CHAPTER EIGHT #2
I set the deity down, and reached for his nemesis and enemy, the golden-haired God of Eskalon, Kavrir.
Orsete’s lover. I never understood how it happened—but Eskalon had claimed him centuries ago, making him their own, and worshipping him with such fervor.
I found him almost off-putting. According to their stories, he married the wild Orsete and tamed her—an idea as insulting as it was infantilizing.
Not once had I read a single story in our histories to corroborate that idea, and I’d read plenty.
But despite Eskalon’s claims on him, and their twisting of his stories, Kavrir always had and always would be ours.
I turned his body in my hand, taking in his golden hair and armor, the longsword he used to fight his enemies, and his shield with the seven-pointed star that was said to defend the rest. To defend his consort, his lover, his leader, and his queen.
Orsete. But her statue was missing from the set.
The Goddess who’d meant so much to my mother, whose likeness she’d kept at the altar in her bedroom.
I traced the box, my fingers moving over the space where the Goddess was supposed to be.
Her cut-out was the widest—for often Orsete was depicted with wings of fire.
Had this once been my mother’s set? I could imagine it.
Imagine her removing Orsete, placing her on an altar, lighting candles whose flickering flames would make her wings look like fire, and then leaving the other two Gods behind without a thought.
Perhaps, in my aunt’s desire to remove anything that reminded her of me, she’d also removed my mother’s personal possessions, the trinkets and treasures she would have kept in her bedroom. The Queen’s room.
The room that was now my aunt’s. I closed my eyes, afraid I might cry from the thought.
But all I could see were the walls of my mother’s old bedroom, and statues of Orsete placed carefully around her altar.
Her firewings blazing, looking real in the firelight.
My mother always kept a bowl of rose petals plucked from the castle vines.
And before bed, we’d pour the petals over Orsete’s head to request good dreams. In the mornings, we’d leave tiny pieces of parchment at her feet, full of our wishes for the day.
I closed my eyes, realizing just how long it had been since I’d done that, since I’d even thought of those quiet moments between us. Where was the statue? Gods, I just wanted to see one—see anything that once was owned or touched by my mother.
There was a sharp knock against the door, pulling me back. I replaced the figurines in their box and closed the clasp right as the door opened. The Hermit stepped inside.
“You’re supposed to wait for me to tell you to come in,” I said, annoyed. Quickly, I wiped my eyes and pushed the box behind me.
“I knocked. That was me telling you I was coming in.” He swept his long blue cloak over his shoulder.
His black tunic was made of a shiny, delicate material I didn’t recognize.
Perhaps one he acquired in his travels. The front was cut low, exposing the expanse of his torso to his belly button.
Two tassels trimmed in gold thread hung from either side.
A thick leather belt, with golden coins depicting the old Gods sewn into the center, cinched the tunic at his waist. “Sleep well?”
“No,” I said flatly. I peered back out the window. It was dawn when I fell asleep. It couldn’t be much later than that now.
“Bed uncomfortable?” He frowned, looking at the disheveled sheets and pillows.
“No.” I folded my arms across my chest.
He shrugged and made a tsking sound with his tongue. “I fear there’s no pleasing you. I mean, the little tavern with your previous bed burned to the ground three nights ago. So that certainly wasn’t an option.”
“Three nights ago!” I yelled. “No. Last night.”
“Three, you slept through the day you arrived, and the following two nights.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, the echo of my dream, of my mother’s death, still lingering against me. It hadn’t felt like that much time had passed. Had I been dreaming of her death for nearly three whole days? Was that why it had felt so intense? By the Gods.
“Now,” the Hermit continued, “I assume sleeping in the tower of a princess must surely be better than the grass and dirt of Kalder Forest.” He cocked his head to the side.
I glared, a retort on the edge of my tongue, but I slammed my mouth shut as his words sank in. “How long?” I asked. “How long had you known about the tavern? How long had you known you would find me in the forest?”
“A while.” The Hermit smiled, his entire expression catlike. “I know many things.”
“None of which you’ll tell me,” I said through gritted teeth.
He laughed. “That might be the first intelligent thing you’ve said since I found you.”
“So what happens now? You drag me to court? Humiliate me before my people? Show off that you found me after all these years until my aunt throws me in prison?”
