Black as Diamond by U.M. Agoawike

Author:U.M. Agoawike
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bindery Books
Published: 2026-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Palenisa

On the first day of the Maronwuchi festival, they passed a line of boundary stones. And just like that, they were in Ilon.

And just like that, Palenisa felt sick, a thick miasma caught in her throat.

It was subtle, how the Lizardwood blended into the jungle of her home. But she knew it very well. From the dry itch of her eyes to the humidity sticking her hair to the sides of her face.

Terrace farms appeared through the trees, fields of green spilling between thin vine ladders, water gurgling down irrigation pipes buried in the trunks of those artificial palms. More signs of life that only ratcheted up the energies brewing in Palenisa’s unsettled belly. She looked up at Ilon’s rope bridges, strung across the canopy with colored fusion globes for the two-day festival.

The fervent hum of celebration hung in the air, an ululation rising with the symphony of talking drums.

Once, Palenisa would have delighted in the familiarity⁠—once. Before that night. But now she kept her head lowered from the sights, away from the thatched-roof caravanserai climbing ribbed trunks, and the foul gutters that ran in neat lines through the middle of the street. Turbulence spread with sunlight through her warm veins. She wanted nothing more than to sink into the cool darkness underneath that knew no name or face.

They merged into the boil of bodies flowing over the wide road from Bartrom to the Ilonese subcontinent. On foot and ahorse, they descended into a bustling township.

The streets of Bolsember were thick with common folk pouring in to attend the gala, which was always held there, where the kharess’s chief lived, rather than at the capital. An evening of revelry. Then, the next day, as was tradition, the hungover devotees would make the trek back to the capital to pray before the suvaunoors. The monoliths that spiraled before the kharess’s manse were only replicas of the originals from Peskelos and were littered with suvaugrams in imitation of those painted by the hands of the Twelve Builders long before.

Two of those suvaugrams, she wore. A blessing from the Zodiac, to whom she was meant to give praise on this day of celebration. Instead, Palenisa hunkered beneath a hood, trying to hide from a plague of dreadful thoughts. Wallowing⁠—at that, she was excellent.

In the eyes of mortals and spirits alike, her honor was filth. Disgraced. She shouldn’t be there. She hadn’t meant to return until she proved that she deserved to be Sister of Faith again. That she deserved her emblem⁠—the one that was Ada’s before hers.

Shame filled her at the depth of her longing for the coterie. It rent her as wide as a cavern, unending as the turn of the sun. Despite her misgivings, she longed to rush before the kharess and plead for her forgiveness. But the thought gave her pause⁠—the kharess hadn’t actually been there when her emblem was stripped away. In the memory that the damned lulaik had resurfaced, only her sisters⁠—her former sisters⁠—hissed and turned their backs.

Palenisa shook her head as the scent of spiced water rolled in on the wind.

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