>>6065875Astoria sighs running her fingers over the painted page, looking for a way to put the threads together.
“I can’t seem to find a way,” she laments, her hands lingering over highlighted paintings of the ancient Sunseekers. Those who had to spend years sitting on a column, watching Her sun dancing in the sky, never blinking, until their eyes crumbled into dried powder and fell down their cheeks like rivers of dust. Then they would receive the blessing and the grace.
Those were holier times. Without a certain angel to blocker due. Her left hand rose from the page to rub against her forehead, feeling the eight incisions stopping right in the middle.
If only she got her ninth, she could access—
She could ascend and feel Ansàrra’s hand into her own before her time was due. Her appearance might be youthful, but she felt it, the fire that had sustained her body for decades was starting to run thin. For the first time since she had received the scars on her head, Astoria di Ottava Ora had begun to shiver at the thought of death.
Ansàrra’s attention seemingly attracted to more important pursuits, or more meaningful people, she was to be discarded and left in the dark, a thing that had served he purpose?
“I know that girl is not what she claims to be,” she growls. That Salicera. The so-called genius.
She had followed her career with great interest, from her sudden appearance to her rising through the cadets, her growing fame as the most gifted swordsman of her generation.
If only Astoria has not been caught in her silent battle with Carnaval, she could have put a proper investigation on the girl before she took the introductory vows. But now that she was solemnly a part of the Faith, scrutinising the other Sunseekers who approved of her would put Astoria through a whole new mess. Political allegiances she had spent years cultivating would be jeopardised in the matter of hours.
She just couldn’t insinuate some of the Amaranthines could make mistakes judging a person’s worth. Doubt would spread through the ranks and they would have another hunt for heretics and traitors. Astoria wanted to hold Ansàrra’s hand, not see it bleeding even more.
But she needed a victory. If she could prove that the Fors girl had given herself to the forces of the Adversary, or of the Seven Sisters, she would prove a great asset to the Throne of Dawn.
Yet, even putting Salicera right into the lion’s den had only made her more confident. No proof of involvement with anything.
[cont.]
