Chapter XIX #2
“You certainly could not. It may be Silith’s favorite hour for scheming, but I’ll thank her followers not to do so in the sanctuary of the sun.”
Dolenza swept across the chapel, resplendent in her disapproval, immaculate in her Matria’s garb.
“Imperatrice,” she said with icy courtesy.
“I believe your retinue has already left my cloister. If you tarry much longer, you will lose your goddess’s light on the road.
Ambassador, your king has become enamored of my newest soria, Beatrice.
I’ll thank you to stay by his side and ensure my daughters remain untouched by your sovereign.
Should he lay the barest finger on them, I will hold you personally accountable for it. ”
Fia watched without surprise as the two moon-marked women melted away, taking their leave with murmured words and smiles cast backward at herself and the Priest.
“Think on my offer,” Gileta said. “I make it in earnest, and what you might carry out would be a great service to the Hand.”
Dolenza dismissed them both with a haughty flick of her wrist. If Fia had thought it was unsettling to be caught in Gileta and Gwylen’s company, it was far more so to find herself skewered by Dolenza’s gaze, while standing before Raea’s altar in company with the Invers’ Priest and the Invers’ heir.
“Silas,” Dolenza said at last. “Raea has appreciated your attentions since arriving here. She accepts this latest gift in the spirit with which it was offered. I would speak to my postulant alone now.”
Beneath and behind the altar, Fia felt something singular. The Priest reached out and traced a finger across her palm, the gesture a question all but spoken aloud.
You’re all right? You’ll face no reprimand because of me?
“It was my pleasure to guide your worship, Priest,” Fia said with bland neutrality that she suspected he would parse rightly. All right. Unsure. Please go. “I bid you goodnight.”
With a nod of acceptance, the Priest departed. Fia could not help the way her gaze trailed after him, or how it pricked her a little to see him walking through the midnight cloister alone.
“Fia,” Dolenza said with unexpected warmth. “I’ve hardly laid eyes on you since your return. But I’ve been kept busy with our guests, as I expect you’ve been with Miriel.”
The postulant said nothing, because she didn’t trust herself to speak.
Her sunny, even-tempered daughter was proving every bit as stubborn as Fia herself, refusing to let go of the unprecedented and deep-seated dislike she’d taken to her own mother.
Miriel clung to the sorias, or to a Corrinian girl called Maya, and if Fia so much as drew close to her, the golden-curled baby set to shrieking her displeasure, growing red-faced with a potent combination of fear and outrage.
The sorias tried everything they could think of—bribing Miriel with sweet morsels of fruit, or favorite toys, or having Fia do the same. Nothing made a difference.
So Fia bit her tongue, knowing if she spoke to Dolenza, all her words would come out sharp and accusing.
She knew, too, that it was senseless to blame a child or a Matria or a goddess for Miriel’s querulous rejection of her, yet she wanted to blame someone.
It might lessen the hurt of her homecoming a little, to turn her ire outward rather than inward.
Instead, she held Justus closer and ducked her head, kissing his downy hair and breathing in the sweet, milky scent of him, as she’d once done with her daughter.
“Soria Aurelia says you’re good to this little prince.
” Dolenza moved to a mat at Raea’s feet and lowered herself onto it, patting the place beside her.
With a little reluctance, Fia did as was expected, and settled at her Matria’s side.
“She says it isn’t just duty; you’re as attentive to him as if he were your own.
According to her, you’ve taken pains with Celina since returning, and the child loves you as well.
It seems you have a way with Invers. Their Priest follows you like a hound, and even Orden speaks highly of you. ”
“Matria, I want to make my fidelity oath,” Fia said.
The memory of how Orden had looked at her after she used the blooded touch rested in her like an arrow shaft.
There’d been raw desire in him, of an inexplicable sort, for Fia knew how he cherished his queen.
“Now, if possible. I’ve done what you asked and more.
Your three-day errand cost me dear—Miriel forgot me, and I was far more certain of myself when the summer began.
But I’m still sure of this—I belong at Raea’s cloister. ”
Dolenza gave Fia a troubled look, and she knew at once what it meant. But so great was Fia’s regard for Bright Raea, and for the goddess’s chief representative, that she fought back all the fire and willfulness of her nature, keeping still and forcing her voice to remain even.
