Nobody's Goddess (14 page)

Most women besides me.

This sword glowed brighter than the flames of the torches lighting the way. I’d never heard anyone mention that swords glowed in stories. There were no windows, so the glowing could hardly be a trick of the light. The only other thing in the room was a bookstand with a single, large tome closed atop it.
The book of Returning, perhaps? Always conveniently in the Great Hall on a Returning Day.

“Well, Olivière. Welcome. I am glad to see you chose to make yourself so comfortable.”

I dropped my hand immediately, not even realizing I was leaning against the throne, reaching up toward the sword. I didn’t even remember walking those last few paces.

“Please. Do turn around. I assure you I am now prepared for your visits.”

I turned, the sword somehow forgotten. His presence drew my eyes with such force I couldn’t bear to look at anything else until I’d absorbed all of him.

He was cloaked entirely in black. Not only was his embossed leather jacket darker than a shadow, his folded hands were covered with what appeared to be smooth, black leather gloves. Instead of a mask or a beautiful face, a gauze veil dark as ink covered his head, the corners of the material tied closed with a somber broach on his left shoulder. Were it not for the wide-brimmed hat he wore atop the veil—which was just as dark as the rest of his attire, if perhaps a little more resplendent—he might have very well sucked all of the light from the room. As it was, the hat—a sort of metal, pointed hat—was glossy enough that it reflected the flicker of the torches’ firelight in small, spectacular movements.

He walked past me before I could speak, his close stride rustling my skirt. I moved back to give him room, and he sank into the black throne, crossing one black boot over and resting it on his knee. He brought the tips of his gloves together, his elbows resting comfortably on the armrests. “I had hoped to see you again much sooner.”

I swallowed and ran a shaky hand through my hair, tucking a chunk of it behind my ear. “I figured. I—I saw the carriages. I just needed some time.”

“Time? Time for what?”

I clutched my shawl again, as if that would somehow save me from the chill that hung over every room of the castle. I formed my words carefully. “I’m not yet old enough for a Returning.” It was true, and I wasn’t saying there was going to
be
a Returning. Not the moment I turned seventeen, anyway.

The lord dropped his fingers and gestured around him to the empty room. “Since when does that stop a man from seeing his goddess?”

“It doesn’t. Usually. But you didn’t come to see me, either.”

The lord scoffed. I could hear the sound clearly even through his veil. “You expect
me
to visit
you
?”

I blinked. This wasn’t going at all how I expected. “No, I … ”
I was quite happy not to have to think about you
, I wanted to say. But there was no need to tell him that. A man could crumble at even the slightest hint of harshness from his goddess. “It’s just that … that’s the way it’s normally done. Men visiting their goddesses.”

The lord tossed his head and cradled what must have been his chin with his thumb and forefinger. His face seemed turned a bit sideways, like he wasn’t going to look at me, although I couldn’t be sure. “I cannot leave the castle.” His voice broke a little, and I was almost unsure I’d heard him right.

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like I’d wanted him to come anyway. And arranging courtship was hardly the first thing on my mind. “Um, sir, Lordship … ” The lord dropped his hand back to his lap. “My mother is unwell. Women have been ill these past four months, and they started dying this week. I thought … we all thought they’d get better, but now that doesn’t seem to be the case, and … ” I didn’t know what else to say.

The lord tossed his hand in the air with a flourish, gesturing for me to go on. “And?”

I felt something snap in my chest, like the one word from him, the callous tone of his voice, was enough to stomp all hope I’d managed to muster. The hope that had gotten me to accept that carriage ride at last and face the fact that I was somebody’s goddess, and that somebody wasn’t who I wanted.

“And you’re our lord. Isn’t there something you can do?”

The lord drummed his fingers on one of the throne’s armrests. “You have tried all the herbs?”

“Yes!” I regretted the tone of my voice the moment I said it. But it was obvious we’d tried that much, wasn’t it? I tried to soften my voice. “I mean, of course. It seems to help with the pain a bit, but they’re still—that is, my mother now, just her, she still has no strength.”

The lord’s fingers stopped tapping at once. “You say women have died?”

“Yes!” I squeezed my shawl tighter. Wasn’t he listening? Wasn’t he paying attention at all to the people he ruled over?
Why, then, do people say he’s always watching?

“There is no typical sign of illness? No rash? No sores?”

“No … ” I bit my lip, thinking about Ingrith and her “healer” man. “I knew a woman, who … well.” I swallowed, struggling to summon my courage to face this man. “She said there was once a family of healers in the village.”

The lord’s head snapped forward slightly. “Healers? I thought they had all been forgotten.”

“They have. That is, if they existed at all in the first place.”

“No matter. They are gone. They cannot help.” The lord held a hand out to silence me before I could inquire further. He leaned his veiled face into his other palm. Neither of us spoke. Then he straightened in his throne. “Four months they have been ill?”

“About that, yes.” I dropped my hand from my shawl and let my arms hang limply at my sides. Even without seeing his eyes, I felt them boring into me. I didn’t know how very much I’d hate the attention. “They got ill the day after I first came here.”

The lord jumped out of his throne so quickly I almost fell backward to the ground as my feet scrambled to give him ample room to pace. He walked to his bookstand and flung the heavy tome open, flipping through pages as if his life depended on it. Maybe my mother’s actually did.

Can he read through his veil?

As if hearing my thoughts, the lord sighed and slammed the book shut with a grunt of frustration, sending dust into the air. “You will have to leave!”

I took a step back before I could even think. “Pardon?”

