Chapter 2
Two
Lierick
“You must appeal to the Conclave again. It isn’t time.” My father was a cautious man, maybe too cautious. It had meant we’d lived in an age of prosperity, and everyone had enough, but we didn’t thrive. We were still trapped here, separated from the lands of our forefathers by secrets and blood.
“You don’t think we’ve tried, Arthur? We’ve asked over and over, and every time, we are rejected.
Vylan doesn’t want to hear it; he’d be more than happy if we were all dead.
Taeme and the Third Line have done what they could, but we both know those boats didn’t accidentally sink in the Alutian Sea.
He’s trying to starve us into extinction, and if we don’t drastically shake things up now, I fear he’ll succeed.
” Jacob Abaster sat in front of the fire beside my father.
“It is even more dire for the Twelfth. Babies are starving at their mothers’ breasts.
The time for hiding is over, Hanovan. We must rise up against Vylan and the First Line, and we can’t do it without the Second Line. ”
Desperation was pushing at the edges of his words. The Baron of the Eleventh Line really had tried everything.
I agreed with him. It was time. Not only did the Eleventh and Twelfth Lines need this, our Line needed it too.
Ozryn was isolated from the rest of the world—perched high in the mountains of Ebrus, we were inaccessible from the mainland, except for a small and dangerous mountain pass through the Eleventh Line Barony.
As far as anyone in the rest of the country knew, there was nothing up here but mountain cliffs and ice plains. A lie we’d carefully curated and manipulated over generations, until no one knew it as anything but fact.
I understood my father’s hesitation, though. To expose ourselves now was opening the Second Line up once again to genocide, one that might actually be successful this time. It would jeopardise the agents we had scattered in even the smallest corners of the country. People would die.
But we would be free.
I looked at my father. “Baron,” I said, using his title. “It’s the right thing to do.”
My father’s jaw tensed, and I could see his fear, despite the confidence in his expression. Fear for his people. Fear for me, his Heir and more importantly, his son.
Sucking in a deep breath, he inclined his head. “Go to the temples. Ask the Votresses to read the stars.”
My father was a deeply faithful man. Faithful to his Goddess, to his family, to his people.
It was why we loved and followed him. I stood, nodding respectfully to Baron Abaster on the way out the door.
His return expression was grateful. Even if we didn’t go to war, he knew I’d try to change my father’s mind.
The temples of Ozryn had been here longer than the stronghold itself.
The temple was a maze beneath the city, and I doubted any of us truly knew the full extent.
The Votresses—the acolytes of the Goddess—had given their lives to worshiping her and holding her magic, and were equally as mysterious.
We didn’t delve too deeply, respectful of their existence.
There had always been something about them that made my skin prickle, like they possessed too much magic. A wild kind of power that made the rest of us look… tame.
Pausing in the large antechamber, I removed my shoes and weapons, then stepped up to the small alcove.
It held two bronze bowls, one filled with water, the other filled with ash.
In a gesture that I’d done for as long as I could remember, I dipped my finger in the water, pressing a wet tip beneath the corner of my left eye.
With my right hand, I dipped a finger in the ash, pressing it beneath the corner of my right eye.
Moving to the left, I lit the wick of a heavy, black pillar candle, one of dozens pressed into individual alcoves on the wall.
They’d explained to me as a child that the ritual was a celebration of birth, life, and death, but I was no theologian, so I didn’t really understand the significance of each step.
Stepping through the gauzy dark fabrics into the temple, I smiled softly at my favorite Votress.
Perla was old; she was hunched, and her skin held a deep wrinkle between her brows.
Maybe it was from years on her knees, offering up prayers to the Goddess, or maybe it was from years of shouldering the burdens of the people of Ozryn.
Maybe she was just really fucking old. Despite the age of her body, her eyes were sharp and bright, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the young woman she must’ve once been.
“Votress,” I said politely, bowing deeply.
“Young Lierick. It does my heart good to see you. You know, if I were sixty years younger, I might have given you a run for your money.”
I laughed. I had no doubt she would’ve. The Votresses had to self-sustain somehow, and many men would have fallen into the bed of Votress Perla to celebrate life the way the Goddess intended.
Even now, there was the sound of giggles echoing up the dense halls, the children of the Votresses playing.
There was even a young, pregnant Votress doing her daily prayers.
I winked back at Perla. “If you were sixty years younger, I doubt I would have been running anywhere, Votress.” We bantered every time I visited, but today, I had a purpose.
