A Prayer for Vengeance by Leanne Schwartz

Author:Leanne Schwartz [Schwartz, Leanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2023-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

When the invocation released her, well into the night, she was perfectly controlled and cold. She ignored Milo. She ate some of the food he’d laid out in neat lines in the cupboard. She ran through the calming training poses taught to her by someone either dead for a thousand years, or still imprisoned somewhere in this cursed city.

Only the next night, as the hours sped closer to the time they’d planned to go to Lena, did she begin to feel the cracks in her careful demeanor. She’d woken well past midnight. Morning and facing her sister threatened nearer. She fidgeted worse than Milo ever did. She bounced on the balls of her feet and stomped about the chambers, checking the sword she’d chosen and sitting down to the mess of tiles cluttering the table, before springing up again to look for Acci outside.

But Milo was there. She’d been keeping her back to him as much as possible and thought he’d gone into the bedchamber to escape her latest eruption. He sat on the top step, long legs bent before him, a wrapper of food in his lap.

He didn’t turn her way now, either, and simply asked, “Are you worried for your sister? About the timing?”

All her bluster died. She sank to the worn stone beside him and dropped her forehead to her knees. “See, that’s not even—” She groaned. “I truly am a monster.”

“What? Why?”

“I should be worried about getting Lena to safety. Like a decent sister. All I can think about is—” Anxiety clawed its way back up her throat as she lifted her head. “I haven’t told you the entire truth of what happened.”

He was looking at her now. “Is this where you admit you’re actually an evil spirit who’s tricked me away from the temple?” His voice was wry, and his mouth quirked.

It gave her the strength to whisper, “It’s my fault Lena and all her people were trapped.”

The starlight illuminated the doubt in his eyes. She wouldn’t give him a chance to protest, to waste any of his faith on her. She would show him what she really was. “Lena was always so busy, and I caused her nothing but trouble. I was too impatient to sit through all her rites and meetings and congresses. But Ennio—” Her throat caught on what felt like a hot coal. She swallowed it, letting it sink and burn in her belly. “I thought he cared about me. He let me train with his temple’s militia.” She heaved two quick, deep breaths that threatened to reignite the painful ember in her gut. “He let me think I was special to him, too.”

The wrapper Milo held rustled sharply—his fingers constricted—but she couldn’t look at him. Her hands clenched her thighs, mangling the drape of her tunic. “He told me about how the other city-states, the emerging empires around us, wanted to take our gods away. That the protection they gave Trestattans could fail with worship and offerings divided, and monsters would pass freely through our streets like never before.

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