Page 4 of Harbinger

The vesper studies me, and her eyes narrow slightly. “Order?”

“Icaros.” I raise my chin and clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

Her gaze settles on me like she can see the dirt that’s usually under my fingernails. “Name?”

“Arden Icaros.” My breath curls around my name like fog.

“Follow me, Lady Icaros.” The vesper steps to the side, nodding permission for me to enter.

“She’s from a patron line,” someone whispers behind me, sudden interest dripping in their tone. My family name changes the math.

For them.

I don’t turn to see who said it. Even if part of me wants to see Miss Second Cousin’s face. Instead, I square my shoulders and march inside, ignoring how my body protests the sudden movement.

I might not be beautiful or rich like the other initiates, but what I do have is enough common sense to get out of the fucking cold.

The sluggish warmth of the floor’s inlaid heating stones rewards me. It seeps into my numb feet and spreads across my skin before settling into my tight muscles. The vesper closes the door and latches it, locking the others out—or me in. Ren seemed pretty eager to get out.

Nope. Not going there.

“This way.” She breezes through the vestibule toward a bend in the corridor.

I’m not even half thawed, so I can barely keep up with her brisk pace. I still try, since the others are stuck out in the cold until I finish. It would be a shame to send Blondie back home with only nine toes.

I make it a few steps before I stop in my tracks. This time to stare.

Moonlight spills through the astrolatory’s glass ceiling—glass so the vespers can watch the Stars, and so the Stars can watch back. Torchieres flicker with captured starlight that illuminates the hallway. Their faint glow catches gold shards embedded in the floor to make the dark stone look like the night sky.

Our astrolatory back home is open to every citizen in the province of Damalis. Unlike this one, it is rustic and plain, little more than stone walls and a paned, sheet-glass roof. Dad used to tell us that the more gold there was inside an astrolatory, the less soul it had.

Which makes the Royal Astrolatory the most soulless place I’ve ever set foot in.

Either the black marble or the gold set into it could probably pay off our estate’s entire debt and fund our family for another century or two.

When we reach a series of alcoves carved high and shallow into the building’s stone wall to our right, she slows, allowing me time to study each one.

Constellations are carved into the recessed walls, their dots and intersecting lines painted with gold leaf. One each for the original patron orders of Antares: Velesont’s many-headed hydra, the gentle lioness of Leontia, Calix’s overflowing chalice, the horned wolf of Marius, and my own order’s pegasus. As we pass a blackened sixth alcove, I avert my eyes. So does the vesper.

The corridor ends with a staircase that spirals up, floor after floor stacking in tiers on top of one another toward the heavens.

We pass doors on each level inlaid with gold and jewels that connect in patterns more complicated than any I’ve ever seen. Each is more intricate than the last until we reach the top. The final door is a slab of stone, unadorned save for a simple knob.

There’s nowhere else for us to go, but she doesn’t open it. Instead, she reaches into her robe, and my breath snags. The first initiate looked devastated when he came back. Now it’s my turn to be traumatized.

And to think I begged my brother to send word that I was sick, so we could skip all of this.

But she only withdraws a small bottle filled with a thick, milky substance that lingers on the sky-blue glass. Smiling at my confusion, she uncorks the lid. “The crown’s observatory is a sacred place,” she explains, dipping a finger into the oil. “Bow.”

I squat into a graceless curtsy, too nervous to do it properly as my eyes drop to the floor. She draws a line across my forehead, then another that bisects, then another, and another. The oil warms on my skin as she murmurs in the strange, melodic language I’ve only heard a handful of times before. During weddings and other rituals. When our local vespers bless the fields before seeding. At my father’s funeral.

“It’s a great honor to enter this chamber,” she says, stepping away. “Only those willing to dedicate their lives to the safeguarding of magic should do so.”

Straightening, I nod. Rites and ceremonies have never been very important to me. Working the land requires practical magic, not ancient superstition. But even in Damalis, there are plenty who believe the Stars expect our devotion and that they’ll punish those who neglect to show it. It’s why every year we perform a fertility ritual in the fields before any magic is done. It’s also why no one says anything if the crops fail anyway.

However, since I’m here as a guest of the king, I can’t risk offending anyone in the royal city. Not if Broderic is going to secure a wealthy wife and, along with her, our family’s estate.

The vesper slips the bottle back into her robes. But when her hand reappears, it’s not empty.