I toss the blankets aside, still hearing the screams of feminine terror in my sleep. Gasping from the remnants of the nightmare, I stand and cross to the mantle above the fireplace.

The black mourning candle lit for my grandfather is not burning. The wick is barely blackened. Not even the tiniest hint of melted wax can be seen. The red jar the candle sits in is as pristine as it was when the first failed lighting occured three nights ago.

The candle won't burn and my grandfather's soul won't be accepted to the Underworld.

I can hear my mother weeping down the hall, even now, probably from her own nightmare. Her own father can't be given the funeral rites because every sign is that Death is refusing my grandfather's spirit.

Bowing my head, I brace my hands on the mantle and murmur my prayers under my breath, "why, Nateos? Why punish our House?"

Earlier this week my father appealed to our House's patron god, the Father, but they had no answers. Furious that his bonded mate is suffering, Everard of the First House has been searching for answers since his father-in-law died.

The gods are silent. The priestesses of the Mother insist that the goddess is remaining neutral while the priests of the Father claim that there is no view of the future they can see for the situation, either.

Yesterday another member of our House died, an elderly grandmother. This morning her family came to me. Her candles do not burn, either.

Something is horrifically wrong. No one can sleep from the hauntings of the two dead spirits and no one knows why those souls are being shunned by Death.

I must go to the temple of Death today and ask the postites there what has angered their god so deeply.

The words of the nomad oracle ring through my mind. Is my House cursed?

---

When I leave the sacred pool the sun is setting. It is mealtime for most of the Houses. We eat later, after the sun sets on the longest day of the year. Even in wintertime, when the days are so short, we keep our late supper time. At night, I can hear the whispers of the dead in the corridors. Breakfast is shared with the living, but we share the most important meal with the dead.

Bells ring out over the city. They make the tiny hairs on my arms rise. It is nothing like I have ever heard before. I look up, but of course I can see nothing down here in the temple. Our windows look out on the cemetary or into our interior courtyards. No windows open into the city. Even if they did I wouldn't be able to see anything. We sit below the roofline of the neighborhoods beyond.

The bells clang again over the city. Mushu, Mishu, and Momo start cackling, a terrible noise that makes me hurry to redress. Harku is jumping up and down, mouth bared in a full-fanged semblance of a grin. Alnue slinks away, black eyes gleaming, a faint hissing noise emitting from his mouth.

I hurry down the corridor, wondering who the warning bells are pealing for.

"Postite!" I call out to Salbin. The sour, grumpy old male has warmed, a bit, towards me. I wouldn't say he likes me, but he would never betray my presence here and for that I am thankful.

"Mara, you have awakened," he says... oddly, I might add.

"I have been awake? Did the First House leave?" I stop short, nearly out-of-breath from my mad dash along the corridor.

"Child, you have been in your pools for over three days, now. We let you be with your father. There are... something has happened."

"What? Why, Postite?" I am utterly flabbergasted. It felt like I spent only a few hours in the pool. How did entire days pass without me knowing?

"Because, the black candles do not burn, bless Nateos," he curses under his breath.

"What does that mean?" I ask in a hushed voice.

"Your father has refused to accept Arim of the First House into the Underworld." His mouth twists bitterly. "We will try a different candle. The First House... they are furious. They may blame us, Mara. We need to be prepared."

My eyes widen on him.

He stops short, coughing a bit. "Mara... I know that I was... less than welcoming, before. I'll admit that I was jealous. The god has never shown me favor and here was this tiny stripe of a flame-haired child being claimed as his own. I suppose I wouldn't want your sacred duty, however. No, no I wouldn't want that.

Now, go to your rooms. It isn't safe just yet."

I turn, slowly, more than a little stunned that Salbin offered an apology. I imagine he'll still be cantankerous, but I almost feel as though we have suddenly become... friends? Well, maybe friendly... not unfriendly.

"I will not take his grief," I whisper to him over my shoulder.

"No one would ask you to, little one." He pats me on the back gently, careful to avoid the copious amounts of acidic tears I'm shedding by the bucketful.

"How do the candles not burn, Momo?" I ask softly.

Momo hisses at me, making a very rude gesture in the general direction of the First House across the city.

I agree with Momo. Fiddlesticks on the First House. Biting my lip, I rush toward the burial chambers. I doubt that they're empty, but part of me needs to see it. I need to see the body of Arim. I'll go to my rooms later.

The chamber isn't empty. Four Recondites stand guard. They are different from my friends in the bushes; expressionless, incredibly intimidating. I'm not getting close to the body, then.

Harku slinks out of the shadows. Alnue close behind. They both look more feral than I have ever seen them be. I sigh, turning around on my heels. Maybe I can enter the chamber another way...

Patriarch Rimon is standing just behind me, arms folded, hands tucked into his sleeves. His bushy grey eyebrows raised high.

"Mara. Postite Salbin told me that you were heading in this direction."

So much for Salbin being my friend. Tattle-tale.

