Leela was not allowed to accompany her purple mother home. She was not allowed to go home at all. She was marched by the High Priestess straight to the temple. The walk was long and peppered with gardens and dwellings so that Leela had to watch the news of her shame spread throughout the City. All the bravery she’d felt earlier evaporated, leaving her flat and lifeless. She did not know what her penance would be, but she was certain it would not leave her free to roam about the City any longer, even in the dead of night. How was she to get back to the stairs beneath the Moon Gardens? How was she supposed to see Sera again?

She cursed herself for being so reckless. But as they made their way across Faesa’s Bridge, Leela felt her resolve harden. Whatever this penance was, it couldn’t last forever. She would pay the price and she would return to finding a way to get Sera home.

They skirted the hedge that surrounded the Moon Gardens, novices inclining their heads as the High Priestess passed, then shooting Leela curious looks.

The High Priestess had not spoken a single word to Leela throughout the entire walk, and while Leela was beginning to feel the weight of the silence, the High Priestess herself did not seem to notice. She moved so gracefully she appeared to glide, her face set in an expressionless mask, and Leela could feel the heat of her body radiating through her long robe. The moonstone in the High Priestess’s circlet gleamed in the sunlight and Leela was possessed with the sudden urge to pull the circlet from her head and pry the stone from its setting. She wondered if maybe there were more answers in that stone than in any of the statues in the Moon Gardens.

Leela felt weary as they approached the doors to the temple, her feet dragging, her head bowed. This morning, the world had seemed full of possibilities, but now everything had changed again. The freedom she had taken for granted was gone. She would be watched. Wherever she went, she would be seen as the young Cerulean who’d broken the rules.

But even worse—she had lied to her mothers and she had been caught. She had disappointed them, and Leela’s stomach pinched with the shame of it.

Just then the sun lit on the temple’s golden spire, a blinding flash of brilliant yellow that vanished as quickly as it had come. The High Priestess was still climbing the temple steps, but Leela’s own legs had turned to stone.

She stared at the copper doors, where the markings of Mother Sun were etched in ever-changing, indecipherable symbols. Only they weren’t indecipherable any longer.

Heal them.

Two simple words written over and over and over.