24 — A Murder Sequence

The Lutetia Cathedral was exactly as I remembered it.

Same pews. Same stained glass. Same altar with the figure of Sophia hanging from the great wooden cross. Same light falling in colored squares across the floor. Red. Blue. Gold.

Except it wasn't empty.

The pews were full.

People. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Sitting in rows, hands folded, faces turned toward the altar. They wore simple clothes. Farmers. Merchants. Mothers with children. Old men with canes. Ordinary people. The kind of people my father had governed. The kind of people who had been in this church ten years ago.

They didn't move.

They didn't speak.

They just sat there, watching.

I was standing at the altar.

I was not six years old.

I was sixteen. I was wearing my school uniform. I was wearing my glasses. My chestnut hair was pinned back the way I always pinned it. I looked like someone had cut me out of the academy courtyard and pasted me into the middle of a memory that didn't belong to me.

And I was not alone.

She was standing across from me.

Mint-aqua hair. Mismatched eyes. Priestess robes. Glasses that caught the light. The same woman. The same smile. The same voice that had told me my parents were in Heaven.

But she wasn't looking at me.

She was looking at them.

The congregation.

Her hands were raised. Her voice was gentle. She was mid-sermon — or mid-prayer, or mid-something — and the words she was saying were soft and holy and meant for the people in the pews.

"—and so we gather in His light, and we ask for forgiveness, and we—"

She stopped.

She turned her head.

She looked at me.

And she smiled.

The congregation kept watching. They didn't see the smile change. They didn't see the way her eyes shifted. They just saw a priestess pausing in her sermon. They just saw a holy woman turning toward a girl at the altar.

"Hello, Clara," she said.

I didn't answer.

"You've grown."

I still didn't answer.

"You're dreaming," she said.

"I know."

"Do you know why you're dreaming?"

"No."

She smiled.

"Because you brought me here."

I don't know how the magic started.

That was the thing. I didn't feel myself casting. I didn't feel the words leave my mouth. I just felt something in my chest — something that had been locked away for a year — click.

The air around me shifted.

The candles on the altar guttered.

The light through the stained glass changed. The red got redder. The blue got bluer. The gold got almost white, and it hurt to look at, and I looked at it anyway.

The congregation didn't move.

They just watched.

Felice's smile didn't change.

But something behind her eyes did.

Something that looked almost like satisfaction.

"There you are," she said.

I didn't answer.

I raised my hand.

The magic came.

Not fire, exactly. Not lightning, either. Something in between. Something that was neither element and both, something that came from the place where my cognition met the world. I was projecting. I was manifesting. I was doing the thing I had been told I could never do.

And I was doing it to her.

The spell hit her squarely in the chest.

She didn't scream.

That was the thing that stayed with me. She didn't scream. She just stood there, with her robes on fire, with her hair on fire, with her skin on fire, and she looked at me.

She looked at me the way she had looked at me when I was six.

She looked at me like she was proud of me.

"You're real," she said. "You're actually real."

The congregation started to scream.

Not at her. At me.

A woman in the third row stood up and pointed. "She's killing the priestess! She's killing the holy woman!"

A man near the back shouted something I couldn't hear.

Children started crying.

And Felice kept standing there, burning, smiling, watching me.

"I knew it," she said. "I knew there was something under the mask. I knew you were—"

She stopped.

She looked down at herself.

She looked up at me.

And then she did something I didn't expect.

She fell to her knees.

Not like someone collapsing. Like someone kneeling in prayer. She folded her hands. She bowed her head. She let the flames take her.

The congregation saw a martyr.

The congregation saw a holy woman accepting death at the hands of a monster.

The congregation saw exactly what Felice wanted them to see.

And I couldn't stop.

The magic kept coming. It kept pouring out of me. It kept burning her. It kept burning everything. The pews. The altar. The cross. The stained glass windows cracked and shattered. The roof started to collapse.

The congregation was still there.

Still watching.

Still screaming.

Still seeing exactly what Felice had arranged for them to see.

"Goodbye, Clara," she whispered.

The roof came down.

And then I heard it.

