Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(61)

Father sighed and began fumbling at the outside of his coat pocket. “What does she know?”

I felt the heat of the tea almost singe my palm through the mug. “I know that my father is so ashamed to face me that he won’t even speak directly to me.”

Father wiped a tired hand across his gray and black hairline. “I’m sorry, Noll. When I saw you’d showed for the wedding … I just didn’t know what to say.”

“You should have started by asking how Mother was doing.”

Alvilda gasped. Father’s eyes widened. “She’s well, then?”

I slapped my palms atop the table. Sawdust went flying, probably landing in my tea. “I can’t say how well she’s doing, fast asleep in the care of a monster!”

Father pulled his ale bottle out of his pocket and took a swig. Alvilda didn’t stop him.

“I knew he had her,” said Father at last. “I didn’t know for certain if she was still living. I thought I’d feel it if she … well. I couldn’t be sure.”

My eyes couldn’t meet his, couldn’t stare into the budding ember of flame I knew I’d find there.

Alvilda looked from one of us to the next. “So you’ve seen her, Noll?”

I shifted in my seat uncomfortably. “Just once. My first night there, he took me to see her in a guarded room, sleeping. She didn’t wake. And he made sure that I knew the consequences of abusing my power over him: Her death.”

“The cheat!” Alvilda banged her hands across the table.

“That evening when you were gone, Aubree took a turn for the worse.” Father gulped the ale for a moment, slamming down the empty bottle. “She was breathing so heavily. She could barely speak, but she couldn’t stop moaning. Sweat poured off her like she’d just come in from a torrent of rain. Then she stopped moaning. That was scarier than when she was moaning. She was still breathing, but barely.”

Father drummed the shaky fingers of his free hand on the table. “I heard a sound outdoors. I thought it might be you or Elfriede come home at first, but it was louder than that. The door burst open. It was the lord’s servants.”

He picked up the bottle and tried to take another sip. When he came up empty, he leered at the bottle and put it back down. “I told them you weren’t there, to be on their way to find you, that I had a dying wife to worry about. Then they came to the bed and picked her up, carried her right out the door without so much as a word to me. I jumped in and followed. ‘This was all I wanted from Noll,’ I told myself. Just to ask the man. Ask him if he could help us. Since he’d do anything for you.”

“I did ask him. That same night. You wouldn’t believe me. But that’s probably why he finally sent for her.”

Father shook his head. “The lord greeted us in the entryway to the castle, wearing his black veil and hat. I dropped right down to my knees, even as the pale servants lay Aubree on the floor before me. ‘Have mercy, my lord,’ I said. ‘Do what you can to spare my wife. I’ll do anything.’ ‘And where is Olivière?’ he asked. ‘Why has she not come with you?’ Well, I wanted to say it was just that Noll is such a—” Father stopped suddenly, held the empty bottle to his lips and spat. He wagged a finger at me. “She’s a stubborn girl, but I thought better than to insult a man’s goddess right in front of him, so I said nothing.”

But you don’t think better than to insult your own daughter in front of her. Not that that was surprising. I took a sip of my tea. It tasted a bit of sawdust.

Father plopped his filthy spit-bottle down on the table. “The lord, he waited a bit for my answer. I suppose he finally figured I had nothing to say to him on the matter, so he bade me to rise. ‘That woman continues to aggravate me,’ he said, which is why I thought you hadn’t visited him. I thought he’d tell me if you had. ‘I can heal your wife. It will take time. Tell no one she is here, not even your daughters, and do not come here yourself. You can see your wife again on the day of Olivière’s Returning.’”

If he could heal her, why wasn’t he certain until he’d sent me away? “He told you not to tell me? How could he—”

Father cut me off, letting go of the bottle in order to wring his hands. “I dared to ask if he was certain he could save her. I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. He gave me a warning. ‘The lord of the village does not make promises he cannot keep.’ I begged his forgiveness. I just didn’t know what to believe, what with the talk of immortality and how it was his lack of a goddess that had made him master of death. But I knew beyond a doubt that the lord had never found a goddess among all of the women in my lifetime, so maybe it was possible. I just worried that having found Noll, he’d have lost whatever it was that made him keep death at bay.”

Of course. Another excuse to blame me.

Alvilda sighed and stretched her arms up over her head. “I hope you didn’t say that part aloud.”

Again, Father tried to drink from the empty bottle. “No, of course not.”

“So you’ve heard it, too,” I interrupted, putting the mug down. “The title the ‘heartless monster.’”

Alvilda let her arms fall gently to the table. “People have never liked to talk much about the ‘always watching’ lord and his servants. A whisper here, a tale there—the things one could piece together are downright laughable.” She sighed. “The ‘heartless monster.’ A strange way to put it, but it means that he’s inhuman, an immortal whose heart never found its goddess and so he lives forever.”