Obsidian Flame (Guardians of Ascension #5)(27)
Author: Caris Roane

Because she’d sat for an hour or so, the wood stool had created a numbness on her backside. It was hand-hewn and uneven but very smooth from centuries of use. She turned the pen in her hand as she stared down at a poem she had written at least a decade ago. She smiled because she thought it beautiful and obscure, the perfect verse: He took me to the grotto, And explored the damp, weeping walls.

She sighed. This sensual part of her had always required an outlet, but it was something of a mystery. Nor did she understand exactly why she held Warrior Leto as some sort of romantic, sexual figure in her imagination. Of course he had embarked on his journey at about the same time she had gone into the Convent, a coincidence that had increased her sense of mysterious connectedness to the warrior.

She thought the dichotomy in her personality a great paradox, but contrary to much spiritual teaching, across religions, she didn’t try to suppress these longings and imaginings. She gave them form, in verse, and when she did that normally she felt satisfied and could move forward with her devotions.

However, of late, especially since Marguerite had been taken from the Convent, Grace’s longings had increased in both fervency and frequency.

She had been writing a lot of verse over the past three weeks.

Today in particular had been full of new strange sensations. The earth seemed to be moving beneath her feet and her mind had a strange, loose quality, as though all the doors were open and a breeze blew through constantly.

And also, for inexplicable reasons, she was missing Marguerite this morning more than ever. She had truly loved her cellmate even though they were water and oil.

They were even different physically, since Grace was tall and Marguerite relatively short at five-five. In complexion, Marguerite was dark and Grace was fair, her skin almost white. Marguerite’s eyes were a dark brown and her hair long and of a color to match her eyes, while Grace’s hair hung in thin blond ringlets to her waist.

As for temperament, their dissimilarity continued.

Marguerite was wild, without sexual restraints. She had a worldly outlook and often spoke of men as something to be worshiped with her body. She had been Thorne’s lover, the one who eased Thorne from his duties as a warrior, from almost the beginning of her residence in the Convent.

Grace was chaste. During her life prior to the Convent, she’d only had one lover, her husband, since divorced. She blamed herself for the divorce since she knew she was a rather strange ascender. She had been chaste before him and chaste since. She worshiped in chapel, her head bowed, her eyes closed, her heart completely open to all the mysteries of the universe.

Yet with all this disparity of inclination and temperament, she had loved and valued Marguerite as a sister. She had prayed for Marguerite every day, not with a hope that Marguerite would accept Sister Quena’s harsh and oftentimes brutal discipline; rather, she prayed for Marguerite’s freedom because that was what her Convent sister had wished for more than anything else in the world.

So the day had come when Marguerite had been granted her freedom, and Grace had rejoiced for her even though Thorne in turn was devastated. And therein lay one of the great mysteries of life: how one person’s deepest desire could hurt another person to the core.

But Grace had compassion for Marguerite. Her life had been exceptionally difficult from the time she was a child. She was also quite young in ascended terms, just over a hundred and twenty. And most of those years had been lived in a state of duress behind the stone walls of the Convent.

Then quite suddenly, everything had changed for Marguerite. Endelle, acting in her capacity as the Supreme High Administrator of Second Earth, had finally approved a transfer for Marguerite to the Superstition Seers Fortress. However, the transfer had been granted by Madame Endelle on the sole condition that Her Supremeness be allowed access to the Fortress.

When the High Administrator of the Fortress, Owen Stannett, denied access to Madame Endelle, she in turn authorized Thorne and Warrior Jean-Pierre to break down the front doors of the fortress and to remove Marguerite by force if necessary. In doing so, the warriors found a nightmare awaiting them since it was revealed that High Administrator Stannett had been siring children by the Seers under his care in an effort to create a super-race of Seers.

So Marguerite had been given her freedom, and though Madame Endelle had believed that Marguerite would join forces with her and serve her administration in support of the war against Commander Greaves, Marguerite instead had made her escape to Mortal Earth.

Grace had always been amazed by Marguerite, by her spirit. Again, water and oil. Grace had never been powerful like Thorne or like her twin sister, Patience. Grace had been the one to sit back and smile at their antics, to glory in who they were in all their strength and brilliance.

Her thoughts had always been inward and upward.

She had been on the sidelines, cheering them on, in everything they did. Patience had been wildly powerful, almost a warrior like Thorne. Her disappearance—for Grace still could not believe or even feel that her sister was truly gone—had been a shock.

As for Thorne, Grace had always thought that his symbiotic relationship with Endelle had held him back, had prevented greater powers from emerging. She had tried to tell him many times of her beliefs, but he had replied that he was doing his duty—and for a Warrior of the Blood, there was no greater honor.

Shortly after she had joined the Convent, Marguerite had arrived. To some extent, though she could never explain it, Grace had always felt that her fate was linked to Marguerite’s, a very strange intuition, to be sure, given that they were, yes, water and oil.

But she loved Marguerite, and though she had been gone just a little over three weeks, she missed her.

She turned the pen in her fingers. Her joints ached. In late March the stone cell was icy cold and the inmates weren’t allowed to wear more than their handwoven gowns, day or night, rain or shine, winter or summer.

As she dipped her pen in the inkwell, sudden, inexplicable longings surged yet again within her, a swell of her heart and lungs that caused her for a moment to lose her ability to breathe.

This was new.

What on earth?

Then the experience took a turn, a sudden hard turn. She dropped the pen on the floor and rose from her stool. She moved to the center of the small chamber. She held her hands palms-up and tilted her head back just a little, her eyes closed.

Spiritual fervor, surely.

She was almost in pain.

She could feel a vibration now, but it came from below, beneath the stones on which she stood.

The vibration intensified and fear suddenly shot through her. She didn’t understand what was happening.