The scream.

Not the congregation's scream. Not the scream of people burning. A child's scream. High and shrill and terrified and coming from somewhere behind me.

I turned.

She was standing at the back of the church.

Young Clara.

Six years old. Chestnut hair. Emerald green eyes. Dress too small for her because she had grown faster than her parents expected. Standing in the aisle. Holding her hands clasped in front of her the way a little lady would.

She had just come back from the bathroom.

She had just finished her line.

She had just been about to say Papa! Mama! I already finished going to the toilet by myself!

And then she had seen me.

And then she had seen Felice burning.

And then she had seen everything.

She was screaming.

Not at Felice. Not at the fire. At me.

"Murderer!" she screamed. "You're a murderer! You're a monster! You killed her! You killed her!"

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

"I saw you!" she screamed. "I saw you kill her! You're a murderer! You're just like her! You're just like her!"

I wanted to tell her I was her.

I wanted to tell her we were the same person.

I wanted to tell her I had only done it because—

Because what?

Because Felice had killed our parents?

Because Felice had held us in that church and told us lies about Heaven?

Because Felice had been the monster under the bed for ten years and someone had to stop her?

None of that mattered.

She was six.

She didn't know what justice was.

She didn't know what revenge was.

She just knew what she had seen.

She had seen her older self kill someone.

She had seen her older self kill a woman in priestess robes, in front of a congregation, in a church.

She had seen her older self become the monster.

And she was calling her a murderer.

And she was right.

I woke up screaming.

The dorm was dark. Lily was on her feet, her hands on my shoulders, her face inches from mine.

"Clara! Clara!"

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't see.

I couldn't hear anything except the child's voice in my head. Murderer. Murderer. You're a monster.

"Clara, look at me. Look at me."

I looked at her.

Lily.

Lily's face.

Lily's hands.

Lily's voice.

The dormitory. The windows. The moon. Myra standing by the door with her ears flat and her eyes wide.

I was here.

I was awake.

I was in my room.

I wasn't in the church.

"Clara," Lily said. "What happened? What did you see?"

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

"I killed her," I said.

Lily froze.

"What?"

"I killed Felice. In the dream. I— I burned her. I burned her alive. In the cathedral. In front of everyone. In front of the congregation. In front of my—"

"Clara—"

"I killed her, Lily. I killed her with magic. I didn't mean to. I didn't— I don't know how. But I did. And they saw. They all saw. They saw me kill a priestess. They saw me kill a holy woman. They saw me—"

I couldn't finish.

I was crying.

Not the way I had cried in the council room. Not controlled. Not quiet. This was something else. This was everything I had been holding in for ten years, coming out all at once, and I couldn't stop it, and I didn't want to stop it.

Lily pulled me into her arms.

She didn't say anything.

She just held me.

And I cried into her shoulder the way I had not cried since I was six years old.

I don't know how long we stayed like that.

Long enough that the moon moved across the window.

Long enough that Myra came and sat beside us on the bed and put her small hand on my back and didn't say anything either.

Long enough that the sky outside started to turn gray.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Not a normal knock.

A pounding. Urgent. Fists against wood.

Lily pulled back.

"Who—"

The knocking continued.

I wiped my face with my sleeve. I stood up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else, but they carried me to the door, and I opened it.

It was Arthur.

He was out of breath. His hair was a mess. His glasses were crooked. He looked like he had been running.

"Clara," he said.

"What?"

"You need to come with me. Now."

"Why?"

He looked at me.

His face was pale.

"Professor Felice is dead."

I didn't react.

I couldn't react.

"She was found this morning. In the Lutetia Cathedral. The old one. The one—"

"I know the one."

"She was burned. The entire cathedral is destroyed. They're saying it was arson."

He paused.

"They're saying someone killed her."

I stared at him.

"Who?"

He shook his head.

"They don't know yet. But there were witnesses."

I went cold.

"Witnesses?"

"The congregation. They were in the church. They saw everything."

He looked at me.

"Clara. They're saying a girl killed her. A girl with chestnut hair and emerald green eyes."

He stopped.

"They want to question you first."