J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [418]
Three words came out of her mouth, three impossible words that changed everything: “Yes, I did.”
Cormia lifted up her robing and let it fall back into place, thinking of that scroll that was on the floor back at the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, the one with her sketches of buildings on it, the one she had nowhere to go with.
Now she was the one shaking her head. “I never knew how much I didn’t know about myself until I went over to the far side. And I have to believe the others are the same. They must be . . . it can’t just be me who has talents undiscovered or interests unrevealed.” She paced around the bath. “And I don’t think any one of us doesn’t feel like a failure—if only because the pressures are so great that everything elevates to a level of supreme and total importance. One small error, either in a word written incorrectly or a note off-pitch in a chant or a stitch done wrong in a bolt of cloth, and you feel like the whole of the race is disappointed in you.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t stop the words falling from her lips. “You are so right. This is not working. The purpose of us is to serve the Scribe Virgin, but there’s got to be a way of doing that while honoring ourselves.” Cormia looked across at Phury. “If we are her Chosen children, doesn’t that mean that she wants the best for us? Isn’t that what parents want for their young? How is this . . .” She looked around at the all-pervasive, stifling white of the bath. “How is this the best? For most of us, it’s more like a deep freeze than a life. We’re in suspended animation even though we move. How . . . is this best for us?”
Phury’s brows went down. “It’s not. It’s fucking not.”
He wadded up the long cloth in his hands and slammed it to the marble floor. Then he grabbed the Primale medallion and tore it off his neck.
He was going to step down, she thought, both elated and disappointed for the future. He was going to step down—
Phury lifted up the heavy weight of gold, the medallion swinging on its length of leather, and she lost her breath completely. The expression on his face was one of purpose and power, not of irresponsibility. The light in his eyes was about ownership and leadership, not ducking or shirking. Standing before her, he was the whole landscape of the Sanctuary, all the buildings and the land and the air and the water: He was not of this world, but the world here itself.
After a lifetime of watching history unfold in a bowl of water, Cormia realized as she measured the medallion being held aloft that for the first time she was seeing history made right in front of her, in live time.
Nothing was ever going to be the same after this.
With that emblem of his exalted station waving back and forth under his fisted grip, Phury proclaimed in a hard, deep voice, “I am the strength of the race. I am the Primale. And so shall I rule!”
Chapter Forty-nine
On the outskirts of caldwell, in the temperate summer night, the Brotherhood was gathered together under a fat, heavenly moon—and wondering what the hell was going on. As the Escalade pulled up next to their tight group, John was amazed to be among them. Popping his seat belt free, he got out as Rhage shut the SUV down. Blay and Qhuinn fell in side by side, and together, the three of them walked over to the Brothers.
The meadow up ahead stretched out between a collar of pine trees, the grass marked by stands of goldenrod and the occasional frothy-mopped milkweed.
Vishous lit one of his hand-rolls, the scent of Turkish tobacco drifting over. “Fucker is late.”
"Easy, V,” Wrath said under his breath. “I will relieve your ass if you can’t stay tight.”
“Fucker. Not you, him.”
“Butch, chain your boy, would you? Before I muzzle him with a goddamn pine tree.”
The glow came from the east, starting out small as the flick of a lighter, then growing big as the sun. As it gathered in the forest, the light was filtered