Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(23)

“I’m sorry I sent you alone.” Mother took both of my hands in hers. “We were just all so busy.” She looked up and down at my wreck of a dress. “I figured there might be some explanation for how your dress got to be so tattered. Did you fall into one of the ponds during the earthquake?”

Close enough. “Yeah. I didn’t have time to change.” Best to shift the focus elsewhere. “Mother, Ingrith called the lord a heartless monster.”

Mother’s lips puckered. “That’s a rather rude way to address our benefactor, but I’ve heard the term before.” She put her arm back through mine and gently tugged me forward.

“Who calls him that? And what does it mean?”

Mother shook her head. “No one who’s properly grateful calls him that. And it doesn’t mean anything. Not what you’re expecting. Do you remember me telling you about kings and queens?”

The little elf queen. That’s what I called myself. But kings and queens were just mythical figures in stories Mother used to tell Elfriede and me. “Yes.”

“They make for wild tales.” She pinched my shoulder playfully. “The type that keep little girls lost in their own little fantasies. But they’re not real. They’re just what some person thought of, to fantasize about a world where women and men might have once been equal.”

I wasn’t sure where she was heading with this. “So the lord isn’t real?”

Mother snorted. “Of course he’s real. He watches over us, and he pays us well for our wares.”

I nodded. “The men leave the supplies in the castle foyer and pick up the copper pieces left there.” Jurij had even gone once when he was smaller, to leave a few new sets of jerkins and trousers entirely in black. Odd, since the servants wore only white. “So even the men haven’t seen him before?”

“No, they haven’t.” Mother heaved a deep sigh. “And when you don’t lay your eyes upon something yourself, it’s easy to make up stories, to fantasize about a man who doesn’t die.”

“What?” Forgetting myself, my gaze was a little higher up than it ought to have been. Darwyn and his cart were still ahead of us, heading through the eastern part of the village, but we’d arrived back at the center. I stopped and faced Mother. “The lord doesn’t die?”

“Don’t be silly.” Mother smiled and started tugging me back toward the Great Hall, though it was hard for me to tear my eyes from the cart, even if it was off in the eastern direction. “The lord watches over the village from the shadows, but he must pass the job to his son when he’s older, or maybe a child of one of the lord’s servants. They’re a secretive lot, never speaking, always just showing us the lord’s requests on parchments—that’s why we all learn to read. I refuse to believe that never finding your goddess makes you immortal. Every woman gets her man.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Did Mother even know of any women who’d been a lord’s goddess? Who’d been a goddess of a specter? I never thought about it before. How were they going to have children without goddesses? Yet they were unmasked, so they must have had them at one point. When? “But does every man get his goddess?”

Mother stood in front of me, sliding her hands onto both of my shoulders. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with all of these questions. The lord is good to us. He watches over us on behalf of the first goddess. His secrets are his own. There is but one thing we all know for certain: If a woman lays eyes upon the lord of the castle, the penalty is death.”



I shivered. The night was young, but it was promising to be cold. And I was in a damp and tattered dress with no time to stop at home and change.

If Darwyn was making a late-night delivery, surely the lord would be awake and expecting his order. But would he be expecting me? Was he watching? Did he know? I’d fled the Great Hall almost as soon as Mother and I had arrived back, letting Father know I wanted to go home to change in case anyone missed me. He waved a hand and took his place at Mother’s side without saying anything. I watched him go briefly, but my gaze soon fell on the face I ought to have known for ages, the face I’d never before seen. Jurij had the widest eyes that I had ever seen, almost perfectly spaced below the softest eyebrows and the longest eyelashes. His lips were curled into a smile that set off dimples in each of his cheeks. The cleft in his chin cried out for a finger’s caress.

His beauty was more than I imagined, his face impossible to forget. But it was because of Elfriede’s love that I was able to see him, and for that, the sight of his face made it so much harder. I tore my eyes from his beautiful features and turned to leave, quietly and unnoticed.

She needed only love him for today, and he’s safe forever. That means he’s free.

I shook my head to clear it. I’d been wrong about the Returning. But what would Jurij feel if he were actually free? I had a feeling that was something that only the goddess might be able to tell me. And since she was nowhere to be found, the lord was my only option. I trembled with expectation, with fear. This is it. I have nowhere else to turn. I can’t just go to bed and wake up, day after day, pretending my heart is still whole. I refuse to. The elf queen wouldn’t.

I was on the road home, out past the eastern edge of the village. I jogged a few steps and then walked briskly, jogging and brisk walking, whatever it took to get down the road quickly without drawing too much attention. Looking at the ground as I went made jogging decidedly more difficult.