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Ileana stood alone in her dressing room, reaching up one last time to adjust her hair clip and hairnet.
The Aurora Order-they still had to call it that before it was officially renamed some church or other-certainly would not care what their future saint wore to her advancement ritual today. She did not care either; she simply needed something to do to ease her nerves.
After the War of the Gods, the Intis parliament had remained silent about the change of deities, only resuming its operations yesterday.
Controlled by the Church's higher-ups and commercial oligarchs, the parliament had thoroughly exposed its nature as a theocratic assembly.
The War of the Gods and the replacement of the chief deity had come quickly and ended even faster. With help from her and the others hidden within the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun, this extremely small-scale religious war had ended before most believers even realized what had happened.
She looked up at the jeweled wall clock in her dressing room. The hour hand pointed to nine; it was time to head to the cathedral for the ritual.
Ileana took a deep breath, composed her expression, then walked out with her chest lifted and her head held high.
The mansion, usually so noisy, was exceptionally quiet today. Servants along the way bowed to the young lady, offering a rare moment of peace.
There were no extravagant banquets stretching from last night into the morning, no lingering smells of wine and spices, no annoying guests who began harassing maids and manservants once drunk, no unfamiliar people drunk out of their minds, no parents or brothers returning home only at dawn after dallying with their lovers... Apart from a tiny handful of unconventional lunatics, most Intis nobles had spent the past week trying to