I stepped forward, skin sparking with Primal essence, but an arm blocked me. “Don’t,” Kieran seethed. “Don’t waste any energy on her. It’s not worth it.”
My hands closed around air as the Priestess smiled, and her eyes closed. Peace. That was what I tasted from her. Soft and airy like sponge cake. Peace.
The breath I took was full of daggers. “Give her what she so eagerly awaits.”
I stepped back and turned stiffly, walking away. The only sound I heard was that of a sword meeting flesh.
“Is that all of them?” I asked.
“The Temple is empty,” Valyn answered stoically, staring at the bodies carefully placed on the ground—the too-small bodies wrapped in rags with sunken stomachs and shriveled, pale skin. Bodies treated worse than diseased cattle.
“Seventy-one,” Kieran stated. “There are seventy-one that are…”
Fresh.
Seventy-one that must have been taken in the unexpected last Rite and the one before. That number had to include the second and third sons and daughters. Which meant none had been given over to the Court as was normal for the second-born. It also meant that those who carried that not-so-dormant ember of life had been slaughtered.
Even worse was that the soldiers had carried outside what had to be…hundreds of older remains.
I’d never seen anything like it.
The underground chamber in New Haven, with all the names etched into the walls of those who’d died at the hands of the Ascended, paled in comparison to this.
Because most of these bodies belonged to children. Only a few may have been older, like the ones in the chamber under Redrock. But these were innocent children. In some cases, babes. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about that floppy, stuffed teddy bear that smelled of lavender.
The back of my throat burned as a knot gathered there, tasting of hot anger and bitter agony that wasn’t just mine. I searched out the source, finding Casteel’s father. His features gave nothing away, but his emotions had broken through his shields and projected outward, crashing through mine.
“That opening in the floor in there?” Naill cleared his throat, taking a step back as if the distance could somehow erase what he’d witnessed. “It looked like some sort of well. It goes deep. Real deep. We dropped some rocks down it. Never heard them land.”
Meaning, there could be more. Bodies that had either been dumped or had fallen into the well. Gods.
Opening my eyes, I looked behind me to where many of the Atlantian soldiers stood in silence, and I knew what I would feel if I let my senses stretch. Horror. Horror so potent, I would never be able to wash it away. They all knew what the Ascended did, what they were capable of, but this was the first time that many of them were seeing it.
“What will we do with this place?” Vonetta asked, her back to the Temple.
“There is only one thing.” I lifted my chin, searching the sky. A few heartbeats later, a purplish-black draken broke through the clouds. The shouts of surprise from those who had remained in the city echoed through the valley as Reaver stretched out his large wings, gliding overhead. “Burn it,” I said, knowing he would carry through, even though he couldn’t hear me. “We will burn it to the ground.”
Reaver swept up with a powerful lift of his wings as Valyn asked, “And what of them?”
I turned to the Priests and Priestesses clothed in white. The two Ascended had already been dealt with. I opened my senses wide then. None of them felt guilt or even regret, and those were two vastly different things. Regret came when it was time to face consequences. Guilt was there no matter if one paid for their sins or not. I wasn’t sure if it would have changed anything if they had felt either of those things instead of what I sensed from them.
Peace.
Just as with the Priestess, they were at peace with their actions.
They hadn’t just stood by, doing nothing. They weren’t merely another cog in a wheel they couldn’t control. They were a part of it, and it didn’t matter if they’d been manipulated into their faith. They had been taking children, not to service any god or True King, but to feed the Ascended.
“Put them on their knees.” I walked forward, reaching for the wolven dagger at my thigh. “Facing the bodies.”
Valyn followed as the soldiers obeyed. “You don’t have to—”
“I will not ask any of you to do what I would not do myself.” I stopped in front of the kneeling Framont. His eyes were shut. “Open your eyes. Look at them. All of you. Look at them. Not at me. Them.”