She heard soft begging. A continuous chorus of pleas and distress came from Blue’s cell. Raeia had never been under Kyrah’s influence, but after witnessing this, she was sure she never wanted to be. Coughing and sputtering came at the end, constricted sounds echoing off thin metal.

‘I am finished,’ Kyrah said. 

High Rector Augustin moved to the door, but paused with a hand over the lock.

‘Why did you show me that shit?’ Blue’s voice spat enough venom to make Raeia flinch.

‘It is one of your guiltier moments. Not by crime of law, but by the emotional toil it has left in you. I thought it would be suitable,’ replied the soulmaster.

‘Suitable for what? To make me want to wring your neck?’ 

‘I’m surprised you have not switched again.’

‘Switched? You mean you want me to black out?’ Then louder, Blue projected their voice through the door, ‘Is that what you want, Priest? You want the monster?’

High Rector Augustin’s face was impassive beneath the opaque folds of his veil, unmoved by Blue’s viperous tone.

Raeia used to have venom like Blue. Where had it gone? Her vision swam, head rushing with the thump of her heart, leaving no space for air. She gripped the wall for stability. A reminder her power was better left lost. 

High Rector Augustin instructed guards Ivan and Janice, who stood not far from he and Raeia, to ready themselves for moving Blue to an inspection suite. There, Raeia would finally check the baby’s vitals, though she couldn’t understand why he had thought it wise to distress Blue and the child right beforehand. It would only lead to discrepancies and a skewed assessment. 

Raeia gathered herself with shallow breaths so as not to draw attention. She stepped back and watched Ivan approach the cell with a syringe in hand. Inside, Kyrah and Blue were still exchanging words in a bizarre turn of conversation.

‘I thought you were going to be cool,’ said Blue.

‘I would not say I’m cool, but my base temperature does run quite tepid.’

‘How can you tell when I’m blacked out or not? Do you see through metal?’ 

Kyrah laughed. 

The soulmaster’s delight was a terribly strange sound, vapid and disjointed. Raeia’s skin prickled in its wake.

‘That would be an interesting ability, but I think it would not help with seeing your eye changes.’ 

Blue grumbled something incoherent. No, not incoherent, Raeia realised. In another language. Hightongue was what everyone spoke from a young age. It was taught in classes so countries could band together under Tassurian rule while keeping portions of their individual identities intact with native languages. Tassuri had been shrewd in their expansion eight hundred years prior. Snuffing out original tongues immediately would have raised resistance, but the majority of city state leaders had bowed their heads to the Tassurian Codes. Those who hadn’t, were erased from the land and from history. It was the same method Tassuri had used with the Scillas in the early days, allowing them to continue functions but under the fringes of Tassurian control. The religious group would be far more dangerous if forced underground. 

Raeia was from Lernich, and had gleaned from Ibictor Janice that Blue was from Alturica, but it wasn’t Alturican she heard. That was a notoriously harsh sounding language with strange muddles of rough-rolled rs and chesty cs. Whatever Blue mumbled, was matched by Kyrah, who swung into a lilting, soft language that Raeia wasn’t too acquainted with. She was able to pinpoint it with Kyrah’s clearer diction though. Vonatian. Vonaty was in the far-south. Had Blue lived there? Raeia had always wanted to visit its cerulean-shored beaches.

Fingers snapped in front of her face. Raeia jerked and nearly backed against the wall at the sight of High Rector Augustin’s withered gaze. ‘Go and fetch Miss Adofo. Send her to take care of this inspection instead.’

‘I will do it.’ The last thing Raeia wanted to do was send her own girlfriend to see how unhinged Blue was. Willow would demand they swap clerical roles for good because she knew just how easily attached Raeia became to people. It was already too late to stop it. Raeia wanted to perform the inspection so she could ensure the baby and Blue were okay. She needed to know for herself. 

‘Fine.’ High Rector Augustin turned from her to deal with his subordinates. Before he left, the High Rector pressed close to the door and spoke in his most cruel of tones. ‘Make sure you produce a healthy baby for us, Blue. Corina Bain is first in line for adoption.’ 

If the others noticed, they said nothing about it, but Raeia was sure she did not imagine the air being touched with the chill of ice.

Raeia was in somewhat of a trance after she left the solitary cells for dinnertime. Confusion dappled her thoughts because High Rector Augustin never spoke directly to any of the new clerics. It was just as well. Even in silence, the High Rector was a vile creature that made every aspect of Raeia’s life more difficult. His words to Blue replayed in her mind again and again. Who was Corina Bain? And what in all hells was Blue’s dhaheri that she kept turning Raeia’s bones to ice? She should have let Willow take her place. She always fell too deep, trying to fix things that weren’t hers to mend. 

The dinner hall, though dark due to boarded windows and dim lights, was abuzz with nearly two hundred women and girls munching, their cutlery chiming. General conversations weren’t allowed at mealtimes, only discussions on what they’d learned in that day’s lessons. Lessons were usually monotonous. They all had to learn secretarial skills because receptionist posts at Tassuri’s state offices were the only ones they would be hired for after leaving The Arabella. Companies didn’t hire people branded with shame. 

Raeia had never seen a physical stamp or brand left on any of the girls who left, but there were rumours of them. It was said that a needle was dipped in ink and sterilised blood mopped from the maternity wards, then the needle was used to leave the mark of a veiled figure on the woman’s abdomen. Rumours though, usually started and ended in the kitchens. The young women who worked there rarely left, and when they did, it was to share a tall tale with someone in the bathing rooms. Raeia was sure half their jargon was fuelled by the stove gas fumes. 

