Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(64)

No. What has he done?

Elfriede’s mouth cracked upward in a hollow echo of her smile. She opened her mouth to speak, but she bit down on her lip quickly. Was it the idea of our mother in the castle that kept her from asking the obvious?

Well, I wasn’t afraid to ask the monster a question. “Where are you taking him?”

The lord released Elfriede and stood now, facing me. He adjusted first one glove and then the other, tugging on the leather cuffs.

“Well, well, good day, my goddess,” he said. “Did you enjoy the wedding, Olivière? Or did you find the reception afterward more enticing?” His words gathered an extra edge toward the end of his latter question.

Heat swirled inside of me. “I enjoyed the reception very much.”

The lord placed his hands on his hips and stood immobile for a moment. Then he motioned a hand toward me and turned to exit. “In any case, I can see I just missed the last of the festivities.” He nodded at Elfriede, the tip of his hat bobbing down and up. “I dare say your sister will be glad to see us leave. The lord of the castle and his goddess alike. Wherever they go, no mere bride can compare. It seems we have stolen all that was owed to her this day. It is, after all, her wedding day.”

“Noll, how could you?” Elfriede screamed as the specters pulled me toward the second black carriage. She was weeping, barely able to speak between heavy, quivering sobs. Her voice grew quieter, the words catching in her throat. “How could you be so selfish? You won’t be happy until you have Jurij for yourself. You’d rather he die than be with me.”

“Friede!” I shouted back, doing all I could to break free from the tight grips on my arms. I had more to say, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted her to hate me.

The lord seemed amused. “My, what a joyous family reunion.” He nodded at the specters, who pulled me inside the carriage like they were lugging in a sack of grain. The lord grabbed hold of the sides of the carriage doorway and heaved himself inward. “You must be so delighted that you came.”



***



My fingers dug into the black leather seat. It was my first time in the carriage with company.

The lord sat across from me, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I imagined his eyes attempting to bore through the veil to shoot daggers straight into me.

“That was not very nice,” he said at last.

I gripped the leather harder, imagining that it was the arms of his leather jacket instead. “What have you done with him?”

“Are you going to order me to answer you?”

“Will you not answer me otherwise?”

The lord moved his hands up, stopping shortly below where the veil began.

“I feel compelled to answer you,” he said. “I feel compelled to do anything I so much as think you want done. It is a battle within me not to slit my own throat at this very moment.”

I smiled sweetly.

“But I will not let you have power over me.”

I scoffed. “I don’t think you have much of a choice.”

“No, I do not,” he said, his head tilting slightly toward the carriage window. “But still, I have the power to fight it. And I will fight it until my last breath.”

Don’t tempt me.

I bit my tongue and followed his gaze out of the window. We were entering the woods now. I had missed the chance to bid my childhood home one last farewell.

A surge of wickedness came over me. There was one place nearby that was still home. And it could save me, if but for a moment. You promised them you would help. Dream or not, I’ve got to know.

“Were you alive long ago? Say, a thousand years in the past?”

The lord’s head snapped toward me. “How could you—”

“Answer me!”

The lord spoke before he could stop himself. “Yes.”

I’m not crazy. It wasn’t a dream! “Don’t move,” I said.

The lord tensed.

“Have them stop the carriage.”

He knocked on the window and the carriage halted instantly. “Olivière, if you remember—”

“Stay still,” I said. “Don’t speak. Don’t move.”

If I can go back, I can stop him before Jurij was ever hurt. Before he ever took my mother. Before she ever fell ill. What if he caused the illness somehow? I didn’t understand how or why, but it seemed to be too much of a coincidence since it happened right after I met him. Maybe he planned to make me grateful to him from the start.

I have to go back. Before this village ever became cursed with men and their goddesses.

I pushed the carriage door open and ran trembling off of the dirt path and deep into the woods.

My legs burned. My dress snagged on branches and tore. Lily petals fell from my hair, withered already by a day without earth and water. I hiked up my skirt and kept moving.

I reached the cavern and tore inside. I had no candle to light my way, and my feet stumbled from time to time over a rock or a spike I didn’t fully remember, but I made my way through the darkness.

And it was the violet glow and the cavern pool that awaited me, called me home.

Even my wild and racing heartbeat seemed suddenly subdued, quiet, and calm. There was something in the pool that wanted me, a gentle vibration, an unrelenting reminder of life. It was as if until that moment I hadn’t realized that even among the voluble pounding of my heart, there had been gaps every other beat. Moments of silence in which my heartbeat echoed here, in the pool, in the depths of the secret cavern.