AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So why was the Path of the Word considered the highest? Or was this merely another sign of how the entire system was broken? I really needed to ask Zeal about that, and to find out what he had originally intended when the temples had been created.
Chapter 32
Wraythe
Nari was cute with her First Aid class. She got so excited about it, and her eyes always lit up when she talked about what she'd learned. Back when we were kids and she'd said she was thinking about declaring that as her Path, I'd thought she merely assumed she couldn't be more. Now, I realized how wrong I'd been.
She would've been a physician or a medicine maker. As she told us all about how Action grew most of their own medications, only needing to purchase ingredients that couldn't be sourced here, she beamed. But like so many kids, I'd fallen into the trap the temple laid for us. Some Paths were considered higher, so if we wanted to "win" at being a priest, we had to shoot for those. Since Action was the second-lowest Path, most of us thought of it as a failure.
And yet, this amazingly beautiful and brilliant woman would've been so happy there. I liked to think she was happy now, with us, and I knew that I liked the way things had turned out, but was that selfish? Yet when I'd asked her, she'd agreed with me completely. Yes, she loved the knowledge, and she thought medicine was fascinating, but she was glad Zeal had given her Temptation instead. She would rather have us - including me - than anything else.
The next day, my mind kept jumping back to that moment. I'd caught her alone in the dressing room as she passed through. I'd asked, worried that she had regrets. Instead, she'd cupped my cheek and had smiled at me in the sweetest way. She said she loved her First Aid course because it felt like closure, as if she could now be comfortable knowing she'd made the right choice by choosing all Paths.
That was how I'd felt when I'd first met Talin. I had chosen Ela. We'd always planned for that, but once the lace was on my skin, there was that voice in the back of my mind that said I should've screamed for it to be Nari instead. I hadn't even known that Ela would match my marks at the time, since I'd still been waiting for the Choosing Room door to be unlocked, and yet I'd known. I'd also worried that I'd made the wrong choice.
But seeing Talin, I knew he was right for her. He would protect her with his life. He would love her the way I did. He would be strong enough for her, even if he was a pompous little shit. Well, little compared to me. But seeing how easily he accommodated her, and how Ela's eyes followed the guy, I'd known that this was the better ending. This way, we would actually work out, and it had been a subtle relief.
Sitting in my Strength Training class, I lifted the bar of weights again, not needing to concentrate on what I was doing. In truth, focusing too much made it feel tedious and boring. Thinking about Nari? That made the hour pass quickly, and somehow it made the burn in my arms easier to ignore. I curled another repetition, thinking about how Nari's little fingers wouldn't even wrap around my bicep, and my lips curled on their own.
"Wraythe?"
The voice belonged to one of the instructors, Ursula, and made me lower the bar back to the rack it was stored on. "Yeah?" I turned to find her standing a respectful distance behind me.
The woman was small - not like Nari, but more like Tishlie. Her skin was dark, maybe one shade lighter than Shalsa's. Her hair was shaved on the sides and cut short on top. Her eyes were hazel in a way that reminded me a bit of Zeal's, yet without the iridescent effect all of the gods had. The strangest thing was that she wasn't overly muscular. She was fit but lithe, and even more beautiful because of it.
She tilted her head, encouraging me to step aside with her. "I need you - all of you - to make sure Nari has time in her schedule to keep training at the Salle."
My eyes narrowed at that. "We try, but with her First Aid class running so late, it's hard for her sometimes. Then her extra homework. We don't want a repeat of her first year."
"Then pick up the slack, guardian," Ursula told me. "I don't care how you make the room in her schedule. She needs to be there. Zeal insists." And she raised both brows to make the point. "She needs to keep up on her training because knowing how to move is very different from being muscled so she can move."
"Ok," I admitted. "But I'm not going to have her skipping sleep to keep up her grades. If it's that or skipping the Salle, then she's skipping the Salle." Then I crossed my arms over my chest, showing I wouldn't budge.
This was whereIdrew the line. If we even hinted that Nari needed to do this, she would make it happen. In her first year, that had included working herself until she fell asleep in the middle of her homework. She was willing to run herself into the ground, so if hiding things from her was how to make her life easier, then I would fucking well hide them.
Ursula just bit her lips together and pulled in a hard breath through her nose. "It's for her own good."
"No, you have to give me more than that," I countered. "Look. I know you barely know her, but Nari's job is to save the gods. Save them, Ursula. She is pushing herself to be more than any priestess has ever been in this temple, and she's doing it. She has the four of us following her around for a reason, because she can't do everything."
Ursula's eyes dropped to the lace at the top of my chest. "Uh huh. That's obvious. What you don't understand is that things just got..."
She shut her mouth and glanced back at the rest of the class. Making a face, she moved even further away, trusting that I'd come with her. Curious, I followed. Something had happened, she was worried, and I really needed to figure out what was going on.
Then Ursula stepped in and lowered her voice. "Earlier today, the High Priest of Inspiration came to our temple. Not a polite visit, Wraythe. He was holding those gossip papers and yelling about the tithe as he and his advisors walked through the main entrance. Yana, the priestess who is Kinen's lap dog? Yeah, she stopped the man at the statue of Zeal."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"Because I was coming back from lunch," she explained. "I walked in about three steps behind them. Julyen, Inspiration's High Priest, was furious and not afraid of making a scene. He flat-out accused Kinen of embezzling money from the tithe, right there, in front of the entire temple. Needless to say, Kinen was livid. He said something about how he wished that priestess was dead - meaning Nari." Then she grabbed my arm. "And guess where he was? In the basement, by the stage, with a laceless priestess. Roek says that's the girl who makes problems."
"Ciella," I realized. "We're pretty sure she's supposed to be spying for him. That's why he hasn't kicked her out yet."
"The girl has no lace," Ursula said again. "Why would he keep her?"
I just huffed at that. "Kinen doesn't either."
"What?" She shook her head in confusion. "I've seen it. He does."
"All fake," I assured her. "Ask Zeal. He took Kinen's lace for trying to drown Nari in the tears. He rode Talin to pull the guy off her. That's when he took Kinen's lace, but it all seems to have come back without the help of a god. You figure out how that's possible. Oh, and I wonder if that's why he knows just which solvents to use to test for which marks are fake, hm?"
