Noble Sacrifice: Chapter 5: Words from the Window

Blinded Angels: Book 1: Noble Sacrifice

Ellis struggled to take their eyes off River. Sister Lydia gently tugged on their elbow to encourage them to follow her. As they turned away, a frigid emptiness broke within their chest, hollowing them out. 

They and their friends followed Sister Lydia as she led them across the courtyard as strange eyes judged them for crimes they didn’t understand. They entered the largest building, into what must have been the common room or the dining hall of the convent.

Whatever words Mother Soteria and River Blackwood had to share were not for their delicate ears. After all, why would they be interested in their own fate?

Why did these strangers care about their future so much? No one who didn’t know them should have such strong opinions about them. If they really wanted to help, all they had to do was explain the options to them, and then trust them to decide for themselves, but that seemed to be one of the few things beyond their ability.

Sister Lydia waved her hands with a flourish. Gas lamps flickered to life on the walls and candles ignited in the center of various tables around the room.

The interior of the convent lacked the expected austerity of a religious community. Soft cushioned chairs covered in luxurious burgundy and gold fabrics sat around square and circular tables with no high table or place of honor, obvious to the eye.

Sister Lydia showed them to a table in the back of the room farthest from the door and the stairs.

Ellis sat to the left of Moriah, Peter on her other side. Lydia sat opposite them and kept her eyes on them like they were vipers that might strike at any moment.

“I apologize for all of this.” Lydia said, slightly lifting her hands from the top of the table. “I should have wiped your memories and sent you home.” She squinted. 

“Why?” Moriah asked.

“You don’t belong in the middle of this feud.” Lydia said flatly. She glanced at the door. Her upper lip curled. Her voice deepened. “It’s too old and boring to subject anyone to it.”

“I understand nothing that’s happened since we found those statues.” Peter slapped his palms on the table. “We were on a hike, and now we are in a cult compound waiting for strangers to decide what is going to happen to us.”

“They aren’t a cult.” Moriah snapped at him. “We walked off the edge of the map. That’s on us.”

“And now we might never get home.” Ellis said. Their breath caught in their chest. Dizziness twisted their vision. For a second, they forgot where they were.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Lydia asked. “We learn all about your world in school. I mean, if I had a choice to leave a world built on lies and deceit, I would jump at the opportunity.”

“What are you talking about?” Peter asked.

Lydia frowned. “For starters, you didn’t know magic existed before you ran into Graycek, did you?”

The three shared a glance and sighed in unison.

“I always hoped.” Moriah said. “But no. Magic only existed in fairy tales.”

“I am sure the fae had something to do with that.” Lydia said with a strange look on her face, somewhere between disapproval and amusement.

Ellis straightened up in their chair. “You mean fairies are real too?”

Lydia nodded. “Fairies, dragons, giants, you name it, and it is probably out there somewhere. That is what I am talking about. You know nothing about the real world.”

“How?” Peter said. “Look, I love a good story as much as the next person, but all of this is an illusion. Smoke and mirrors and flash paper. None of it is real.”

Lydia leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her face. “I felt the same way when I heard about your world. You don’t have healers. People go hungry, they die of exposure to the elements. You live in a nightmare world, and you want to hold on to that instead of accepting the truth right before you.” She took off her mask, revealing her striking features and brown skin. She was in her late teens or early twenties, like them. “If you want to suffer for the rest of your lives, rejoin the rest of your exiled people. Mother Soteria is offering you a chance at a better life.”

“If you can do all those things, why do you let us suffer?” Peter asked. “How are you any better than we are if you have the power to save so many and don’t?”

Lydia sighed and set her mask down on the table. “What do you want us to do? Conquer you? Force our way of life on you? How would that be just or right? Our people have fought against each other and on the same side since the beginning. We just stopped fighting and let you all have that nightmare you call life.”

“Which is why the age of heroes and legends ended...” Ellis said. “Your people exiled us and magic disappeared from our stories.”

Ellis didn’t want to leave their friends, but if Lydia told the truth, they had to know. Her promises sounded too good to be true, but they begged investigation. If Mother Soteria and River Blackwood decided to cast them out, they would beg to stay.

“Exactly. It wasn’t easy. The elders argued about it for centuries, but they were so tired after the last Great War, they just didn’t want to fight anymore.”

“So you chose to let us suffer.” Peter said.

“We didn’t choose anything.” Lydia said. “We sent our heralds to invite everyone into the covenant. Your ancestors chose not to join.”

“Or had someone else make the choice for them?” Moriah said.

“Not exactly.” Lydia said. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is.” Moriah said.

