Everyone was silent for a long moment.
“Perhaps it’s all a mercy,” Asha said softly, at last. “Let them destroy each other. Maybe it will thin the herds.”
My head snapped toward Asha. I couldn’t choke down the sudden wave of indignation at that statement.
I bit my tongue, right over the raised ridge of scar tissue from when I was ten years old, until the pain supplanted the anger.
Too late, though. I could feel the Sightmother’s gaze on me.
“What do you wish to say, Sylina?”
“Nothing, Sightmother.”
“No lies are spoken here.”
The refrain was uttered frequently around this table, as we pressed our fingertips to the salt—and maybe it was true, because we were never more exposed to each other than we were around this table, but it didn’t mean that there weren’t thoughts that were unacceptable to express. To even feel.
I shouldn’t have answered at all.
But before I could stop myself, I said, “There could be a high human cost to letting that happen.”
“I would think that you, of all people, Sylina, would know this,” Asha said, in a pitying tone that made me want to leap across the table and slap her. “We act on the will of Acaeja alone. Not our personal feelings.”
Yes. True. The Pythora King had ravaged our country, leaving Glaea in a state of perpetual war since his own ruthless conquering path, two decades ago. But even that would not be enough to make the Arachessen act. The Arachessen didn’t make decisions based on morality—some made-up measure of right and wrong, though of course, by any measure, the Pythora King was wrong. Worse, the Weaver had shown us that the Pythora King disrupted the natural order. His actions moved our world away from its course.
That is the measure of an enemy of the Arachessen. Acaeja’s will. Balance. Not evil or righteousness.
But this… it felt…
“Acaeja has no hatred for Nyaxia’s children,” Asha reminded me. “She may support this. Sometimes, gods deem a purge necessary.”
I choked out, too angry to stop myself, “A purge?”
“No progress comes without a cost.”
My temper had been short lately. Too short. Especially with Asha. Sometimes, when I heard her voice, I could only hear how it had sounded as she commanded me to stand down.
I could have taken the shot. These seats would not be empty.
And yet, I knew that she was right. Nyaxia, the mother of vampires, was an enemy of the White Pantheon of human gods. Two thousand years ago, when she was just a young, lesser god, she had fallen in love with and married Alarus, the God of Death. But their relationship was forbidden by the rest of the White Pantheon, ultimately resulting in Alarus’s execution. Enraged and grieving, Nyaxia had broken away from the other gods and created vampires—a society to rule all on her own. Now, the gods of the White Pantheon despised her. Acaeja was the only exception—the only god who tolerated Nyaxia and the vampire society she had created.
It was not up to us to judge our conqueror.
But I wanted to. I wanted to judge him. I wanted to judge anyone who made a city look like that, feel like that, just as my own home had felt so many years ago.
That made me a poor Sister. I was, at least, self-aware.
It would be one thing to control a facial expression. But like sight, facial expressions were shallow indicators of the truth. I could control every muscle in my body, including those on my face—it was much harder to control the shifts of my aura, more visible than ever here before my Sisters.
Right now, it seethed with anger. Anger at our conqueror. Anger at Asha for daring to claim his killing could be for the greater good.
And—who was I kidding?—anger at Asha for not letting me take that shot.
{Is there something more you want to say, Sylina?} Asha Threadwhispered, and I was so close to snapping back—
{Enough!}
“Enough!”
The Sightmother spoke in both places simultaneously—her voice ripping through the air and the threads.
We all went silent. I collected myself.
The Sightmother said, “Sylina is right.”
Beneath my blindfold, my brows twitched in surprise.
And satisfaction.
“We know better than any that evil can wear many different faces,” she went on. “Yes, the Pythora King is our enemy. But that doesn’t mean that all his enemies must be our friends. This conqueror is troubling indeed.”
Troubling might seem, to any other, to be a mild word. Coming from the Sightmother, it might as well be damnation.
“Has the Weaver spoken to you, Sightmother?” Yylene asked tentatively.