I kept seeing the desperate expression on the Baron of the Eleventh Line’s face, kept hearing his words about starving infants.
I knelt in front of her, and she patted my head. “Such heavy thoughts today, Heir Hanovan.”
“The time has come for us to step out of the shadows, Votress. Ebrus starves, due to the greed of a few, and we can’t stand by and let it happen.”
Votress Perla’s eyes were soft and sad as she lifted my chin.
“You’re correct. It’s time to act, but you, Lierick Hanovan, have a much greater purpose than fighting at your father’s side.
” She looked up, waving a hand at one of the other Votresses.
“Get the books.” The second Votress disappeared into the maze of halls, while Votress Perla stood.
“Come, we should have this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable.”
I’d normally have made a joke there, but her face told me this wasn’t the time.
Leading me to another small alcove filled with heavy floor pillows and two wide chairs, she indicated I should sit beside her. “Do you know where the Votresses came from, Lierick?”
I shook my head. I just assumed they’d always been, and always would be. “No, Votress.”
“We were once the women of the Ninth Line. Well, it wasn’t called the Ninth Line then, but we were once from the Halhed family tree.
When our magic weakened, and the Goddess was withdrawing her favor from the world, the women of my Line pulled themselves away from civilization and became her devotees.
We kept her magic alive here, even as the power in the people of Ebrus waned.
We sacrificed all the women of our Line, until the Line produced only sons for centuries.
” The second Votress reappeared, her eyes flicking between me and Perla quickly as she handed the older woman a book, then disappeared. “Until Ellanora Halhed.”
Everyone knew the history of Ellanora Halhed. She was the reason our people still existed. As soon as she’d foreseen the plans of Ivan Vylan—his plot to murder us all and eradicate our entire Line—she’d moved quickly. She’d met with the Baron of the Second Line at the time, Luftan Hanovan.
Luftan’s oldest son, Oris, had requested Ellanora’s hand, and been rejected.
Despite that, when Ellanora went to Luftan, he took her seriously.
Ellanora’s reputation as an oracle was legendary all throughout Ebrus, so he believed her immediately when she told him that she’d seen his whole Line dying.
That no matter what thread she took, it all ended with the entirety of the Second Line gone.
Dust on the wind. There was only one thread that ended with the Hanovans surviving, and it was a hard one.
Her plan was simple. He had to disappear dozens of people from his lands. Not titled people. Not people whose names would have appeared in the heraldry ledgers at the Hall of Ebrus. Everyday Second Line folks. And they couldn’t know why. If they knew, everyone would die.
The only person he could tell the truth to was his wife, who was carrying his child.
For Ellanora’s vision to come to fruition, Luftan would have to tell the world his wife and baby had died in childbirth, and then she would be smuggled across the Alutian Sea by boat, down through the Eleventh Line and up over the Herelean Cliffs to the hidden temples of the Votress.
His wife would lead their people until the Heir in her stomach could take over.
And that was what the Baron of the Second Line did.
He said goodbye to his wife and put her on a boat, knowing he’d never see her again.
Over the course of the two months after the Baroness’s “death,” the Baron recreated these steps with hundreds of people, making them disappear in the night, leaving behind their loved ones.
Loved ones that they didn’t know would die, murdered in their beds by the First Line.
The Baroness had known, though. She had to leave, knowing her husband and sons would die. They still wrote laments about the lifelong sadness and guilt that plagued Baroness Hanovan. How she mourned for her husband, her children, and her people until the day she died.
All on the word, on the prophecy, of Ellanora Halhed. “She was the savior of the Second Line,” I said softly to the Votress Perla.
She inclined her head. “And so powerful, like many women in the Halhed family. Powerful enough, she created this.” She passed me a book.
A Future History of Ebrus.
“She isn’t the only powerful Daughter of the Ninth Line. There will be one even more powerful. The Ninth Daughter of the Ninth Line. You must know that she is the real savior of the Second Line. The Savior of all of Ebrus. You must find her.”
I tried not to be sceptical. The Second Line didn’t need saving now. We needed to step out of the shadows and into the light. “The Ninth Line doesn’t have power anymore.”
“Yet, young Lierick. Yet.” She pressed the book further into my hands. “Learn who she is. How to understand her heart, not just her actions. Ebrus needs her. You need her. Do you know what a Recreationist is?”
By the time Perla was done, I felt like I didn’t know anything at all.