“Leave. Now.” He gestured toward the door and flicked his fingers, summoning four specters from behind me. They held their arms out, leading me toward the door.

My head spun from one specter to the next, to the pacing lord before the throne. “What about my mother?”

The lord slowed his pace, but he didn’t stop moving. He waved a hand absently at me. “I will do what I can, of course. She will live to perform our Returning.”

If his first statement offered me a bit of comfort, his second was a kick to the stomach. “What do you mean? Is she going to die of this after that?”

The lord stopped and sighed, quite audibly. He positioned both hands on his hips. “I cannot tell you. I do not know.”

“But you know
something
, obviously.”

The lord took a few steps forward, closing the distance between us. “Olivière,” he said, grabbing one of my hands. He squeezed it and brought it up between our chests. “I will do what I can. Please worry instead about preparing yourself for my Returning.”

I ripped my hand out from his grip. “Your Returning? How can you speak to me about a Returning when my mother might be dead tomorrow?”

The lord leaned forward, trying to reach for me. I took a step back. “Olivière, the timing of your mother’s illness is unfortunate, but—”

“The
timing
?”

“If you knew how long I waited. If you knew how hard this is for me, to accept your love.”

“Accept
my
love?” I crossed my arms tight against my chest, all timidity forgotten. “What love? I don’t even
know
you.”

“A fact that could be remedied if only you would accept my invitation more often.”

“And what do you mean, how hard it is for
you
? Do you think I want to be the lord’s goddess?” I threw my hands in the air at him. “That I have any interest in this black void of a man who stays locked up inside this monstrosity of a castle, ignoring the needs of his people, a heartless monster who doesn’t care if they’re dying?”

The lord straightened his shoulders and clenched his hands into fists. “A
heartless monster
?”

“I was wondering what it meant. But now I know. You think nothing of your people.”

“And whose fault is that?” His tone was so accusatory, I flinched. He started pacing again before his throne, back and forth, back and forth. “I cannot leave this castle, Olivière! I do not know one person in this village from the next. I blink and they die. I die and they would not know—they could not
imagine
the depth of the pain I feel.”

I sighed heavily. He was making no sense. Leave it to me to wind up with the recluse with little grip on his sanity. “Don’t talk to me about a Returning until my mother’s health improves.”

The lord stiffened, and I realized, far more clearly than I had the first time we’d met, that my words had power over him.

I decided to test it. I pointed above the throne. “And give me that sword.”

I’d had to ask for the scabbard, too. And he gave them to me. Without a word. Thrusting them at me like he couldn’t wait to be rid of them. Or of me.

The scabbard rested now around my waist. I hoped I wore it right; we’d used our sashes to hold our stick blades. I held the sword out in front of me like a violet torch that lit my way down the path that ran between the castle and my home.

I was stupid to think he could do anything.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
That he would be helpful at all.

I wouldn’t have been comfortable with a simpering sycophant, true. That was part of the reason why I couldn’t bear to see him again at first. The idea of a man weak at the knees and lost without me made me almost as ill as seeing Jurij acting just that way with Elfriede. Even if it might have been different if Jurij acted that way with me.

But this man wasn’t at all sane. He was, impossibly, rude to his own goddess. He babbled on about things that made no sense. Cared about things that weren’t anywhere near as important as my mother’s illness.

But since when did a man care about anyone other than his goddess?

I shook my head. It may just have been because Mother’s illness worried Elfriede, but Jurij was as worried about her as the rest of us. If the lord truly loved me, he would have been worried sick.

If he loved me
. He’d said it was hard to accept my love. For
him
to accept
me.

I stopped my manic pacing halfway down the path and let out a roar of impatience.

The blade glowed even brighter. It seemed to pull at me, like if I let it go it would fly right out of my hands. But that was crazy.

“Olivière
…
”

That voice again.

I headed through the foliage, where the blade seemed keen to take me.

***

The glowing light.

I stood before the violet pool in the cavern, Elgar’s hilt clutched in both hands. Yes, Elgar. It seemed a fitting name for the blade. Elgar had taken me there, to the pool. And the pool still called to me.

Elgar drooped in my grasp, perhaps because of my faltering arms, weak from holding it aloft so long.

“Olivière
,” called the pool. “
Olivière
!”

It was a chorus of voices, a hundred women and men, both familiar and unknown. What would I find if I finally went all the way down to the violet light?

The pool gave me its reply. “
Olivière.
”

I stood straight, snapping Elgar back upward in my grip.
This is stupid. Ridiculous. I should go home. I need to check on Mother.

Elgar shot downward, yanking my arms more forcefully than anyone ever had before, pulling my body aloft briefly before we punctured the water and dived into the depths below. I hadn’t had a chance to catch my breath. The toes of my boots had scraped against sediment for a moment, and then I felt nothing. It was as if I were floating, only I was flying downward, deeper and deeper into the light.

And then I stopped so suddenly it was as if my body had forgotten all movement. In my panic, the need for air ceased. There was nothing. There was no one. Nothing but me and the blade in my hand, the blade that spun and twirled round and round gently, slowly.

With every blink of my eye, I saw what I’d once seen. What I wanted to be again.

Jurij and Elfriede’s Returning in reverse, coming undone. Little Jurij and me, battling unseen foes before we ventured outside, leaving the cavern behind. The old crone and Darwyn still with us. With every moment that passed, more friends came back to me.

But then friends became Mother, her face alight, bending down to the floor to pick me up and cradle me against her shoulders.

Then what I saw became unfamiliar.
Was that Mother as a child?
The images passed by faster and faster, and I spun so I could hardly bear to look. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shield my lids from the light.