Chapter 22
The subsequent weeks settled into a predictable rhythm: we met at the library after breakfast and either skimmed through sheer endless piles of books or listened to Theo and the Abbot who gave us all the intel on the Gods that were expected at the meeting.
We had decided that while Auretheos would take the lead in the meeting, me, Caelan and Lydia would try to stay in the shadows, and watch for the reactions of the Gods.
It was possible that some of the Gods who supported the Heralds would be at the meeting to spy, but there was no way to stop that from happening.
So we’d simply have to have faith that the traitors would reveal themselves.
About half of the invitations we had sent out had already come back, and so far all the Gods and Goddesses had let us know that they’d be at the meeting.
We were arguing over whether it was more suspicious that some of them agreed to the meeting right away, or if it was more suspicious if they took their time to respond.
It was a fruitless discussion of course, we’d simply have to wait and see, but it kept us distracted from the danger we all knew was looming over us.
But there was something else on my mind, I felt the Abbot watching me wherever I went.
He conveniently showed up when I was walking into town, when I was working out he happened to walk past the open door of the gym room, and when we were doing research at the library, he always placed himself between Theo and me.
One night, after we had decided to retire after a long evening of comparing notes and discussing ways to expose the traitorous Gods, he excused the sentinel who was supposed to bring me back to the Lodge and offered to do it himself.
I wasn’t scared of him, but I also didn’t particularly want to be alone with him.
He offered me his elbow and I took it, stepping onto the Pathway.
The now familiar veil was lifted over our heads and we began the ascent.
About halfway, we suddenly stopped. I made the mistake of looking down to see why we had halted and dizziness washed over my body.
“Why did we stop?” I asked breathlessly and looked up at the Abbot.
“I needed to speak with you, wordsmith. Alone, without prying ears,” he said.
The hairs on my back stood up at the tone in his voice.
“We could have done that in your office, sir, why do we need to speak while we are hanging hundreds of stretches in midair?” Panic laced my voice.
The Abbot didn’t seem bothered by the height, quite the contrary. He enjoyed seeing me in distress.
“Let me tell you a little story, Maelis. Wordsmiths have been a useful tool for the Fates since the beginning of time. Whenever the Gods needed someone to do their dirty work, when they needed someone as their ambassador or had a tricky job that needed to get done, they would call upon the Fates to send them a wordsmith. Most of the time the skills of a wordsmith would be bestowed upon someone who had already been working for the God in question, or someone from an influential family. Very rarely a wordsmith was actually born this way, like you. And never in history have the Fates bestowed this honor on a mortal. But there is one thing all wordsmiths have in common: they can not be trusted. I believe you want to be good, but it is not in your nature.”
I looked up at him in surprise. “What are you trying to tell me? That you do not trust me? Because frankly, I do not care what you think of me.”
His mouth turned into an ugly smile then.
“I am trying to tell you that you can’t help who you are.
Wordsmiths are cunning and they have the magic of Gods bestowed upon them.
Sooner or later, you won’t be content anymore with only being a God’s tool.
You will want more, and you will start using the magic for yourself.
You will slowly get addicted to the feeling of it, and Auretheos will have to take you out. ”
His words shocked me, but the hate in his eyes was what undid me. I knew he wasn’t a fan of Theo’s and my friendship, but I never knew his dislike of me ran so deep. “What about Lydia? She is eons older than any of you and she seems to have the trust of the circle.”
The Abbot snarled. “Lydia is bound to Theo because he saved her life. That’s the only reason she hasn’t turned on him yet.
And you certainly are no Lydia. She was immortal before the Fates bestowed the heka on her, you are not.
The curse of the wordsmiths will turn your mind much quicker and when it does, I will be there. ”
My breathing was shaky from barely contained rage.
“You don’t know me, Abbot,” I said calmly.
“I have never asked to be put into this position, and I have avoided using the heka on myself most of my life. You have no idea what I would or wouldn’t do to save the people who are most important to me and you have no right to question my loyalty when you so clearly feel no remorse in questioning Auretheos’s judgment. ”
We started moving again and I thought he wasn’t going to respond, but when we stepped out of the veil at the Lodge, he looked at me again.
“Auretheos knows what you are. He has read extensively about the history of your kind, and he knows that you will turn on him if it suits your own agenda. The question is not if it will happen, but when it will happen. And he knows exactly that if it comes to that before the prophecy is fulfilled, he will have to harness your power to ensure the safety of our realm.”
The Veil lifted and I stumbled as the Abbot abruptly pulled his arm out from my grip. “Oh, and one other thing. I know about your past. You didn’t think you could hide your misdeeds from me, did you? Stay away from Auretheos, you little harlot.”
And with that, he left me standing in front of the house that suddenly didn’t feel like a home anymore.
The Abbot was right. I knew my past would have to come out one day, but knowing that he might expose my crimes to the people I had started to care about so deeply made my heart ache fiercely. I was a monster, something to be feared, always one bad decision away from ruining the people around me.
But what broke my heart was to realize that Theo had not been honest with me.
He claimed that it was the prophecy that made him keep his distance, but maybe that had all been a ploy to make sure I didn’t get too close to him.
Because I was not to be trusted. I was supposed to be used to free him of the prophecy and save the realm and then he’d simply move on.
None of this sounded like Theo, the gentle and rational God I had gotten to know over the past months.
And yet, the Abbot had planted a seed of doubt in my mind and the roots had started to infiltrate every memory of every conversation I had had with Auretheos.
Maybe the Abbot was right about me. But if I didn’t confront the shadows of my past, I’d never know if I was truly a monster bound to my heka… or a woman capable of something better.
* * *
10 years ago
I looked to my right.
