Chapter 12
The sun had only just begun to rise when Evelyne finally slipped free from her riding lessons. Isildeth had found her on the steps of the stables, brushing flecks of dust from her sleeves, and in that gentle, grandmotherly voice suggested she “pay a visit to the shrine.”
Evelyne had not argued.
The corridors of the castle were still and cool. She moved without escort and ceremonial robe. Here, in this hidden corner of her own fortress, she was not a princess. Just Evelyne. A woman with too many expectations braided into her hair and too few places to exhale.
She descended the stairs past the Hall of Seals, down into the ancient parts of the castle where the dust never quite left the air. The shrine was buried deep, nestled beneath the west wing.
The door creaked open with familiar resistance, and the air within greeted her like an old friend—warm, scented faintly with cedar ash and crushed milfoil.
The oval chamber stretched out before her, carved beneath the ground and ringed with pale columns.
Above the very center of the room, the ceiling opened in a perfect circle to the sky.
She walked in quietly. A figure stood at the far end, lighting a bundle of incense in the iron basin beside the hearth. The smoke curled upward in elegant trails, rising toward the sky-hole.
“Highness,” said a voice, deep and warm, without turning. “I was told you might come.”
Evelyne smiled softly. “Told, or divined?”
The man straightened and turned. The Keeper of Rhyssa. Old, but not fragile. His robes were simply brown, unadorned save for the bronze clasp encrusted with a fire symbol at his throat. He had the kind of face that had weathered many nivalens without losing its kindness.
He had taught her everything she knew about faith, and just enough of what she didn’t.
“Ah,” he pondered, smiling. “Only the gods know.”
He bowed slightly to her and she stepped closer. He smelled like smoke and dried herbs.
“It’s been some time,” he remarked, straightening up.
She looked around the room, at the quiet flicker of the flames, the old symbols painted into the stone floor and worn half away.
The priest tilted his head, considering her as he always did before answering. As if every word might be his last, and he wanted to mean it.
“You’re not here for rites,” he said.
“No,” Evelyne admitted. “I’m here because I needed to.”
“A better reason than most.”
The priest drifted aside, letting her approach the fire.
Evelyne knelt before the white stone sculpture; her knees pressed into the woven red mat that had warmed in the hearth’s glow. The statue of Rhyssa loomed in front of her. Soft and serene, almost present.
The Great Hearth. The Mother. The patroness of women’s roles and all the delicate things men tried to name with reverence but often reduced to duty.
She tilted her chin up, studying the goddess.
The sculpture had been carved with care.
Perhaps too much care. Rhyssa was well-figured, sensual almost. Her robe draped generously across ample hips and arms, her breasts high and round beneath folds of stone that looked more like velvet than marble.
Her lips, slightly parted, were the kind of mouth Evelyne imagined inspired lustful poetry.
Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in thick waves, each strand meticulously etched as if the sculptor had loved her just a bit too much.
Praying had always made her skin itch. She didn’t like the idea of whispering wishes to an invisible power in hopes it would answer. What did it mean to surrender to a deity with thick hips and a knowing smile?
She sighed quietly and folded her hands on the stool, though she didn’t close her eyes.
Maybe she envied it. The quiet conviction of people who could ask for things. Who could kneel and unburden themselves and believe something was listening. Maybe it was easier, after all, to put it on someone else’s shoulders. To say, “This was the will of the gods,” instead of: I failed.
Her gaze drifted toward the hearth, to the slow-burning flame.
If you ever watched, Rhyssa... if you keep what’s sacred, then let this not be wasted. Let something good come of it. Just let it not end in blood.
She was not one to be ruled by feeling, yet something shifted low in her stomach. She exhaled, watching her breath rise in the air, warm against the cold.
“How do you feel, Your Highness?” the priest asked.
Evelyne remained still, eyes fixed on the folds of Rhyssa’s robe. There was a small chip in one of the sculpted toes.
“I feel,” she admitted, “like I’m asking questions to someone who doesn’t answer.”
He said nothing. Just sat there, waiting like it was his first language. That was one of the reasons Evelyne liked him. Where others tried to fold her into neat comforts or pious lectures, he only ever offered space. Sometimes silence. Often questions.
“So why do you ask?” he asked after a moment, gently.
