“It’s only me. I’ll just leave this out here.”
“No. Wait,” I called.
I jumped up and limped to the door, my ankle more painfully stiff now than it had been earlier. Rafe stood there with his finger hooked through the strings of the two bundles I had dropped in the forest. I took them from him and set them on the bed, and when I turned to face him again, he was holding out two delicate garlands, one pink, one lavender. “I think these are like the ones you had?”
I bit my lip and then finally whispered a small inadequate thank-you as he placed them in my hands. An awkward moment passed, both of us looking at each other, looking away, and then looking back again.
“Your neck?” he finally asked, turning his head to the side to look at my bandage. I remembered how, only hours ago, his thumb slid across my skin as he held his kerchief to the wound.
“Berdi said the cut was no bigger than a fleabite. Mostly a bad scrape.”
“But you’re limping.”
I rubbed my shoulder. “I hurt all over.”
“You fought hard.”
“I had no choice,” I said. I stared at his clothes. He had changed. No trace of a corpse’s blood or the method he used to take care of the body. I was afraid to ask but also afraid not to. “The body?”
“Don’t ask, Lia. It’s done.”
I nodded.
He started to leave, then stopped himself. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked.
“I wish I—” He shook his head. “Just sorry,” he repeated and left down the path. Before I could call after him, I spotted Pauline coming toward the cottage. I ducked back inside, grabbed my bloodied shirt from the floor, and looked for a place to hide it. In our small quarters, that could only mean the wardrobe. I flung open the door and stuffed the shirt into the dark corner, pushing some other things in front of it. I’d retrieve it later to be washed. Pauline had enough worries in her life right now without me adding to them. Among the clutter in the bottom, I spotted the basket Walther had given me. I had been so consumed with the news he had brought that day, I had hastily tucked it away and forgotten it. He’d said he put a morsel in the bottom to tide me over, but surely it was spoiled by now. I imagined more of the lovely fig cheese gone to waste and braced myself for the smell as I pushed aside the napkin covering the bottom. It wasn’t fig cheese.
The door flew open, and I spun to face Pauline.
“What happened to your neck?” she demanded immediately.
“A little tumble down the stairs with some firewood in my arms. Pure clumsiness.”
She slammed the door behind her. “That’s Enzo’s job! Why were you doing it?”
I looked at her, perplexed. It was the most engaged she had been in two weeks. “The laggard wasn’t around today. Every time he comes into a bit of coin, he disappears.”
She started to go on about my bandage, but I stopped her and drew her to the bed to show her the basket. We sat and I noticed her scarf was gone. Her hair was full and honey gold around her shoulders.
“Your mourning scarf,” I said.
“It’s time to move on,” she explained. “I’ve done all I can for my Mikael. Now I have other things that require my attention. And the first thing appears to be you.”
I reached out and hugged her, pulling her tightly to me. My chest shook. I tried not to make a display, but I held her long and hard until she finally eased away, cautiously looking me over.
“Is everything all right?”
Weeks of worry poured out of me, my voice shaking. “Oh, Pauline, I missed you so much. You’re all I have. You’re my family now. And you were so pale and grieved. I feared I might never get you back. And then there were the tears and the silence. The silence—” I stopped, pressing my fingers to my lips, trying to force the quiver away. “The silence was the worst of it all. I was afraid when you told me to go away that you blamed me for Mikael.”
She pulled me toward her, holding me, and we both cried. “I’d never blame you for that,” she said. She leaned back so she could look into my eyes. “But grief has a way of its own, Lia. A way I can’t control. I know it’s not over yet, but today at the Sacrista…” She paused, blinking back tears. “Today, I felt something. A flutter inside. Here.” She took my hand and pressed it low against her stomach. “I knew it was time for me to prepare for the living.”
Her eyes glistened. Through all the pain, I saw the hope of joy in her eyes. My throat swelled. This was a journey neither of us could have imagined.
I smiled and wiped my cheeks. “There’s something I need to show you,” I said. I put the basket between us and moved aside the napkin, pulling out a fat roll of Morrighan notes—a morsel that was supposed to tide me over for some time to come. My brother would understand. “Walther brought this. It was Mikael’s. He said Mikael left a letter saying it was for you if anything should happen to him.” Pauline reached out and touched the thick roll. “So much from a first-year sentry?”
“He managed his purse well,” I said, knowing any good trait assigned to Mikael would be easily accepted by Pauline.
She sighed, and a sad smile lined her eyes. “That was Mikael. This will help.”
I reached out and held her hand. “We’ll all help, Pauline. Berdi, Gwyneth, and I, we’ll all be here for—”
“Do they know?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
But we both knew, either time would tell them or Pauline would. Some truths refused to be hidden.
Tell me again, Ama. About the warmth. Before.
The warmth came, child, from where I don’t know.
My father commanded, and it was there.
Was your father a god?
Was he a god? It seemed so.
He looked like a man.
But he was strong beyond reason,
Knowledgeable beyond possible,
Fearless beyond mortal,
Powerful as a—
Let me tell you the story, child, the story of my father.
Once upon a time, there was a man as great as the gods.…
But even the great can tremble with fear.
Even the great can fall.
—The Last Testaments of Gaudrel
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A pink sugar haze glazed the sky, and the sun began its climb over the mountain. Either side of the road was crowded twenty deep with everyone in Terravin waiting to be led in the procession that would hail the beginning of the holy days. A reverent hum ruffled through the crowd, holiness incarnate, as if the gods stood among us. Maybe they did.
The Festival of Deliverance had begun. In the middle of the road, waiting to lead the crowds, were dozens of women and girls, old and young, hand in hand, dressed in rags.
Every First Daughter of Terravin.
Berdi and Pauline were among them.
It was the same procession my mother had led in Civica—that she would lead there today. The same procession that I had walked in just steps behind my mother because we were the kingdom’s First Daughters, blessed even above the others, holding within us the strongest gift of all.
The same procession, sometimes immense, sometimes attended only by a handful of the faithful, was taking place in towns, hamlets, and villages all over Morrighan. I scanned the faces of the First Daughters lining up, the expectant, the confident, the curious, the resigned—some supposing themselves to have the gift, others knowing they didn’t, some still hoping it might come, but most taking their places in the middle of the road simply because they knew no other way. It was tradition.