“You’ll be all right here?” Katrynn eyed the attendants defensively. She grabbed the arm of a white-robed man, who had opened his mouth to let the rain fall on his tongue. “You’ll make sure she’s safe?”
“We’ll take good care of her,” he confirmed, winking at Genevar. “We are a small but loyal community.”
Sabine smiled. “I know.” In a matter of days, she had wept, had sweated, had wedged dirt beneath her fingernails with the people of the Lower Banks. Because of them, she had what she needed to return to Velle triumphant. Or, at the very least, to put up a valiant fight.
And wasn’t that the New Maiden’s only wish for her? To embrace her anger and point it in the direction most warranted?
She considered this, as they planned their departure. She could not say for certain where the emotion truly belonged. The Second Son had earned some for the murders of third daughters and this vendetta against her. But there were many others who deserved her ire. Her father, for his inability to keep his family’s hard-earned coin in his pocket. The Loyalists for their targeted scrutiny of people from her neighborhood. Chaplain René, who had barred all of Harborside from entering Her churches. Elodie, for not realizing the truth about Tal. Even Sabine herself, for acting weak when all along there had been magic running through her veins.
The New Maiden was due Sabine’s anger, too.
Without Her, Sabine might have floated through life freely, might have flounced and flirted like Katrynn, might have been crafty and light-fingered like Artur. She might have met a nice girl, and settled down, Velle none the wiser to her sorry existence. But Sabine’s soul had never been hers alone. Her mind, her magic, and her sadness had come from an enigmatic deity; her destiny had been set from the moment of her birth.
Just as the trip to the Lower Banks had lulled Sabine’s travel companions to sleep, so did their return. One dusty lantern hung above her shoulder, jostling with each curve in the road, casting light across the carriage’s quilted doors and the slack expressions of Katrynn and Brianne.
Again, Sabine did not rest. This time, however, she was not reading the New Maiden’s confessions. Instead, she wrote her own.
It is a heavy weight. Her handwriting was uneven as the coach lumbered toward Velle. I don’t yet know where this feeling will fit, and if it will hinder or help me. But I will learn how to hold it, like the dagger that at first was awkward in my hand. I shall wield my anger like a weapon and use it to protect myself.
“What are you writing?” Brianne’s voice startled Sabine out of her musings. The youngest Warnou’s eyes were heavy with sleep, her hair still matted with the ocean air.
“None of your business,” Sabine said gently.
“Not yet, anyway,” Brianne countered, letting her grin take over her entire face as she dangled the key before Sabine. “But one day, it’ll be recorded in the Archives. I’m bound to outlive you.”
She said it sweetly, but the truth of it sent Sabine reeling like a ship on stormy seas. The New Maiden had died at seventeen, the same age she was now. Although her magic had returned, she still did not know how this fight would end. If the Second Son had His way, Sabine might not live to see her eighteenth year. There was so little life to make a legacy.
24
Elodie’s first reaction was not to embrace her aunt, but to berate her.
“Where have you been?” she howled, voice reverberating through the eaves. She had been struggling desperately to maintain control of her country, and all the while a Warnou elder looked on from behind the white robe of the clergy.
Silas looked taken aback. “In Adeya,” she said, naming a small province on the border of Velle and the First Republic. “They needed help building a church, training the clergy folk, spreading Her word. I was there for three years. I only returned to the city upon hearing of your mother’s death. I’d been away for so long that the Harborside chapel was the only one that would have me.”
“Three years doesn’t seem so long,” Elodie said, her voice chilly.
“You misunderstand,” Silas said softly. “I fled the palace more than thirty years ago. I swore then that as long as my sister was alive, I would never return to Velle.”
“Why not?”
Silas exhaled slowly. “If you did not know of my existence, I suppose I am not surprised your mother kept her path to the throne from you, too.”
“Tell me.” Elodie’s fingers gripped the pew in front of her. She could not stomach any more secrets. “Please.”
“You already know,” Silas said, eyes on the pulpit, “that your mother was a third daughter.”
“None would let me forget it,” Elodie chuckled softly.
“Then you also know,” Silas continued, “that the third in line to the throne hardly ever sees it.”
Elodie could not imagine her mother as anything other than a monarch. Tera Warnou had been shrewd and vindictive and incredibly persuasive. Her mind would have been wasted as a perennial princess. But the circumstances surrounding her mother’s rule were shrouded in loss.
“One dead young queen is odd,” Silas said, “especially for a girl under protection night and day. But two dead queens,” she continued, “is beyond suspect. There was only one person my sisters’ deaths would benefit.”
The skin on Elodie’s arms crawled. Silas spoke with such gravitas that she could not help but fear what the woman would say next.
“It was no coincidence that my sisters did not live more than a handful of months after the crown touched their heads,” the Royal Chaplain said. “Tera was willing to do whatever it took to be queen. Sororicide was no exception.”
Elodie pried her white knuckles from the pew. Her mother had murdered her own sisters in order to gain control of Velle’s throne. Years later, Elodie had poisoned Brianne with sadness for the very same reason. Once, Elodie had been proud to be compared to her mother. Now, the association felt like a curse.
“So she was a monster.”
“It’s never so simple as that, Elodie,” her aunt said plainly. “Your mother was my greatest friend and confidant. She always took two of everything: cakes, flowers, jewels—just in case, she’d always say, though in case of what I never knew. She taught me how to enjoy something in the moment while also keeping it carefully preserved for the future.” Silas laughed gently, a tinkling sound like chimes. “Perhaps that is what readied me to spread the New Maiden’s word more effectively than most in Her Church. Knowing that what I felt each time I read Her word was never mine alone, but a treasure that could and should be shared.”
“Were you always called to the Church?”
“Certainly not,” Silas said, sounding affronted. “The clergy was not a suitable calling for a Warnou woman. ‘Why give up your own lineage of power to amplify someone else’s?’ my mother always said.”
“Then why…?”
“Absolution,” she answered simply. “I wanted to earn my sister the forgiveness she required but would never seek.” She shifted on the pew. Her gray eyes were darker than Elodie’s own, but the queen recognized the quiet determination behind her aunt’s expression.
“Tera spent her childhood preparing to serve at the right hand of the queen. ‘Our sisters were going to need it,’ she claimed, and privately, I agreed. I liked Aurielle and Ursula well enough,” Silas said, chuckling at Elodie’s expression, “but they were terribly dull and prone to whims. If the Second Son had been campaigning this viciously back then, well,” she sighed, “the whole country would have converted long ago.”
Shame rose like a lump in Elodie’s throat. “I haven’t done much better,” she admitted, gesturing to the royal chapel’s empty pews. “If I had not been so distracted by the threats from the Republics, I might have identified His prophet sooner. It is my own weakness that allowed Him to rise so swiftly.”