“Hello there,” she whispered to it. “I went to a lot of trouble for you. Let’s hope it was worth it.”
With a tremble, she lifted her hand and let the diamond settle against her skin.
A bright light burst from the diamond at contact. Cyrene tried to cover her eyes, but she couldn’t move. She was rooted in place.
A moment passed in confusion, as she wondered what she had done wrong to collect it from the in-between, and then her world went dark.
11
The Test
Cyrene awoke in the same place that she had been standing. It felt as if only a moment had passed, but she had no way of telling. Her body had a strange sensation, as if she had been trampled by a horse. All in the blink of an eye.
Her hand was still outstretched, and her gaze landed on the shiny diamond in her palm. What had it done to her?
Slowly, she raised her eyes, and her jaw dropped open. The room had been transformed. It was no longer dirty and neglected but resplendent and restored to its former glory. The floor had been scrubbed clean, and the light reflected off of the incredible artwork around the room. Even the chairs for the court were just as she had seen them in Serafina’s memories.
She didn’t understand how this was possible.
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and screamed, jumping away from it.
“It’s all right. It’s just me,” a familiar voice said to her.
She whirled and found Serafina standing in the same blood-red dress she had been in when she sacrificed herself for the diamond.
“Sera, what are you doing here? Am I…on the spiritual plane?”
“No, Cyrene, you’re not.” She smiled like Cyrene had never seen her smile. “You are in the Domina court.”
“The…Domina court?” she whispered in confusion.
And then they appeared. One by one. All women. All dressed in white. All looking down on her with incredible smiles. The seating filled up on the perimeter and then each chair of the court. Until, finally, a white-clothed woman sat in the Domina chair. She held herself like a queen. No…like a Domina.
Serafina turned toward the woman and curtsied. “Domina Selma, I present my choice, Cyrene Strohm.”
“It has been a long time coming, child,” Domina Selma replied.
“Yes. Too long. But she is the one.”
“And you, Cyrene Strohm, do you think that you are the one?”
Cyrene opened her mouth in confusion and then shut it. “Can anyone really know? I do the best that I can.”
“As do we all,” she replied. “I am Selma the First. I believe that you have met my mother, Benetta.”
Cyrene gasped. “She mentioned that you were training the Doma as she had trained you. I didn’t realize that you’d become…the first Domina.”
Selma tipped her head. “I did the best that I could.”
A smile split Cyrene’s features at that.
“We must continue onward, but first”—Selma waved her hand at Serafina—“the white if you please?”
“Oh no,” Serafina whispered. “I do not deserve it. This is my punishment.”
“Child, you believed you were bringing equality between the humans and the Doma. My mother also believed the same thing. It is not easily won, especially with dark forces at work. You were deceived. You did not offer your people up for slaughter. You belong with us. In the white.”
Tears came to Serafina’s eyes. She truly had believed this was all her fault. Taken the weight of it on her shoulders for this whole time. Two thousand years of perpetual agony over it. She had been training to get Cyrene to this moment the last two years, and still, she hadn’t believed or clearly even hoped for a second that she would be able to finally return to the white.
“Thank you,” Serafina whispered. “It’s an honor.”
She waved her hand, and the red dress was replaced with a gorgeous white Domina dress. Finally, two thousand years later, she was returned to her people.
Cyrene couldn’t help a tear coming to her own eye at it. At how Serafina’s help had brought back all that she thought she had lost.
Serafina briefly touched her shoulder once and then stepped forward to take the lone empty chair on the court. Her eyes were kind and encouraging.
“Now,” Domina Selma said, addressing Cyrene once more, “you have come a long way. We are pleased to see the Doma line restored. But there is one more test.”
Of course there was. Why couldn’t it be as easy as Serafina choosing her and then just making her Domina? Nothing ever was.
“I’m prepared.”
“We shall see,” Domina Selma said.
She gestured before her, and suddenly, a podium appeared. Sitting on the podium was a small book. Déjà vu hit her fresh. She had done this before during the Hymn of Remembrance. Reading from the Doma book that had started it all when Basille Selby gave it to Elea in the Laelish Market. So much had changed since then, but still, it came back to the book.
“Please begin,” Domina Selma said, gesturing toward the book.
Cyrene stepped toward it and saw the swirling, iridescent letters that had unlocked her ability to read the magical book. Then they settled, smoothing into words that she could understand. Even though she had the actual version of this book in her possession back with Sarielle and she had read the thing forward and backward more times than she could count while traveling, she had never seen the words at the top of this page.
“The Hymn of the Domina?” she asked, it coming out more of a question than a statement.
But, when no one said anything, she continued to the next line. And then it hit her. Her magic poured from her body, slamming into the ancient book. It swirled with the letters, becoming a tornado of glowing letters, before shooting up out of the book and bursting onto the ceiling.
They kept coming, sucking pure, raw energy out of her body and transporting it to the book. She was glad that she hadn’t used more energy to get through the castle because she was exhausted from her near-drowning and freezing experience. She wasn’t as clearly bottomless in her powers as she’d thought. And still, the book sapped it out of her. Until the words covered the ceiling, expanding and expanding and expanding. Growing to fit the full dome above her in a glittering, bright mosaic.
Cyrene sank to her knees as the book finally tapered off just before draining her dry. She gasped at the emptiness within her. Not gone completely, but she knew how much food and rest she would need to replenish that. It would be days before she could be of use to anyone. How was she going to get out of here without a drop of magic in her veins?
She didn’t voice the question. Just tipped her head up to the ceiling as if she had been compelled. And then watched in horror as the book revealed the tragedy of her life. She couldn’t look away. Stared and stared and stared at the horrors in front of her.
When Rhea had made Second Class and been torn from her. No one had even wanted Cyrene to give Rhea a proper good-bye. They’d had to steal it in the rain themselves.
Cyrene writhing on the floor of the tunnels underneath Albion. The stab wound from the Braj’s poisoned blade slowly killing her.
Maelia standing on the scaffolding, giving an empowered speech. Betrayal of the deepest kind after she’d killed Dean’s parents. She’d leaned down and put her head on the block. The blade had come down, severing it from her body.