“No.” He grimaced. “I know it’s been a few days for you, but I already explained.
No one knows you’re here.” He gestured with his finger for me to come closer.
“And no one will. As far as the witches of Azeal are concerned, Princess Shamhira remains in her prison cell, still suffering and paying for her crimes to this day.”
I blinked. “Remains?” There was a hollow feeling spreading through my body. I’d been on the run for years, hiding, terrified of being found, and all this time … “You mean they think—they think I’ve been here all along? That I wasn’t in exile, but imprisoned?”
“Yes, you remain. Quite securely, I might add,” he said.
I wanted to vomit. The lie felt like a betrayal I could not explain. Years I’d hidden, and no one had been seeking me.
The Hermit shook his head. “Secrecy concerning your whereabouts has always been of great importance to Her Majesty, and me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Put your boots on, and you’ll understand.”
Catching a glance of myself in the dancing mirror, I quickly made a mental note to smooth and brush out my hair. It hadn’t been washed since the lake, and days had passed.
But nothing happened when I had the thought. No energy moved through me. Nothing changed in my appearance. I was still empty. Completely depleted. My stomach rumbled with a twinge of pain. I needed food, and the Azete needed to feed. Soon.
With no other choice, I used my fingers to gently slide through the knots and tangles I’d accrued. Then I pulled the long strands behind my shoulders, and slipped into my boots, carefully tightening the buckles at the top.
The Hermit jerked his chin for me to follow as he strolled into the stone corridor, his cape flowing elegantly behind him. Sunrays streaming through the open windows caught on his long black hair, the way it always had. The way it had when I’d first seen him burst into my mother’s court.
We wove down a long hall, one that I’d never really used before.
It led to a stairwell only accessed in the past by my mother’s guards.
I’d never been in it before, so it seemed right it was unfamiliar to me.
But when we reached the final landing, entering one of the castle’s main halls, I didn’t see a single room I knew.
Not even the decor on the walls felt recognizable.
I was so disoriented when we arrived in a sitting room, I couldn’t tell if it was new or just a room I’d never been in before.
There were no windows built into the grey stone walls surrounding me. Crackling torches were our only source of light. On either side of a red carpet were two black leather chairs. One small and simple. The other stood twice as tall, with two armrests. A makeshift throne.
The Hermit went to the smaller chair and pulled it back to sit, elegantly sweeping one leg across his knee. He watched me watching him and smirked. “Oh. Did you think you were going to get to sit?” He pointed at me, then the rug. “Prisoner, remember? If I were you, I’d kneel.”
I resisted the urge to shoot him a dirty gesture, but again, by Batrir, he was right.
I moved to the center of the red carpet and knelt before the leather throne, trying to breathe, trying to keep from panicking.
I fixated on the details of the chair, and then on the two golden statues that stood behind it. Two Gods.
Batrir and Kavrir. Just like the deities in my bedroom, but far larger in scale.
But there was no Orsete. Strange. Had my aunt banished her image?
Or simply not favor her? She was still the patron Goddess of the witches—unless more had changed than I knew since I’d left.
It felt like another erasure of my mother.
And I suddenly had such a powerful longing to see Orsete’s likeness—no, not her likeness, but the actual statue my mother had kept—I felt like it would knock me over.
But it wasn’t about Orsete. It was about seeing reminders of my mother. Reminders she’d been mine, reminders that before the end, before what had happened at the end—that she had loved me.
Even the stones in this room felt odd and unfamiliar to me. My mother had loved amethyst and rose quartz crystals. She had a collection of moonstones that she kept by her bed.
But circling the throne were a series of black stones—onyx, I thought. But not quite—each one had a blue flash of light within—almost like a dark moonstone. I’d never seen anything like it before. I reached forward, wanting suddenly to touch one.
“Stop.” The Hermit clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “No touching.”
“What are they?”
“Not for you,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “She comes.”
The door opened, and with it, I finally did see a reminder of my mother. Only it was the very last one I wanted, the one I feared most. The one that, seven long years of grief later, I was still wholly unprepared for.
Because there was one thing about my aunt and my mother I’d tried to forget the last few years. One detail that was still too painful to think of.