ORIANA

I awoke to a droning hum, my cheek sticky with my own drool. Unlike the rest of the infuriating temple, the desk I lifted my head from was solid wood, worn smooth by many hands over the years. The candle flame stretched as I rubbed my face on the shoulder of a suspiciously soft linen robe, taking in the unexpected row of desks. They were arranged in a semi-circle around a lecturer at the front of the chamber, who stood in a small recess: the source of the droning.

Sun Warriors lined the walls — or at least, I assumed as much. It was hard to tell if there was anything living in those decorative suits, the scales of which all seemed to have been dipped in gold to unify the palette. I wondered which of them housed Sol, the traitorous bastard.

I was about to get my way when he whacked me over the head. By putting the entire temple under duress, of course, but there was no way they could have refused my demand at that point, which meant I was this close to getting Sebastian back. Rana had stated in no uncertain terms that he was good as dead if I didn't interfere, and while I regretted what happened to her, I knew that I would make the same choice again. I'd make it for any of my friends.

Rana. Gretchen. Even Eddy, the mutinous foal who'd been acting as a double agent for the duration of our journey. Thrice I'd been betrayed — nay, four times. Five, counting Hunter's rejection and Sebastian's lie by omission when he came into my life as a Wraith, pretending he didn't understand any of my words. Betrayed by an entire village, if you counted the poisonous tonics the lycans shoved down my throat for years.

There had to be something wrong with me. Why else would I fight so bitterly for people that didn't love me back?

That's not true, I reprimanded myself, recognising the start of an all too familiar spiral into self-deprecating despair. Sebastian loves me, even without the mate bond. Rana and Gretchen and Eddy almost died trying to protect me from Gaia. Even Hunter fought for us in the end.

We were all capable of making mistakes it seemed, but also of coming back from them. I had to believe Rana would come back from this, too.

Cloth stirred. I turned to the left, startled to find Rana of all people sitting at the desk next to mine, as if plucked from my thoughts. Her crossed her legs at the knee and folded her hands folded politely on the desk. A strip of white silk had been tied around her eyes, but I could make out a hint of rosy scar tissue peeking out from the edge of the band.

"I'm sorry," I blurted out, drawing a stern look from the lecturer up the front. I lowered myself down in my chair, surprised to find I was freshly washed and clothed, in the same white robes as my friend. "I should be able to heal it. Give me your hand?"

"No," Rana said, the word so soft it almost sounded like a normal breath. "It is time I faced my fears."

"Your fear of being blind?" I asked, recalling how adamantly she'd refused to give up any of her senses in our hypothetical scenarios on the road. "Like what happened to your mother?"

Rana nodded — the slightest dip of her chin. To anyone watching, it would have looked like she was following on with the lecturer's spiel about the speed of light and solar rays, whatever that meant. "I never wanted this power, Ori. I've been running from it all my life, but the Kirins' trials showed me it's inevitable. I have to face it."

"Is that why we're here?" I asked. "Are you trying to learn how to use it?"

Another nod.

"It's a great sentiment, but it's going to have to wait," I said. "The phoenix came to me in a dream, Rana. It wants us to find it. In the Thornwood."

"Does it want us?" she asked softly, her midnight gaze sliding towards me. "Or does it want you?"

I was floored. She was right — it hadn't asked me to bring anyone else. It had only called out to me. "But we do everything together."

Her smile was pitying. "All things come to an end, Ori. Good things are no exception."

I looked back to the front of the room, a sour taste in my mouth. That was what I'd wanted this whole time, right? For the others to trust me to work independently, to rise to the challenge of being the only person Blessed with Rya's power in centuries?

Only that wasn't exactly true anymore. Rana and her mother had the gift, too. The wyverns didn't need me any more than the lycans or the kirin had. I was just another pawn on the tabletops in their war rooms, another helpful thing to control — but not necessary to win.

"Fine. You can stay here if that's what you want," I muttered. "But Sebastian is coming with me."

The lecturer paused, piercing me with a hawkish gaze. "Is there something you wish to share with the group, miss..."

"Starfall," I offered. Murmurs of descent broke out amongst the students as they realised who the name belonged to. "And no, my message is not for your meek ears. I demand an audience with the High Priestess."

Rana stiffened beside me. She was afraid of her mother, it seemed. The class broke out into titters, and the lecturer — a portly man despite all his preaching about religious fasting — frowned. "What makes you think you're entitled to such an honour?"

I smiled cruelly, rising to my feet. The back of my neck tickled as my hair rose of its own accord, floating on a nonexistent wind. Light shone from my pores and the crystal underfoot glowed red-hot, pliable under my pushy toes, on the verge of meeting its melting point. "I have shared words with Rya Herself, and it is with Her complete power behind me that I assure you: those who deny me shall be obliterated from the face of this star. Not even ash will remain."

