The winding corridors were the same as I remembered. I had visited these sacred halls more times than any other asha, and I could have walked its silent paths blindfolded. It was unusual for a full asha to visit the temple of the oracle more than half a dozen times in her lifetime, and yet here I was, making my twenty-seventh visit. It’s been said that an asha confided in only two people in her life: her hairdresser and her confessor. I had no deep ties to any of the gods worshipped within the Willows, but the oracle was the closest thing I had to a confessor.

The last several visits, however, had been failures. I sought the oracle many times for counsel on shadowglass and my own black heartsglass, only to be rebuffed. No number of zivars thrown into her fires as offerings could change her mind. I had not expected this visit to be any different than the last.

I did not know how old the oracle was, only that she had presided over this temple when Mistress Parmina had been but a baby. The mysteries of her shrine were a puzzle; no one in the Willows claimed to know the process of selecting and training temple candidates. Some believe that the oracle was a title passed down from mother to daughter, that both come from an unbroken line of revered seers since the time of Vernasha. Still others were convinced the oracle was immortal, though no such spells or runes exist.

All I knew, as did everyone else, was that the oracle was a permanent fixture of the Willows. She—or perhaps more accurately, one of her ancestors—had been present when Vernasha first founded Ankyo, and she will be there when the last asha-ka closes its doors.

The flames burned lower than they had on my last visit. The oracle was unchanged, or perhaps no one had lived long enough to see the variations between successors. A veil was drawn across her face to mask her features, though at times it would shift to reveal a soft, generous mouth. She was dressed from head to toe in a flimsy, silver gauze that revealed nothing and suggested everything.

As before, no servants tended her fires, none available to offer sustenance amid the heat of the hearth. The oracle seemed to survive without the need for food or drink or sleep. Worship was her nourishment.

I knelt before her and shook my crescent-and-stars pin out of my hair, one I had worn since my days as a novice.

“That is not necessary.”

I paused, shocked. This was different. It was customary to offer a zivar to the oracle’s pyre; in exchange, she might dispense advice or predict one’s future. “Are you turning me away?” I asked, my voice small and insignificant in the expanse of that bare chamber.