Sitting at their usual table, nestled in the corner farthest from the deli and opposite the entrance, was Willow. When she had first set eyes on Willow, Raeia had thought of starlight on a serene winter’s night. Willow was radiant, her tight-curled hair the splendent white of Big Moon, and she always exuded an aura of certainty that Raeia craved to be near. At the sight of her, the anxious energy that the day had brought on became muted, and when Raeia found her seat beside Willow’s, she was able to take her first deep breath in hours. 

‘What’s the matter?’ Willow pressed a hand to her knee beneath the table. 

‘Later.’ She grazed her fingers over Willow’s, a fleeting touch, then began to cut her potatoes up into small orderly pieces. 

Willow pulled something from the pocket in her robes. The shock of yellow was stark against the black maternity ward robes. It was a buttercup, pressed to delicate flatness. ‘Thank you for the gift,’ Willow whispered with a smile. ‘I needed it.’

Raeia looked at the squashed flower that she’d left in Willow’s robes before her long night shift began. She’d begun pressing flowers in her books two years before, fascinated by the process. The way broken blooms could dry there, pressed in so tight, and find a new form of life. The Scillas always forgot that the clerics were so used to being smothered, they had become comfortable in the tight, dark places of the world. 

‘Let’s get some air after,’ Raeia said, overcome by a sudden thirst for the sea. ‘We are due a visit to the lighthouse.’

*

Salt immediately whipped Raeia’s face as she and Willow descended the marble steps of Keeper House. The lingering bite of winter’s gale reminded Raeia how little true power the Scillas held in the face of nature. It terrified and settled her. They lived on a manicured rock, miles from a remote corner of the westernmost Lernich peninsula, at the mercy of insatiable coastal weather.

Leaving the salt-beaten mansion house behind them, she and Willow dashed for the pseudo shelter of the lighthouse pathway. The wind still wove through the grove, but when the gusts came from the southwest, it was buffered by the birthing houses and a strong line of ash trees.

‘How are you set for deliveries this month?’ Willow asked while they walked, elbows linked.

A shimmer of joy bubbled in Raeia’s stomach. Deliveries of fresh books for her collection were one of the few things—aside from Willow—that brought her any form of warmth. ‘Oh it’s going to be incredible. I’m finally getting my hands on the Lyvanian edition of The Solar Scholar’s works!’

‘You can’t read Lyvanian,’ Willow mused, voice nearly swept away by a large gust. She pulled Raeia tighter to her side. Willow was shorter and slimmer than her, but had always been considerably stronger, her muscles toned and ready for heavier work than was asked of any of them. She often ran circuits of the island and did exercises Raeia would never voluntarily partake in. 

Raeia shushed her. ‘Well, I can look at the pretty letters. I know the Scholar’s stories inside out anyway.’  

‘This is true. You and your fascination for the uncanny.’

In a quieter voice, Raeia asked, ‘Did the baby arrive safely?’

Willow’s mirth dried up and she nodded. ‘Last night.’

The lighthouse loomed before them, bright white, its high cylindrical walls repainted every spring. The lantern room at the peak was already aglow, shedding light across the darkening sea. With the moons both covered by heavy clouds, it wouldn’t be long before the night slipped in entirely.

Raeia hauled open the lighthouse door. The thick wood groaned but warm air met them inside. 

They did not speak again for a while, going instead through the motions of checking the lantern room was in order—which Raeia completed short of breath and Willow climbed to without issue—then finding empty buckets in the storage room near the base. The work was comforting for Raeia, same as curating her growing library. Less painful than the work with the babies.

Next was the basement. They had to clamber through a hatch door to reach a small cavern which lay beneath the lighthouse foundations. Willow led the way down the damp narrow staircase which hugged the granite wall in a broad spiral. 

Waiting for them at the centre of the cavern, surrounded by mounds and dips of the island’s natural rock, were the Casket waters. A small pool of still water that the clerics speculated was secretly filled by the rectors to seem more mystical. 

True, the pool did not have any obvious source, for it was not salt water, but even Raeia, who was entrenched in mytho-histories, had found it difficult to attach any concrete myths of such a water source relating to the Scilla’s goddess Itta. Either way, once per week, two long-term clerics were ordered to collect two large bucket-loads from the base of the lighthouse and leave them at the steps of the Temple of Harmony. The clerics were never told what was done with the waters. 

 Two empty ceramic cups waited for them beside the pool and they both crouched and began ladling water from the shallow pool into their buckets. 

‘You haven’t mentioned the new arrival,’ Willow broke what Raeia had believed to be a comfortable silence, but when she looked up, the tension in Willow’s jaw was undeniable.

‘You mean Blue?’

Willow looked up. ‘Blue?’ The word echoed lightly around them. 

‘They don’t remember their name. I gave them one.’ Raeia’s cheeks smarted. It felt ridiculous now. ‘There were so many names and speculations tossed about by the others, I didn’t want to give them the wrong identity.’

Willow held her gaze a fraught moment longer, then turned her attentions back to the water. ‘Augustin has you assigned to them exclusively?’

‘Not officially, but it seems that way. He’s not acting as he usually does. Called the soulmaster in on them almost immediately.’

Willow nodded but said nothing more on the matter. When she had finished filling her bucket, which she always completed first, she helped Raiea finish hers. 

When they were alone, Willow lit up with affection and warmth. Traits, Raeia knew, were reserved only for her and a select few. As they were now, alone and underground, Willow would steal sweet kisses, and press Raeia against the walls in embraces so amorous they nearly forgot their jobs, and Willow would whisper lines from Raeia’s favourite love poems so she would blush in the dark. Then they would return to the upper world and Willow’s rough stoicism would lock back into place.