There was power in my words. It made Rana's soul sing and the others' drab, flickering life-forces gutter. At a single touch of my finger, my wooden desk burst into withering flames, gold as the heart of the sun. No more than a second later the flame was gone and the desk along with it, a tidy evisceration of matter from the world, not so much as a charred speck on the floor to attest to its prior presence.

Rana snorted; she had not lost her sense of humour, then. "I will take her," she said magnanimously. "Come, Oh Blessed One. My guard shall lead the way."

A golden suit of armour stepped forward, bowing slightly at the waist, and marched off into the distance. A second warrior offered Rana their arm. Irritation twisted her lips as she lay a hand on his cold metal grieve, allowing him to guide her through passageways she must have known like the back of her hand. I felt another pinch of guilt and quickly set it aside, going after them.

Instead of the gardens, our path spiralled up, so high that sweat soaked the back of Rana's robes.
The crystal walls gave way to plain and simple rock as we passed from the temple into the network of caves beside it. There were so many tunnels; so many pathways. I felt curiously like I'd stepped into an ants nest or a rabbit warren as we passed through a beam of light, one of many haphazard streaks of it filtering down from above. It was stiflingly warm, almost humid, at complete odds with the snow coating the mountaintops.

Soon signs of life became evident: lines of braided vines sagging under the weight of wet washing, shoes lined up tidily outside of cave entrances, with naught but a skin stretched over a frame in place of a door. Light passed through soldered panes of coloured glass hung before each one. A curious murmur bubbled up to meet us, the sounds of many people going about their days at once, but we seemed to be skirting the main settlement because I didn't spy a single soul.

The voices diminished as we reached another set of stairs, giving rise to the overloud sawing of my breath as we climbed. And climbed. And climbed. I actually had to grab Rana's shoulder in a silent bid to rest once we reached the first landing.

"Go on," I wheezed. "Lay it on me."

"Whatever for?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"Being unfit. This is where you tell me my legs are weaker than boiled noodles. Or my lungs give out faster than an old man's knees."

Her lips twitched — just a fraction — and pressed together again. "That wouldn't be polite."

Fury spiked my blood. "I want my friend back."

"She's already dead," Rana said, the slightest bite to her tone as she pulled away. The Sun Warrior led her deeper into the tunnel and I had no chose but to follow, quietly seething as I turned over the possible meanings of that statement. Had I somehow failed to save her, and this was just her body acting without its soul? Was she in some kind of danger, or was it more metaphysical than that; a death of the self in order to serve the many as a priestess?

Suddenly I was in danger. I gasped as the walls dropped away without warning, the path narrowing to the tiny, zig-zagging spine of a lesser mountain. On either side a deadly chasm opened up, the walls of the mountain sleek and cloudy as glass, as if the snows had been melted and refrozen many times over. There were no handholds or footholds. No branches or shrubs to catch a fall.

At the end of the deadly path crashed a fall unlike any I'd ever seen. Instead of water a liquid kind of fire rained down, forming a uniform sheet of vivid gold that rippled with highlights of pink, orange and blue.

And Rana was walking right towards it, shirking her outer robes as she went. The white cloth snapped taut and sped away like an arrow, reduced to a speck in the blink of an eye.

"What are you doing?" I hissed, lunging forward to grab her. Metal creaked as the Sun Warrior barred the way with his hulking body.

"Entering the temple," Rana called over her shoulder, her voice snatched by the wind. The bone runes woven into her hair clunked together like a wind chime, and she teetered for a moment, raising both arms for balance. "The real temple."

So the Crystal Palace was just... What? A ruse? A farce?

"It's the tallest point of the Grey Fist mountains," the Sun Warrior said gruffly, holding me back with ease, as if I were a petulant child. Only my reluctance to hurt Rana again prevented me from reaching into the depths of my power and frying him the way Eddy fried fish: criminally overdone.

My heart swelled up into my throat. Be careful. "What's behind the falls?"

The Warrior shrugged. "No idea. Only those with Rya's Blessing can enter."

"Can?" I echoed meekly. Come to think of it, the wall was emanating a lot of heat. "What happens if you don't have it?"

"Much the same as what you threatened to do to your lecturer earlier. An evisceration of body and soul that ends the cycle of reincarnation altogether." His armour creaked as he turned to watch my friend cross, blind but still balanced, somehow defying every odd stacked against her. She cut a striking figure, even in that slim-fitting chemise.

"You say that like you've seen it with your own eyes."

"Aye," he said grimly. "It is where the broken come to die."

My brows knit together, the tension contributing to a growing headache. Did Rana count herself among them?

... Did I?

"Tell me she's been in there before," I whispered, my nails digging into my forearms.

The warrior simply shook his head.