Evelyne exhaled and leaned back slightly on her heels. The fire popped beside her. Rhyssa said nothing.
“I keep thinking there’s some version of me that already knows how to do it all,” she went on, eyes still fixed ahead.
“That woman walks with dignity, speaks with ease, gives her husband exactly what he needs and her people even more. She doesn’t flinch when they call her empress.
She doesn’t forget to eat, or wonder what would’ve happened if she’d said no. ”
Her whisper cracked at the end, and she swallowed it down like something poisonous.
The priest’s voice came, calm and slow. “That version of you does not exist. She never did.”
For a heartbeat, she wanted to argue. But deep down a quiet part of her knew he was right.
And that hurt.
“You do not need to kneel if it doesn’t feel right,” he explained softly. “Faith is not always a ceremony. Sometimes it’s a conversation.”
“I don't think I like gods,” she admitted without apology. “I don’t mean that as treason. I just… I’ve never liked the idea of being owned by something I can't see.”
Like a lack of control. Curse.
The priest hummed. “That’s fair. Many people feel that way. They simply don’t say it out loud.”
She turned her head to glance at him, half-expecting disapproval, but he merely smiled. His soft eyes creased at the corners, like he’d been smiling the same way for seventy years.
“I was told faith was a duty,” Evelyne went on. “That women are vessels for tradition. That Rhyssa blesses obedient wives with fruitful wombs, and the faithful with peace.”
“And do you believe that?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I want to. I want to believe there's a reason. That if I do everything right, the path will reward me. But I’ve done everything right my whole life. I’ve followed every rule, met every expectation. And still…”
Her breath caught, but she swallowed it back. She would not cry in front of him. In front of anyone.
“Still, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff,” she continued. “And soon I’m meant to leap with a smile on my face.”
Keeper Halwen nodded slowly. “Marriage is not a leap, child. It is a bridge. They are built and maintained together. A bridge can be walked by two people—or abandoned if unsafe. But yes, even bridges can sway beneath your feet if you're the only one walking.”
Evelyne let out a breath that might have been a laugh, if it hadn’t tasted so bitter on her tongue. “Well,” she murmured, “then perhaps I should’ve studied architecture instead of politics.”
The old man smiled, but said nothing. He never interrupted when her sarcasm came.
Evelyne turned slightly. “Do you think I’m cursed?” she asked. “That Rhyssa doesn’t favor me? That what had happened… was a sign?”
She hadn’t meant to ask it. Not really. It had hovered at the edge of her thoughts for months, circling like a wolf inside the walls. The suspicion that maybe it had been her fault all along.
Keeper Halwen’s robes brushed stone as he rose. Some priests believed in blessings through hands. Halwen believed in space.
He sank down beside her at the base of the statue. “The gods,” Halwen said gently, “do not deal in curses, only in consequences. And even those are not always ours.”
“I was born under a lunar eclipse.”
“Yes,” he observed calmly. “So was Queen Virelle. She founded a dynasty.”
“She also died in her sleep at thirty-six as the last female ruler of Edrathen.”
“No, she died as a first one,” he replied with a soft smile. “You’re not cursed. You’re not marked for tragedy. You’re simply walking a path few are prepared for. It is not your birth that others fear. It’s your strength. And strength, when not understood, is easily mistaken for danger.”
She didn’t respond right away. The flames crackled in the hearth, spitting tiny sparks into the dark. She watched one spiral upward and vanish.
“I’ve taught you not what to believe, but how to believe,” he continued. “Because faith without freedom is just fear in prettier clothing.”
Evelyne looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I serve the Flame of Rhyssa,” he murmured, “not because Rhyssa is a goddess of fertility or hearths. I believe in her because she represents the continuity of creation. She watches the fire even when the house is empty. She waits for us to return.”
They sat in silence then, the statue of Rhyssa casting her soft shadow across the stone floor.
“I’m glad you’ll be the one to bless the wedding,” she confessed, shifting to face him more fully. “At least one kind face at the ceremony. Between the heralds, the foreign dignitaries, I was starting to feel like a decorative statue being shipped off to a warmer gallery.”
His mouth curved with amusement. “A statue, hmm?”
“A very valuable, politically priceless statue,” she added, dryly. “But breakable nonetheless.”
