Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(20)

As Luuk stood from the chair next to me to join the celebration, I squeezed his hand tightly. His puppy face met mine and he sat back down beside his owl-masked father and his sour-faced mother. But only a moment had passed when he stiffened. Summoning strength I didn’t know he had, he ripped his hand free from mine, walked across to the room to the end of the row, and hugged a girl seated between her parents. Nissa. She was grinning as she hugged him back.

Mother unhooked herself from Father’s embrace and laughed, pointing at Luuk and Nissa. “Look, everyone!” she shouted. “The Returned’s brother has found his goddess!”

Laughter. Clapping. My hands clasped feebly together. Another one. Another coupling. All because of the first goddess. All because of a woman who appeared out of nowhere, barking out orders and vanishing from sight. All because of the lord and his goddess’s blessing. My awful attempt at clapping ceased, my body flushed with rage.

There were two others who didn’t bother to laugh with joy at the little boy who’d found his goddess. At last, I saw that stunning face I’d never seen before as it pulled away from Elfriede with great effort, its flame-filled eyes still mesmerized by her features.



“Half the village is here,” observed Master Tailor. “How wonderful.” Everything was “wonderful, wonderful” with that man. Must be great to live in a rosy, wonderful version of your awful life. If only I could. But I’m a woman, with a woman’s mind.

After the Returning, everyone had filed up to the Returned to smile and pretend like they cared for the happiness of a man and goddess not their own. That left the families of the goddess and her man off to the side, waiting for the ceremony to be over. I stood as far away from Jurij and Elfriede as I could without leaving the area. But next to Master Tailor stood Luuk and Nissa, their hands clasped, and every so often, I heard them giggling. There was no escaping it.

“Do you remember Elweard and Vena’s Returning? What, fifteen, twenty years ago?” asked Mother. She cradled a cup of wine in her hand. She’d offered me some, but I said no thanks. Wine, like the terrible laws of the village, made me nauseous. “The whole village was there.”

Father had one arm around Mother’s shoulder and the other stuck firmly across the front of her waist. “That one was a long time coming.”

Master Tailor had neither food nor drink nor a wife who loved him to occupy his hands. No surprise. He couldn’t eat with the mask on with all of the unrelated women about. But he could talk. “Didn’t they marry before the Returning?” Mistress Tailor looked up between bites of the roll she was stuffing into her mouth.

“I believe they got wed seven years before the Returning.” Alvilda, Master Tailor’s sister, gulped down most of the contents in her cup, which I suspected to have some pretty strong liquor. She sloshed the little remaining. “Vena was nine-and-twenty when she Returned Elweard’s love.”

Luuk’s puppy face actually tore away from Nissa, and he made a little choking noise. I wondered if he was gasping behind his mask. “So it’s not too late for you, Papa!”

Master Tailor laughed. “Your mother’s a bit older than nine-and-twenty, sweetheart.”

Mistress Tailor, her jaw clenched, knocked against him as she made her way back to the buffet table.

My gaze followed her, even as Mother jumped to pick up the conversation with Master Tailor with some unimportant comment about the Great Hall’s decorations. Mistress Tailor grabbed another roll and watched the crowd, her gaze resting on first one coupling, then the next. Although she was the mother of the Returned, although her other son had just found his goddess, no one spoke to her.

Alvilda was also watching. She nudged me with her elbow and lifted a finger off of her cup in Mistress Tailor’s direction. “They shame her. Even more than they shame me.”

“Is it really so bad not to Return love to your husband?” At least she didn’t risk killing him before she was sure.

“Of course.” Alvilda still hadn’t finished the drink. She seemed fixated on creating little waves of turmoil within her cup. “It’s expected for you to Return love to your husband. If you can’t, you’re supposed to be honest about it and refuse him.”

“Dooming him to the commune? Isn’t it worse for a man to live like he’s dea—” I realized who I was talking to and clamped my mouth shut.

Alvilda laughed, and not out of mirth. There was something a little awkward about the way she spoke, and I wondered if she’d drunk too much. She wasn’t normally the type who did. “I know, I know. I sent a man there.” I noticed she didn’t refer to him as her man. She sloshed her cup again. “Better that than being constantly reminded of my failure to love him.”

“Then why do some women marry their men, if they don’t love them?”

“Who knows?” Alvilda leaned her head back and poured the last of the drink down her throat. She looked around for a place to toss the cup and dropped it on the edge of a nearby pillar. “Maybe they just want children? No other man but theirs will help them with that. Maybe they feel guilty about dooming a man to the commune?” She squinted at Mistress Tailor picking up a cup and filling it from a flask of wine. “Or maybe … maybe they truly hope they’ll love them someday, even though deep down they know it’s just a lie they tell themselves?” She patted me on the back. “Well, take care, Noll.” She gave one last pat on my shoulder. “I think I’m done celebrating for the day.”