The cold stone floor touching my skin made me wince, but it was a welcome sensation on my burning skin. Tiny balls of fluff skidded across the floor on my exhale, like snowflakes in the wind.
Coming down from a magical high was seldom glamorous.
But this had to be a low point, even for me.
I tried to sit up, but my bones felt like jelly and my head fell back onto the floor as soon as I tried to lift it.
I didn’t even feel the pain of it.
I heard voices outside the wash chamber and when I turned my head towards the door, I could see two sets of heels entering the room.
“Where is she?”
Larna’s voice was too shrill for my liking.
“God damn it, that fucker is out of it,” Preeta commented, her voice sounding further away.
The door to the wash chamber opened carefully and hit me against the head.
“Oh fuck no, Mae! Are you all right?” Larna shrieked.
I groaned, but it was a sound born out of annoyance, not pain.
Preeta’s face appeared above my face.
“Can you get up? We need to get you cleaned up before Madame Celestine gets back.”
The girls managed to somehow get me up on my feet and into the shower.
Fully clothed, with vomit in my hair and an ungodly amount of bruises along my body, I had to admit that I had taken it too far last night, even by my own standards.
Lately, it had been more and more difficult to find oblivion in my heka.
When I had left home a few years ago, my heka had been off limits. My parents had always told me to be careful with it, to never use it on myself, but what good was a gift if you didn’t use it?
The first time I intentionally used my heka for myself, I had been out to breakfast with my friends.
We had been jokingly fighting about who would get the last apple and something had snapped inside of me.
A tingling underneath my skin, a voice inside my head daring me to manipulate them into giving the last apple to me.
And so I had taken my pen and written down the spell.
When nothing bad happened after my first attempt, I got bolder.
I manipulated my boss into thinking he had gotten the time for my next shift wrong, when in truth, I was running an hour late.
It wasn’t about the high, not at first. It was about making my life easier, about avoiding consequences and simply living in the moment.
But all magic has a price and the bigger my spells got, the more of a high followed. Until it wasn’t about the benefits of my heka anymore, but about the ecstasy afterwards.
Looking back now, while my friends washed my hair, disinfected the wounds on my arms and made sure that I took my contraceptive powder, I couldn’t remember the last time I had truly felt like anything more than numb.
* * *
“What happened?” Madame Celestine’s voice rang through the brothel.
“Nightpetal got a wee bit carried away wi’ the diplomat the other night, m’lady,” Bogus said, panting slightly as he tried to keep up with the owner of “The Nest.”
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“Naw, m’lady. Poor lad’s still up in her room, sleepin’ off the drink. She was in a rough state when we found her. Pale as snow and mumblin’ nonsense. But the doctor’s been giving her somethin’ to settle her nerves. She’s near back tae herself now, thank the Fates.”
I quickly closed the door and made my way back to my desk. If there was one thing Madame Celestine hated, it was eavesdropping.
A few seconds later, the door to my room opened.
Madame Celestine let her gaze roam around the room, an eyebrow cocked up.
“How are you feeling, Maelis?” Her question might have been polite, but her tone was anything but.
“I am all right, thank you. I am sorry for causing such chaos, I… I took it too far last night.” I said.
She nodded. “Bogus, remove the gentleman from this room and tell the cleaners to do a deep clean.”
Bogus instantly got to work and Madame Celestine came to a stop in front of my window.
The view was rather boring, a long alley filled with garbage crates and washing lines.
But every morning, when the sun lifted its tired head to rise once more, the street was bathed in golden sunlight for a few minutes.
It was my favorite moment of every day and often the only thing getting me out of bed.
I had missed the sunrise today.
“You know I value you and your heka, Maelis.” Celestine said.
All right, so this is where the lecture began.
I stayed quiet.
“When I found you that day in the pub, drunk on wine and your own heka, laughing like a fool with no idea what kind of a talent you were wasting, I saw something of value in you. You weren’t like the others.
You didn’t need your body to earn a living.
Only a whisper, a brush of your voice, and men would hand you their names, their secrets, their souls.
“I gave you a room. A purpose. A clean slate. You never had to spread your legs like the others, and yet you’ve managed to spiral faster than any girl I’ve ever brought in.
Do you know how absurd that is? How ungrateful it looks?
You were an investment, Maelis. One I expected to see returns on.
Not some reckless little wretch burning herself out because she likes the way her heka makes her feel when she’s three glasses in and full of delusion.
“You think this life is ugly? You think I tricked you? No, darling. You walked in. You wanted it easy, and I made it easy. But if you keep wasting what you’ve been given, you’ll end up exactly like the ones downstairs.
Used up. Forgotten. Now get yourself clean.
Or the next time you wake up hungover, it won’t be in silk sheets. ”
Shame washed over me. She was right.
I was free to choose my lovers, free to decide who got to touch me and where. While all the girls at “The Nest” had their own magical gifts, most of them had more practical powers at their disposal and were forced to bed the men to reveal their secrets.
Madame Celestine cleared her throat. “Did you gain any useful insight at least?”
I looked down to the floor, the very same one I had been lying on not even an hour ago.
“I don’t remember.” My voice sounded small and defeated.
“A whole night with the diplomat, for what, Maelis? I hope fucking him was worth it, because we need the intel. I will have to get Larna to do it,” she said.
“Wait!” I called out to Madame Celestine. “I understand you are disappointed, but give me one more chance. I can get him to talk. Please. He is far too violent for Larna.”
Celestine considered my request, walking up and down the room a few times.
“Fine. You’ll get one more chance. But if he doesn’t talk, Larna will go in with him. I hope sparing your friend is a good enough motivation not to lose your shit again.”
And with that, she was gone.