold me back. My arms ached. My lungs began to scream.
I reached her just as bubbles slipped from her mouth.
Just as the agony of her final inhale tore through my soul.
No.
I gathered every drop of my magic, holding tight to the love I had for her. Yellow light ignited the water around us, bright and living and wrong in a place this deep.
I shoved it into her chest.
The chamber around me gasped, the sound distant and warped, as if the memory had opened a mouth through time and made them all swallow it.
I grabbed her and kicked upward with everything I had.
Pressure built in my chest. My throat tightened. My lungs burned.
And then I felt it.
My oath is torn apart.
A ripping sensation like fire beneath my ribs, like something sacred being peeled away from the inside out. It burned. It burned like I was being punished by the very god my father said I served.
I was seconds from losing my breath when her eyes opened.
One eye brown.
The color that held my entire heart.
The other bright turquoise.
Unmistakable.
Not Sahora.
Kathera.
My blood ran cold.
In the ritual chamber, I heard people cry out. I felt it even before I saw it, their fear turning sharp and hungry.
Sahora looked at me through mismatched eyes. She winked, a smile curling on her face like she knew a joke no one else was allowed to hear.
Then she reached upward.
Wind exploded through the water.
A tunnel formed around us, a hollow space where air should not exist. I coughed and gasped in it, shaking, breath tearing in like a gift I did not deserve.
She lifted us.
We rose on a column of spiraling wind until we hovered high above the water, above the cliff, above the others.
“We can come down now, Sahora,” I had managed, my lungs trembling with relief.
“Not yet.”
Her voice carried two tones. Sahora and something older.
Kathera.
In the chamber, the priests drew back as if the name itself had teeth.
My father’s voice cut in, cruelly calm.
“You see,” he said, as if he were narrating a lesson. “Not prayer. Not blessing. Defiance.”
The memory held me there, trapped in the moment I had broken everything.
“I told you not to break your oath,” she said, stern and steady, storm turning around us like it belonged to her.
I met her gaze, mismatched eyes pinning me in place.
“And I told you that you do not get to choose.”
Even in the memory, those words hit harder than the water ever had.
Her smile shifted then. Softer. Almost kind. Almost Sahora.
She pulled my arms around her. I wrapped her in them greedily, as if holding her could undo what I had done.
The vision blurred at the edges, the basin pulling me back, forcing the chamber around me to solidify again.
I was on my knees in the ritual chamber.
My chest still hurt like I had swallowed the waterfall whole.
Sahora stood beside me, alive and steady. Her face was calm, charming, controlled, but through the bond I felt the tension drawn tight beneath it.
The crowd had gone pale.
Some looked horrified.
Some looked fascinated.
Some looked angry, like my love had personally insulted them.
I stood.
My father lifted his chin. “We have seen the moment you broke your oath. Would you undo it if you could?” He leaned in slightly.
“No,” I said, my chest still heaving. I lifted my gaze to meet his and stepped closer.
“Banthys values life above all,” I continued, straightening. “I valued one life above everything else.”
I did not look away.
“I would do it again,” I said. “I will do it again if I have to. I will not live in a world without her in it.”
“We will see how long that life lasts for both of you.”
My father’s voice was cold. “This trial is concluded. You are dismissed.”