I blinked from behind the veil. “You want me to use my gift on you?”
She nodded.
“I thought—”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” she interrupted, and I stiffened. “I want you to use your gift now and tell me what, if anything, you feel.”
Despite finding her request more than strange, I did what she requested. I opened my senses, felt the cord stretch out between us, and…and connect with nothing but vast emptiness. A shiver danced over my skin.
“Do you feel anything, Penellaphe?”
Closing down the connection, I shook my head. “I don’t feel anything, Your Grace.”
The Duchess exhaled sharply through her nostrils, and then she downed her drink in one impressive gulp.
My eyes widened as my mind rapidly processed her reaction. It was almost as if she…expected me to feel something from her, but I’d never been able to. I didn’t think I ever would be able to.
“Good,” she breathed, her skirts swishing around her ankles as she turned back to the cabinet, placing the glass down.
“I was wondering if I was truly feeling something or…” I trailed off as she faced me.
“I believe your gift is…maturing,” she said, coming toward me. The bright light above her glittered off the obsidian ring on her finger as she gripped the back of the chair. “It would make sense that it would be happening as you’re nearing your Ascension.”
“So this…is normal?”
She clucked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. For a moment, it appeared as if she were about to say something, but then she changed her mind. “Yes, I do believe so, but I…I would not speak to His Grace about this.”
Tension crept into my shoulders at the thinly veiled warning. I was never sure if the Duchess knew about her husband’s…predilections. I couldn’t imagine how she could be completely blind to them, but there was a part of me that hoped she was. Because if she knew and did nothing to stop him, did it make her any better? Or was I even being fair to her? Just because she was an Ascended didn’t mean she held power over her husband.
“It would…remind him of the first Maiden,” she whispered.
Shocked, I stared up at her. I had not been expecting her to bring up the first Maiden, the one before me—the only other Maiden I knew of. “Did this…happen with the previous Maiden?”
“It did.” Her knuckles started to turn white, and I nodded. There had only been two Maidens Chosen by the gods. “What do you know about the first Maiden?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “I don’t know her name or even when she lived.” Or what happened to her upon her Ascension.
Or why it mattered whether or not my developing gift reminded the Duke of her.
“There is a reason for that.”
There was? Priestess Analia had never told me anything. She ignored any questions about her or my Ascension.
“We do not speak of the first Maiden, Penellaphe,” she said. “It’s not that we simply choose not to. It is that we cannot.”
“The gods…forbade it?” I suspected.
She nodded as her stare seemed to penetrate my veil. “I will break the rule just once and pray that the gods forgive me, but I will tell you this in hopes that your future does not end the same as the first Maiden’s did.”
I had a really bad feeling about where this was going.
“We do not speak of her. Ever. Her name is not worthy of our lips nor the air we breathe. If it were possible, I’d have her name and her history scrubbed in its entirety.” The chair cracked under Duchess Teerman’s hand, startling me.
My heart nearly stopped in my chest. “Was she…found unworthy by the gods?”
“By some small miracle, she wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean she was worthy.”
If she hadn’t been found unworthy, then why was she never spoken about? Surely, she couldn’t have been that bad if she hadn’t been found unworthy.
“In the end, her worthiness didn’t matter.” Duchess Teerman lifted her fingers. The chair was warped, splintered. “Her actions put her on a path that ended with her death. The Dark One killed her.”
Chapter 20
“‘After years of destruction that had decimated entire cities, leaving countrysides and villages in ruins, and ending hundreds of thousands of lives, the world was on the brink of chaos when, on the eve of the Battle of Broken Bones, Jalara Solis of Vodina Isles gathered his forces outside the city of Pompay, the last Atlantian stronghold. ’” I cleared my throat, wildly uncomfortable. Not only was that the longest sentence in the history of man, I always hated reading out loud, but especially when I had Hawke as an audience. I hadn’t looked at him since I’d started reading. Still, I was almost positive that he was doing everything in his power to remain alert and not be bored into falling asleep while standing. “‘Which sat at the foot of the Skotos Mountains—’”
“Skotos,” Priestess Analia interrupted. “It’s pronounced like Skotis. You know how it’s pronounced, Maiden. Do so correctly.”
My fingers tightened around the leather binding. The History of The War of Two Kings and the Kingdom of Solis was well over a thousand pages, and every week, I was forced to read several chapters during my sessions with the Priestess. I’d probably read the entire tome aloud over a dozen times, and I swore that each time, the Priestess changed the way Skotos was pronounced.
I didn’t say that. Instead, I took a deep, long breath and tried to ignore the almost overwhelming urge to throw the book at her face. It would do some damage. Probably break her nose. The image of her clasping her bloodied face brought forth a disturbing amount of glee.
I smothered a yawn as I concentrated on the text. Having been up most of the night thinking about what the Duchess had told me, I’d gotten little sleep.
And like I’d told Vikter, I’d gotten few answers. But it had been a relief to learn that what was happening wasn’t something that my mind was conjuring up. My abilities were maturing, whatever that meant. The Duchess hadn’t wanted to discuss it further. So, while I knew that what was happening was somewhat normal, I was also left with the knowledge that the first Maiden had done something that had put her on a path to interact with the Dark One, who’d killed her.
That wasn’t exactly reassuring.
Neither was the knowledge that the first Maiden was somehow connected to the Duke. Was that why he treated me as he did? Perhaps it had nothing to do with my mother.
I drew in a shallow breath. “‘‘Which sat at the foot of the Skotis Mountains—’”
“It’s actually pronounced Skotos,” came the interruption from the corner of the room.
My eyes widened behind the veil as I looked over to Hawke. His face was all but devoid of expression. I glanced at the Priestess, who sat across from me on an equally hard, cushion-less wooden stool.
I had no idea how old the Priestess was. Her face was bare of makeup and smooth, but I thought that she might be at the end of her third decade of life. There were no gray strands in her brown hair that was sharply pulled back and held in a bun at the nape of her neck, causing her face to remind me of the hawks that I sometimes saw perched up high in the Queen’s Gardens. A shapeless red gown covered her from just under her neck, leaving only her hands visible.