“If you stay, I will explain it all to you. But there’s no point getting into it if you are just being sent back to the wrecca.”

“We have to stay.” Ellis said. “If they cast us out, there is nowhere for me to go.” They shook as tears welled up in their eyes. “There’s no room for people like me in the world we grew up in.”

“You belong with us.” Peter said. “To hell with the people who don’t bother to get to know you before they judge you.” He scowled at Lydia when he said that.

“I am just tired of being judged.” Ellis wept.

Ellis just let the tears flow. Peter and Moriah did their best to console them, but they were tired of consolation. They just wanted to live their life their way, and if these people offered even a chance for that, they had to take it.

Despite their fear of opening up to the flood of emotions that tormented them since they were a child, eventually the tears dried up. The pain wasn’t gone, but they just didn’t have any tears left to cry.

In the awkward silence that followed, minutes felt like hours, and Ellis lost all sense of time. They couldn’t believe how long Mother Soteria and River Blackwood argued about their fate. 

Lydia offered them and their friends their own rooms for the night. She said the argument would have to be over by morning no matter the outcome.

What choice did they have? They agreed and were led to separate rooms.

Like everything in the convent, the interior was lush. Ellis’ room was nicer than any hotel they’d ever stayed in. The bed was soft and firm and seemed to cradle them with a mother’s love.

They laid in their bed and stared out the window, hoping Peter and Moriah would be alright in their rooms.

Someone tapped on the window.

Ellis jumped back.

River sat on their window sill rapping with their knuckle on the glass.

Ellis took a deep breath, got out of bed, and opened the window. “Have you made your decision?”

“Nah. Mama is still lecturing me, or at least the image of me.” River grinned mischievously. “I thought I would learn more talking to you.”

“Me?” Ellis stepped out of arm’s reach. “Why me?”

“You aren’t as sure of yourself as the other two, so you might be more honest with me.”

Ellis couldn’t argue with that, no matter how much they might want to. They weren’t as sure of themself and never had been. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me your truth.” River said, like the question should mean something.

“I was born in Middletown, Maryland in 1976...”

“No, no.” River interrupted. “Not the facts about you. Tell me something true.”

Ellis turned away from the window. “You might as well send us away because I cannot imagine a world where I would fit in.”

Ellis returned to their bed and sat facing River.

River smiled at them and nodded slowly. “I know that feeling all too well. Among the wrecca I would be considered a freak, a monster. My own people don’t see me much differently. I thought you wanted to stay.”

“More than anything.” Ellis sighed. They would not break down crying again. “I just don’t know what to say to make you let me stay.”

“Maybe you don’t have to say anything.” River said. “What about your friends?”

“They are the only people who ever treated me like a real person instead of an oddball. They never made jokes at my expense. They accepted me for me.”

River clapped their hands. “At least you found somewhere to belong. I don’t see anything abnormal about you, except your lack of charms, amulets, and talismans. You do have enough jewelry on to make up for it though.”

Ellis scowled at River. “Was that a complement or a cut down?”

“Neither.” River said. “It is rare that I interact with anyone who isn’t Sith Thyrsa. I suppose it is refreshing.”

“Who isn’t what?”

“On the path of the Giants.” River smiled. “What I hear you saying is that we don’t really have anywhere to send you back to.”

“I am not magical.” Ellis said. “So I could never fit in.”

“I don’t know about that.” River said. “My dear, everyone learns magic. Even the Rephaim, have to study the arts. Power is inherent. Mastery is not.”

Something in the way River said mastery sent chills through Ellis’ whole body. It was akin to how a lion might say hunt.

“So you are willing to teach us magic?” Ellis asked.

“I never said that.” River squirmed on the windowsill. “But I do think that at least you might benefit from staying here. If you want to?”

“People will look for us. Aren’t you afraid people might uncover your little hideout?”

“Not even in the slightest.” A wicked expression cloaked River’s face. “We can cause people not to think about you for your time here. No one will miss you, and if you choose to go back, it will be like you were never away.” River pursed their lips. “I can only imagine the look on Mama’s face when I agree with her.” They hopped off the windowsill and disappeared into the night.

Ellis leaned back in the bed. Nothing that happened tonight made any sense, but then, life didn’t much these days. There was something about River that felt familiar. Maybe it was just that they were as gender nonconforming as Ellis. After all, they never met someone else who wasn’t a boy, wasn’t a girl. What did Lydia call them? Unbound.