“Then let us ensure you do not crack under the weight of gold leaf and ceremony.”
She rolled her eyes. “A priest shouldn't talk back. It's too secular.”
He chuckled, the lines in his face deepening. “I’ve lived long enough to learn that nothing about devotion is elegant. It is messy, demanding, sometimes even absurd. But in that chaos, we often find what matters.”
Evelyne tilted her head, studying the way the light painted his profile. “Do you have any advice for a woman on the eve of sacrificing her name, and half of her spine to a crown that doesn't fit?”
He gave a thoughtful hum. “Only what the myths teach us. Would you like to hear one?”
“Does it involve someone being turned into a tree or eaten by a lion?”
“Not today.” His eyes sparkled. “Today, it’s about Rhyssa.”
She settled more comfortably, curious despite herself.
“In the earliest stories,” he began, “when Rhyssa was a minor goddess, she wandered. An unseen spirit without a temple. The gods of war and wisdom had their shrines. But Rhyssa… she waited.”
Evelyne’s brows drew together. “Waited for what?”
“For someone to speak to her,” he explained simply. “She wasn’t powerful then. She didn’t wield storms or strike down empires. She made bread rise. She taught one lonely girl how to thread a needle when no one else had the patience. Small things. Forgettable things.”
He glanced toward the statue with fondness.
“One day, a woman lit a fire in the ruins of her old house. She had lost everything—family, land, name. Raiders had taken her fields, the fever had taken her children, war took her husband.”
“No one remembered her real name. Even she had stopped saying it aloud. She didn’t pray to the god of war, or justice, or luck.
She just sat beside the old willow, burned a flame and whispered, ‘Let me build again.’ Rhyssa heard.
And stayed. And that’s how her worship got stronger.
One fire. One woman. Choosing to endure. ”
Heat burned behind her eyes. She looked at the stone Rhyssa. Keeper of survival. A protector of the quiet courage no one applauded.
“She built a fire,” the priest continued, “and tended it. And so they came. Wanderers, children, soldiers. And when they asked her why she gave without demand, she said, ‘Because love is not responsibility. But it is what makes responsibilities bearable.’ After that, she kept creating. She named herself Virelle. Built a village called Vellesmere by the willow. Then the kingdom of Edrathen.”
He turned his gaze to her.
“You are not marrying to fulfill a legend, child. You are marrying to build a fire. And if you tend it well—others will come. Not because they are commanded to, but because they choose to.”
Evelyne’s throat tightened again, but this time, she didn’t swallow the feeling away. She let it be there—raw and aching and utterly hers.
“Even if the fire falters?” she asked.
“Especially then,” he said.
They sat a while longer, watching the embers pulse softly in the hearth.
Keeper Halwen’s voice dropped gently.
“You may not know everything yet. You may not know if you’re walking into a kingdom or a labyrinth. But light your fire anyway. Build what you can. And speak. Let her hear you.”
Evelyne lowered her gaze, and this time she did close her eyes.
“Will you say that at the wedding?” she asked, voice hushed.
He smiled. “No. At the wedding, I will say the proper things. The sacred words.”
She opened her eyes, amused. “And that wasn’t sacred?”
“That,” he said, rising with the slow strength of age, “was for you.”
There was a silence between them, thick as velvet. Then he hesitated, drawing his robe more tightly around his frame.
“I’m sorry, my dear. I must go to the lower circles. The Assembly took more last night. We’re gathering to pray for their souls.”
Evelyne inhaled once, sharply, through her nose and forced it down—the rush of helpless fury, the ache of uselessness. She folded her hands instead.
“Will it help?” she asked quietly. “The prayers?”
He paused at the doorway, silhouetted by the flame behind him.
“Sometimes help is not in the answer, but in the asking.” Her lips parted, as if to argue.
But what was there to say? She watched him return to the hearth, watched the fire catch in the soft folds of his robe and crown him with flickering light.
She stood too, brushing dust from her skirts. He did not bless her. Not formally. But as she turned to leave, his voice stopped her at the threshold.
“Evelyne,” he called.
She looked back.
“You may not believe in gods. That’s all right. But do not stop believing in yourself… especially when others begin to.”
She held his gaze for a heartbeat. Then another.
“I’ll try,” she promised.