Page 57 of The Amber Sunburst

“The Trial is still a week away. Why are they having us do all this now?” one groans.

Another sighs. “I don’t know, but I hope one of my rocks trips up Kleitos. That shithole deserves it after kicking me out of his bed at the ass crack of dawn.”

Priestesses love to be crass when no one is watching. She almost wants to ask why they don’t have the balls to curse like that when the Mothers are around. Forms know Ophelia does.

“Ophelia, do you have anyone you want to trip?” one of the girls jokes, smiling at her with pity.

She wants to scream back. Tell her that she doesn’t need her sad looks and fake smiles. Tell her that she wants her girls back, not some Drachma Store stand-ins.

But she doesn’t. They’re trying to be nice.

So she smiles mildly and shakes her head. Even this politeness makes the conversation stop and the girls go quiet. Polite is far enough from Ophelia’s usual that, from her, it dampens the mood.

For a moment she’s disappointed in herself. This is not who she is. She used to be an invincible force, never hurt, never damaged, always bouncing back. She wants to be that for everyone again.

But it’s only a moment. Because then she remembers that she exists for no one but herself. If she’s mad, she will act mad.

When the Priestesses are called back to their Temples, her team walks home in the same blessed silence, and soon enough Ophelia is up on the roof pushing her dinner around.

Back and forth, back and forth.

The instant they’re dismissed she rushes to her room to pack some candies for Arete. Then she’s off to what’s becoming more of a home than this stuffy place ever could be.

She suffocates a little more with every breath she takes in the Temple. Dancing the dances, chanting the chants, haunted by the echo of Aika’s and Dora’s laughter for the rest of her life and every day suffocating.

One day, she’s sure, she’ll die strangled.

She and Arete make it through three chapters of a Sun Priestess children’s book and at least fifteen candies each before Eudoxia barges in and collapses on the bed.

“My attendants,” she groans, muffled into the pillow, “shower me with love and affection.”

Ophelia and Arete don’t hesitate to jump on top of her, and Ophelia tickles her mercilessly.

“Ah! This is not what I meant,” Eudoxia squirms. “No respect for your Empress!”

Arete sticks her tongue out. “Queens don’t need to respect Empresses, silly.”

“Zeno says you’re a satyr, you satyr!” Eudoxia yells.

As she watches the sisters bicker, the need to kick and scream slowly eases away to reveal the soft part of her under all the newly placed walls.

“Speaking of Zeno—” Ophelia teases, mischief dripping from her voice “—is he coming over tonight?”

“Zeno?” Eudoxia perks up from under the pillow Arete has been trying to smother her with.

Forms, Eudoxia is enamored! The urge to matchmake is simply too strong for Ophelia to fight it.

And if doing that provides a distraction from everything else in her life, well, that’s just an added bonus.

“Now that you mention him,” Eudoxia says, “he invited us over to his dorm tonight.”

“His dorm? Are you sure he wasn’t just inviting you? Maybe he wants some—” she thrusts her hips obnoxiously in Eudoxia’s direction “—time alone.”

Arete laughs maniacally, and Ophelia sits down guiltily at the reminder that a literal child is in the room with her.

“No.” Eudoxia falls back onto the bed again and rolls her eyes. “He wants both of us to come. He’s got this roommate—Alexander—and we think you’ll like each other. I don’t know if he’s your type—nor you his, honestly, because he’s pretty obsessed with someone else—but you would make good friends.”

“Good. I’m tired of people wanting anything more than that,” she replies, leaving out the fact that she hasn’t even considered the possibility of romance since losing her girls. She’s had enough of men thinking they own her. She’s had enough of people she loves leaving her.