Ever since they graduated high school, they just went about their life from day to day doing what was expected of them. They didn’t correct people who caricatured them, went to work, earned money, and did whatever was expected. They never imagined as an alternative, another world that could take them away from the doldrums of life. Even with magic, how different could life really be? More complicated? That went without saying, but the simple banality of living wouldn’t go away just because they could work wonders, would it?

Something in Ellis changed since they talked to River. Were they bolder? It was hard to tell, because that was a word that didn’t fit them well, or at least it hadn’t.

It wasn’t that no one had ever asked them what they wanted before, or actually seemed to care about the answer. Peter and Moriah cared and often asked for their opinion. What was so different this time? 

River’s silver eyes were hard to read, but there was something about the way they looked at Ellis that caused something to stir.

If only it was something as simple as lust or desire, that would have been easy to understand. This was something far deeper, more elusive. Words failed them.

Ellis had no idea how much time passed. The comfortable bed lulled them to sleep not long after River left. At some point later, a gentle knock on the door woke them up.

They sat up in bed and stretched the sleep from their limbs.

Lydia peeked her head in. “Mother Soteria and River Blackwood have agreed on you fate. Please come with me.”

Ellis repressed a giggle. River told them already, but they didn’t want to give up the game.

Peter and Moriah stood in the hall, waiting for them. By the look of them, Peter slept while awaiting their fate. He really could sleep through just about anything. Moriah took time to braid her raven hair in pigtails and fidgeted with the ends impatiently.

The three of them followed Lydia back down the steps, along the corridor and out into the courtyard.

Mother Soteria stood with River beside her. The other sisters watched from their windows in the surrounding towers.

“River and I have reached an agreement.” Mother Soteria proclaimed. “You will be allowed to stay here with us, where we will teach you your lost history, and take you on some trips into Ashborne and Nightfall. Then you will be offered a chance to accept the covenant or return to your former lives with the memories of everything that happened here erased.”

“And if we don’t want to stay?” Peter asked.

“Shut up.” Moriah said, shooting him a scornful glance.

“We are not jailers.” River said. “If you don’t want to accept this offer, then I will take your memories now and escort you home.”

“Do we have the right to discuss this first?” Peter asked.

“What is there to discuss?” Moriah turned to face him. “Think about what we’ve seen tonight, and what more there is to learn. They are offering us magic. Real magic. Why wouldn’t we say yes?”

Peter grimaced like words beat against his lips, trying to escape, but he wouldn’t let them out. “If you are staying.” He said through his teeth, “I am staying.”

Moriah turned to Ellis, who just smiled back at her.

“I knew you had good taste.” Moriah smirked. “It’s agreed then. Do we have to sign anything?”

“In blood?” Peter said under his breath.

“Not unless you choose to stay.” Mother Soteria said. “Unless you have something against her, Sister Lydia will lead you back to your rooms, and we will begin in the morning.”

“And I will return tomorrow night to check on your progress.” River said with what sounded like a rehearsed menace in their voice. They motioned to Sister Lydia, who walked over.

River said something that took Mother Soteria and Lydia aback.

They whispered among themselves feverishly. Mother turned and looked from Peter to Moriah to Ellis, then said something to River that made them laugh.

“What do you think that’s all about?” Moriah asked.

“They are probably devising ways to torture us.” Peter said.

“You can’t believe that.” Moriah said. “Except for Graycek, they have been nothing but generous to us.”

“Is that what you call this? They have threatened us and locked us in a tower like a fairy-tale princess.”

“I don’t mind being treated like a princess.” Ellis said, “It is better than being treated like trash.”

Peter stiffened his back. “Who’s treating you like that?”

Ellis raised their palms to calm him down. “It’s not one person. It is everyone. Moriah and I are excited about this, so just let us be happy.”

“I don’t trust them.”

“Then don’t trust them.” Moriah said. “We don’t have to trust them, not yet. We just need to give them a chance to prove themselves. I want to see what else they have to offer before I decide one way or another. Is that too much to ask?”

Peter shook his head.

“If you're ready to head up.” Sister Lydia said behind them.

Ellis smiled and nodded at her, then watched River turn and walk into the dark night. They disappeared into the shadows.

The spectral form of Graycek rose from the ground and danced around them, singing a dirge with only the words “Fresh meat” in it.

Sister Lydia led them back into the tower with a fresh spring in her step.

When they reached the floor their rooms were on, she said, “I had a sleeping draught brought up for each of you. If you choose to drink it, you will wake up refreshed no matter how much sleep you got.”

Ellis thanked her, walked into their room. For a split second, they thought they saw a black cat sitting on the nightstand next to the cup. They drank the cup of purple liquid and sat the cup back on the nightstand next to the bed and remembered nothing until morning.