"You must go to your rooms, Little One," Patriarch's face softens. "Thane of the First House is here."

I am furious. My gargoyles are stony-faced, too, pun intended. My Fated is here. He is here and I am going to be trapped in my rooms, hiding.

"Why is he here, Patriarch?" I huff. I know I'm being childish, but I don't want my Fated to invade my temple anymore.

"Eventually the old pisser had to die, Mara," Patriarch says casually.

Mushu pretends to pee, chortling at Alnue. A word, I think, comes from his mouth, "pissss... errr."

I hiccup a laugh. I never knew Thane's grandfather. I was my Fated's dirty little secret. No one knew of me in the First House, but all of the postites here know my sad tale. Thane and his House will find no welcome here. Apparently, even Death no longer welcomes them.

"Well, I must go speak with the young fool." The Patriarch pats my arm. "I know exactly how to answer his questions, too. You need to go to your rooms, Mara."

I would be concerned for Thane, but he was never concerned for me.

Momo chatters next to me. I glance down at him and nod. "I'm glad we've moved to the rooms in the basement, Mo. I wouldn't want anything of me to remain upstairs." The voices are quieter below my temple.

As I shut the door behind me I feel a small bit of shame. I'm hiding from him. I wish I could confront him, but suddenly I realize, I am still so very hurt by that male.

---

The elderly Patriarch of Nateos must be close to a full century old. "Young Lord," he greets me with a humorless nod.

"Patriarch, I presume you know why I'm here?" I say with as much authority as I can muster in this place. It is... spooky, here.

"You are here because your grandfather can not pass into Nateos' realm. He is trapped here, a wandering soul."

"Do you know why Nateos has done this to my grandfather?" I ask.

A cold smile graces the male's face. "Your grandsire has offended Death, young Lord."

"How?" I try to stay strong, but my question is a choked whisper.

Steady old eyes search mine. "You know why. Is that your question? Why waste time, Lord Thane?"

"I don't know," I protest, but the words ring in my memory, 'a pure soul taken.'

"Do you not? Then you have wasted my time today-"

"My Fated," I blurt out, desperate.

The Patriarch smiles a very unfriendly smile.. "Perhaps."

"She is a betrayer," I protest, wincing as the words leave my mouth.

"Who, precisely, told you of your Fated's betrayal of your House?" the Patriarch asks me.

"My grandfather and my bonded," I reply with assurance.

The old man eyes me sardonically. "The female who stood to gain much by replacing your Fated, and the old male who Death himself has rejected?"

I swallow. I didn't think of it. I try not to think of my-of her. It hurts too much.

"I don't understand," I finally admit. I'm confused as much as I am horrified.

"I have no answers, young Lord. You must ask Death himself for that."

I blink at him in utter confusion, "how do I do that?" Isn't he supposed to have Death's answers?

"You must enter the pool."

"The pool? The one you clean dead bodies in?" I scoff. He's just another false priest, pretending his temple has something the others can't possess.

"It was once just a... what was that, young lord? A pool we clean dead bodies in? But, things change. The blood of the pure has touched it. The god will let you know what you need to... or not. What choice do you have?"

---

I grimace at the sight of the pool's pink-tinged water. The line on the black obsidian around it gleams wetly and I swear I see a small red handprint near the base of the stature of Nateos.

It's just the red rock the basin is carved from, I tell myself. It is not blood. The blood of the pure.

I step into the pool with both feet. Nothing happens. Grunting unhappily, I move an inch when my left foot slips on the wet stone and I fall underneath the water.

The market square bustles a world away from the graven temple of the dead. The living rule here, from the Tasuris to the Acera to the rats scurrying underfoot. The only signs of death here are the animal carcasses hanging for sale from the butcher's and hunter's stalls.

I watch, not able to move and not understanding what I am here for.

Then I see her.

A flame racing through the streets. Hair so bright that it acts as a beacon. Most others ignore the child, but some frown at her antics as she weaves in and out in a game of tag. More shifters smile indulgently at her, I notice. A few call out to her and she answers back, white teeth gleaming in a wide smile as she draws ever closer to me. I remember that smile.

A shifted demon steps into her path and takes the brunt of her stick body plowing into its side. The demon huffs, grumpy but good natured, as the girl chatters out a swift apology. Her voice is unlike anything I remember. High, lilting, like a song. Nothing like Anthea's sexy husk, far more childlike, but still so very appealing.

Her friends catch up to her and she laughs. It's pure music to my ears and I am suddenly glad that I never heard her laugh before now, because surely I would have been entranced enough to consider breaking my promise to my grandfather just to hear that sound again.

She begins to run again, straight for me. Dark eyes meet mine. Laughter and glee shine in their depths. My breath catches. I have never seen black eyes as beautiful as these.

I smile back at the child.

Then she is gone.

Still in front of me, but gone.

The laughter, the joy, the happy, carefree child, is wiped clean. A stricken, agonized expression twists her childlike features, making them so grotesque that I flinch away, or try to.

