He grinned back, his eyes wrinkling at the corners, his concern easing infinitesimally, but his mirth died without having fully lived.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered, and he shook his head, helpless. He rose from her side and stepped away, turning as Ivo entered the sanctum, his black robes melding with the shadows that jumped from stone to stone.
He did not sit upon the dais but stopped in front of Ghost, his hands wrapped on the knob of his staff, his chin resting on his hands. She tried to rise, but her head swam and she closed her eyes, gathering her courage and finding her balance.
“Why does Banruud fear you, Ghost?” he whispered, his voice curling under her closed lids and skittering beneath the folds of her robe to settle on her cold skin.
“He does not fear me,” she choked, but the truth of her past clawed at her throat and a scream was building on her tongue.
“He will give the princess to the North King to stop their advance into Saylok, and young Bayr can do nothing to stop it,” Ivo said, his voice so soft it should have been lost in the temple dome, but it hovered instead, inflicting guilt and pain.
“I will go with her,” Ghost panted. The scream grew another tail that beat against the back of her teeth.
“You are a keeper—you will not,” Dagmar shot back, incredulous. “You’ve been entrusted with the knowledge of the runes. And that knowledge stays here, in the temple.”
“I gave my word to the princess,” she ground out, her jaw locked.
“You gave your word to me,” Ivo hissed. “To Dagmar. To Saylok.”
“I care nothing for Saylok,” she bellowed. “I care nothing for the bloody runes. What good are the runes if they can’t protect us? If they cannot right these wrongs?”
Ivo swayed as though he too had lost the strength to stand, and he turned away from her and walked up the long aisle to the dais, his head bowed, his shoulders stooped, and Ghost rose and followed him, Dagmar beside her, unable to resist the pull of his displeasure.
“He is going to her,” Ivo accused, sinking down into his chair. “Even now. And you say nothing.” Ivo raised his black gaze to Dagmar. “Have you not seen the way they look at each other?”
Dagmar halted as though he’d been struck, and the scream in Ghost’s mouth slipped out as a moan.
“These secrets have been kept too long, and this one will destroy them, Dagmar. And still . . . you . . . say . . . nothing.”
Tears had begun to course their way down Ghost’s cheeks, the pressure building beyond her ability to contain it.
Dagmar replied, “They do not understand that the connection they feel is a connection of the blood, of the heart, but it can never be a connection of the body.”
“It is . . . not . . . a connection of the blood,” Ghost wept, the words so faint she wasn’t sure she’d even said them. But she had. She’d said the words aloud. Dagmar turned shattered eyes to hers, and Ivo beckoned her forward, curling his fingers toward his palm.
“Tell me!” Ivo hissed.
“Alba is not Banruud’s daughter. She was not Alannah’s daughter. She is not a daughter of Saylok at all. She is the daughter of a slave.” Her words had wings, and she felt the fluttering in her chest as she released them, letting them go free. Her silent scream rose up into the dome and dissipated without ever having been uttered, and Ghost began to shake.
“Banruud took her from her mother only days after she was born. And you made him king,” she mourned. It was not an accusation, but an explanation. “You made him king. You made her a princess. And I could not take that away from her.”
“But . . . in my vision . . . I saw . . . her mother’s . . . joy,” Ivo stammered. “Alannah gave birth to a child. I saw it.”
“And I saw . . . her mother’s pain,” Dagmar whispered, understanding dawning. “You are the slave girl, Ghost. You are Alba’s mother.”
“I am Alba’s mother,” she breathed. “I am Alba’s mother.” She wanted to shout so the whole temple mount would quake, but the truth was too precious, too sacred for sound, and when she said the words again—“I am Alba’s mother”—they were hardly more than a whisper.
“Tell me everything,” Ivo demanded, harsh and exacting, and Ghost submitted, spilling the story with the relief of the long damned.
“My masters . . . a farmer and his wife . . . brought the babe to the Chieftain of Berne. They told me it was custom—law—and that they would return with the child and a piece of gold. I waited for hours. I worried. I needed to feed her. I went to the chieftain’s keep and watched them come out. They didn’t have my daughter. They said . . . they said the chieftain wanted to bring her to the Keepers of Saylok to determine whether she was a changeling . . . a monster . . . or a blessing.”
Dagmar blanched and cursed beneath his breath, but Ghost continued, needing to confide, desperate to release what she’d kept secret for so long.
“I watched her—I am called Ghost for my skin and my hair. But I have become one. I have learned how to blend in, to disappear, to be invisible. I waited and I watched. I planned. And then one day, I got my opportunity. But I couldn’t do it. As much as I hated the king for what he’d done, what he’d taken from me. I could not hate the queen, a woman who so obviously loved and cared for my daughter. She held her so gently. She was so patient . . . and kind. And she was able to give her a life . . . that I could never give her.” Ghost raised her eyes to Dagmar and then to the Highest Keeper, pleading for them to understand. “My daughter was a princess. And I was a ghost. I could not take her from the people who loved her so perfectly. There would have been nowhere I could go, no place to take her where I wouldn’t have been hunted down. In this world, in this temple . . . she had a protector.”
“Bayr,” Dagmar whispered.
“Yes. And all of you.”
“That is why you are here. That is why Banruud dreamed of pale wraiths who came to take his child. Today the king . . . has seen his ghost,” Ivo said, sinking back into his chair, his staff clattering to the floor.
“He thought I was dead. He sent men to kill me then. He will send them to kill me again.”
“What have you done?” Ivo moaned, and Ghost’s grief swelled into fury at his condemnation.
“I have watched my daughter grow. I have seen her raised as a Princess of Saylok. She is loved. She is protected. She is safe.” The final words rang false, and Ghost closed her eyes on her fear.
“She isn’t safe, Ghost. You aren’t safe! Banruud saw you, and Alba is about to become Queen of the Northlands,” Dagmar moaned.
“Better Queen of the Northlands than the daughter of a ghost,” she shot back, wounded, and Dagmar touched her hand as though he’d forgotten Ivo observed. But Ivo was already speaking, his voice a weary wail.
“We made Banruud king. We made him king. And the curse upon the clans continues. We have failed the people. Bayr was our salvation. And I knew it. I did not listen to the gods. Now it is too late.”
“You m-made Banruud king,” Ghost stammered. “You gave him his power. Can you not . . . take it away?”
“How?” Ivo asked, raising his clawed hands to the heavens. “We are a temple of aging keepers and hunted women. We have no power to remove Banruud. Should we seek to remove him by the sword? We have lost the faith of the people and the support of the chieftains. You heard the crowd today. The keepers have failed them. The Northmen are at our door, the king conspires to sell our daughters, and the temple—even Saylok—hangs in the balance.”