Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(34)



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.

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