“You’re not going to hear my oath. What is it in me that you find so unfit for a place here?
Is it my temper? Because Soria Marabeth can rival me for that.
Is it that I’m impatient? Soria Aline has never waited with good humor for anything.
” Fia twisted her hands into the fabric of Justus’s light linen wrapping, the struggle for calm requiring physical effort as well as mental.
“I know I am not what most postulants are—I’m ignorant and backward, and more accustomed to cruelty than kindness, but I can be what’s needed, I swear.
Didn’t I leave everything and go, when Raea called me to the battleground in Corrin?
Didn’t I make it here, with nothing but faith to feed me half the way?
And I went away again, when you ordered it.
I did not want to, but I obeyed all the same, and I can see the wisdom in your sending me.
Honoria and the world outside its borders seem larger and more precarious now—I realize how much depends on the Beloved Three, and on those who keep to their ways and do their bidding. ”
It was a testament to how far Fia had come and how much she had learned, that she was able to maintain calm and acknowledge her own shortcomings, as well as the prudence in the sacrifice Dolenza had required of her.
When Dolenza turned to Fia, the postulant was startled to find her Matria’s eyes bright with tears.
“It isn’t a question of your obedience,” Dolenza said. “Nor of your heart or will. Not anymore. It is my obedience, my heart, and my will that stand in the way. And I cannot hear your oath yet. Not until I’m certain of myself, and of the goddess.”
“Why?” Fia demanded, her voice finally quavering with restrained passion. “Why must everything always go so hard for me? I’ve seen no such reserve in you about other postulants. Matria, I don’t understand.”
“I wish I could explain,” Dolenza said. “But I can’t. You must simply weather this, and trust that it is for the best.”
“For whose best?” Fia shot back defiantly, her true nature finally rising to the fore as she scrambled to her feet, chest heaving. “Because I don’t think it can be for mine.”
“I have other interests to consider besides your own,” Dolenza said. “Fia, that isn’t fair.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Fia said. “Fairness isn’t something I’ve ever found in life, even when I came looking for it here.”
“Child, be reasonable,” Dolenza called as Fia stalked across the chapel. “You haven’t even been honest with me about why you crave office here so desperately. If I swore to keep you and Miriel in comfort for the rest of your days, safe without the bother of a vow, would you accept such an offer?”
Fia stopped in her tracks, her pulse rapid and unsteady.
She thought of how she’d stood before Orden, unrepentant over her use of the touch.
How she’d killed a man for Ariana’s sake, and would do it a thousand times over to spare her friend.
The way she’d pushed Nikolau into a service he did not desire, by using their daughter as a pawn.
How everything she knew of motherhood, she’d learned at her own mother’s knee—a vocation not of kindness but of cruelty.
Fia saw Nira in herself far too often. In her temper and her ruthlessness, if not in her wit and dogged loyalty to those she cared for.
“I require Raea,” Fia said when she could master her voice and be certain it would not shake. “Matria, she tames the worst in me. I cannot be what Miriel needs, nor yet the sort of woman who is fit for good company, without the yoke of our goddess.”
Dolenza rose. She swept across the chapel, meeting Fia at its center. There, she reached up and brushed a thumb across her postulant’s cheek, smoothing away an errant tear.
“Have you ever heard me voice a complaint about your wildness, or declare you unfit company for those in this cloister? No. And you never will. None of my reserve is the result of some flaw in your nature, Fiametta Raeana. But I am forced by Bright Raea to wait, and so I must ask you to wait as well. Can you do that?”
“How shall I occupy myself to pass the time?”
Dolenza was silent.
“You heard what Gileta asked of the Priest?” Fia whispered.
“Yes.”
Looking down at Justus, Fia thought of Orden Inver dead, and her heart broke within her.
Never had she expected to find such compassion within herself, when considering the death of Honoria’s unwelcome king.
But the child she tended and Ariana and even the Priest had changed her, unveiling difficulties and complexities she had not anticipated.
It would hurt Ari to lose Orden. It would endanger her also, as well as Justus and the Priest. And Fia would hate to see any of them in pain.
“Do the Beloved Three require that service of me?” Fia asked, the question quiet as a moth’s wing in the dark. “Is that why Raea would keep me unbound?”