Excerpt: Shrive--Part 3: Glass

It was a beginning—though of what kind we did not know; I remember returning to Lessa when the snow started to fall. We all knew winter was coming; even I did not know what it brought with it. The cold fell like daggers and all of Lessa’s leaves drifted to the ground and crumbled, crushed by feet that swept over the stones of the street. Rain became ice and all of Lessa plunged into winter.

And along with Lessa, I watched them all plunge. Layra into Ezra’s bright eyes and Ezra into his increasingly elaborate attempts to win her favor, Diana into her sea of bitterness. Jared into his lies and Altan into the roaring, black waters of the river with a single hand to pull him out. I watched—these eyes witnessed it all, every gruesome moment, every sleepless night, each and every day of colder weather coming on. I saw every letter, every proposition from the king, each time a little more threatening. And I saw her—the woman in the corner who did not exist. That she should come to life when his body hit the very rock bottom of his soul, without the power to pull him up again but with a touch that he could not flinch at.

That winter Altan sank deep into the dizzy sea of desperation he had floundered in for so long, and, while Katol hid in his dimly lit inn, that broken young man fell victim to the same vice that destroyed Captain Aloysius Ashwin. The sun rose each day and each day he fell a little deeper, a little farther beyond their reach. While Jared lied and Layra worried, while Diana looked away and Ezra laughed. While I watched. And could do nothing. Listen. The winter froze out the lights for our dreams.