I cannot move, however. I can only watch as tears begin to stream down too-pale cheeks. Betrayal swims in her dark gaze, her sweet, pink lips forming just one word; "why?"

Then, it begins.

Hard hands grab her frail arms hard enough to bruise. I watch her as she is awoken and abducted from her warm bed in the middle of the night. She dragged away in manacles and thrown into a cell I recognize as one in my own House dungeon.

It is not meant for little females down there. A tiny hole of rough-hewn rock. Dark and damp with liquid pooling from other inmates, no clean water or place to sleep other than the hard ground. The only facility is a hole just next to the bare spot she sleeps on. This is not right. This is not what my grandfather told me would happen to her.

She is dressed in her thin nightrail, no blanket, no coat. Her feet and head are bare to the freezing desert night. She is shivering, her lips blue, fingers showing early frostbite when they come to hurt her. My fingers twitch with the need to hold her, to keep her warm, but I am frozen solid just like her.

They hit her with fists and feet, first. She can only curl up, try to avoid the worst blows, but she is so small, so fragile, and they are grown, male Tasuris.

They cut her hair to the scalp. Only in small sections, leaving the bulk of red mass behind. It's done to scare her, to break her spirit even more.

Words I could not imagine ever using on a child are slung at her. Harsh words, threats of what is to come if she doesn't confess.

She begs for mercy, pleading her innocence. Confusion and fear are clear in her face, her eyes. She doesn't understand how this is happening. She doesn't know what they are accusing her of.

They break her bones, next. Fingers, toes, a wrist, an elbow, ribs, again and again.

Still, she does not confess. I silently plead with the image; stubborn girl, confess and they will stop hurting you! Please, confess sweetheart. Don't let them hurt you anymore.

Coughing up blood, the girl begs for her mother. A child who wants her mother, just to say goodbye, but there is no mercy in the dungeon of the First House.

They whip her. They chain her by her wrists, the broken one dangling uselessly in the manacles as they slice ribbons from her too-young flesh.

She can only sob breathlessly, now. Even her soft prayers are silenced by that harsh torture.

It is a merciless slaughter of a pure soul. A pure soul.

Finally it is quiet. There are no more guards. The torture has stopped, for now. The other prisoners are sleeping or hiding in their own cells. The girl is just a heap. A rust-colored heap in the corner of the stone cell.

He comes in the night. A large man, unknown to me. He grabs the tiny girl by her ankle and drags her into a stripe of moonlight in the corridor outside of her cell.

No. I mouth the word, all I can do as her life is taken in the most brutal way, a dagger to her heart, stabbing downward into the thin, delicate chest.

They have broken her, finally. One last plea leaves cracked lips, for Death to claim her from this life. The last light flickers in her eyes before it fades into nothing. Black eyes become hollow in death.

The large man picks up the girl and carries her from the cell. I watch as he wraps the body in a blanket and carries it swiftly from the dungeons into the city. He throws it into a large trash receptacle far from the First House, in the slums of the city.

The garbage man who finds the body the next day dumps it at the closet door to the temple of Death for burial. Before he leaves her there he carefully arranges her broken corpse to be as modest as possible. As he leaves her behind he is shaking his head at the barbarism some animal showed this child before returning to work to feed his own family.

I come back to the present, sucking in drafts of air that do nothing to stem the rising feeling of suffocation. I can't breath. I don't even want to draw breath any longer.

Instinct and the beast inside of me forces me to survive. Thrashing, I paw at the water surrounding me, claws extending on my hands as I react to the memory. My beast is snarling, confused by the agony his Fated went through. The greatest gift a Tasuri can have, a Fated, and he failed her miserably. Blood, he wants blood and death in his jaws. His miserable failure to fulfill the basic duty of protecting her from other males has plunged the animal into a tailspin.

"Easy, there, lad," the wizened old man is there, sitting idly by the sacred pool. Eyes gleaming with cruel mirth glare at him.

"What?" I spin around sharply in the pool that is suddenly not any more deep than my waist, half-expecting to see the corpse of my true Fated lying on the floor. My fingers still twitch with the need to grab her and shelter her from the world. "Where-where is she? I mean, did you..." Parijan, my gods, what have I done?

"You saw a vision, yes?" the old man interrupts my blathering. "Always the truth, sometimes the future, sometimes not."

"Not," I croak. It was not the future that I saw. It was the past. She is dead. My House killed her. I killed her.

The Patriarch nods. "You should get out of the pool, then. Doesn't do a body any good to get too cold." His eyes watch me closely, curiously.

I shudder. She had been cold. She had been freezing. She would have most likely died from hypothermia if she hadn't been... gods, what have I done?

I climb out of the pool, suddenly feeling as if I have no business touching sacred water, tinged with the blood of the pure or not. My beast is shuddering in revulsion at the visions haunting him. My fated, in pain, broken, suffering, and dead.

"I..." My voice trails off. Bewildered, I look at the old man with a desperate question in my heart.

"Go home and ask those who need to tell you the truth," the Patriarch says.