Chapter 19: The Temple at Night

Dacian had one rule left from the forty tries, and at midnight on the twenty-fifth night he broke it.

The rule was simple.

Never go to the temple.

He had gone once, in the sixth try, to ask a priestess for help.

Mirelle had died at dawn with a blessing still warm on her forehead.

He had not gone again.

He went now, up the cliff path, with his collar turned up and no lamp.

The temple stood on the edge of the sea, a white tower with a hundred lamps burning in its windows.

Below it the surf pounded the rocks in the dark.

Dacian slipped in through the herb garden, where the priestesses hung their sheets to dry, and climbed the back stair.

He knew the way.

He had walked it in his head forty times, in the long hours after each execution, trying to find the door he had missed.

At the top of the tower there was a round chamber with a pale glass lens in the ceiling.

The temple called it the Lamp Room, and the common priestesses were never let in.

Dacian pushed the door and it opened, because a woman who had never been challenged did not bother to lock it.

A table stood in the middle of the room.

On it lay a book bound in dark leather, the twin of the one Elora carried, and beside the book a long ledger written in a small neat hand.

Dacian opened the ledger.

It was a list of days.

Day two, in blue ink: Mirelle to the east courtyard, Aurek alone.