Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(81)

The words came freely to me, but without the force I’d felt before. It was like these were my own words, and those others were someone else’s.

The tears slowed their descent down Ailill’s trembling cheeks. A snowflake appeared on his dark eyelashes, but the flame within his eyes couldn’t melt it. Snow was falling, despite the previously temperate weather, threatening to blanket us in white.

“You will feel compelled to love your goddess, but do as your heart tells you. If you are ever to vanish at her direct gaze, you alone shall have the power to return.”

I bent forward and kissed him atop the forehead. The frigid snow that peppered his scalp chilled my lips.

The roses beside us were blanketed in snow, hardly a trace of their red petals to be found. Letting go of Ailill’s face, I yanked at a snow-covered blossom, not caring that a thorn poked my finger as I did. I tore out the thorn and placed the newly white rose in Ailill’s open palm, giving his hand a tight squeeze with both of mine.

“Return back to life in your own time, if you alone will it. Return as if you had merely spent a time sleeping. And free yourself of woman’s power upon your return.” I bit my lip. “I command you to overcome the power of women at last upon your return.”

I stood and pulled the shawl down over his face. A braver woman, a nobler woman, would stay and help the boy through the fate I had given him, but that woman was not me. There was no place for the kind of woman I was here, a pretender. The violet glow of the cavern was already calling for me.

Still, as I turned to go, I paused at the fountain, remembering the crying boy who would one day be entombed atop of its cascade of water. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that the statue was of Ailill as a boy, now that I knew how he looked then. Had Ailill had that statue carved? Did it remind him of what I’d done to him, of what I’d done to all men, to women, too? What I wanted to do now was selfish, and I had been selfish enough to doom all of our kind. But still, my mouth opened.

“If, after your own Returning,” I said, my back still to the shivering figure, “you can find it in your heart to forgive me, you, the last of the men whose blood runs with his own power, will free all men bound by my curse.”

I clamped my mouth shut and marched forward. Through the door, past the torn and bloody piles of clothing, beyond the cheering women. I had played at leader, I had played at queen, and this is what my foolishness got me. I slipped away unnoticed into the secret cavern in the woods. I didn’t look once behind me. My last act was to leave Elgar in the hollow of a tree I passed, waiting for Jaron to find it many, many lifetimes later.



Even without Elgar to guide me, the pool acted as before, but in reverse, its terrible purpose fulfilled. If the blade wasn’t key to traveling, then I didn’t know what was. I didn’t know where the power came from, and it was just as much a mystery to me as the healing powers of the men. Had the suffering of women called me? Whatever the reason, I had answered pain with pain. I set in motion all of the misery that the men and women of my village suffered for generations. I had saved the women from torment, but the price was the free will of all men and the liar’s choice of women.

All of that time I’d spent hating the laws of the first goddess—hating the very idea of goddesses—when I had made them all.

So lost was I in my thoughts that it took me a moment to realize the glowing cavern was lit up in red, not violet. I didn’t test my theory, but I suspected it was a sign I was no longer welcome, that the past was forever closed to me. The beating orb at the bottom of the pool even seemed to cease, the silence seemingly pushing me away. So I left.

When I exited the woods, I expected to see the altered village on the horizon. I almost wanted to see it, to know that I couldn’t go home, to have no choice but to devote myself to shielding the boy with a heart from the brunt of the pain I had caused him. It was a choice I wanted, a choice I should have had. But my feet carried me back to where I would live among those who suffered for my foolish tongue.

I headed toward my childhood home, not sure if my feet should instead take me straight back to the commune. But I was eager to at least see their faces. I didn’t deserve comforting, and my heart hardened knowing that I would likely find little comfort awaiting me regardless. Little did they know, though, what real reason they had to hate me.

I halted a few steps from the front door. A chill brushed the back of my exposed neck and down throughout my soaked body.

The castle had returned.

My heart soared, my stomach hardened. But the ground didn’t shake. They had worked, the words forming my final command. I’d given him permission to dispose of my power.

I pulled on the door in front of me.

“Noll?”

Jurij spoke my name. He stood next to the fireplace, his hand in Elfriede’s, a stark scar across his cheek, his left eye wrapped in a bandage. Wounds from my kiss, as though the castle and the lord had never vanished.

Tears littered Elfriede’s cheeks, her eyes neither on Jurij nor me but on the bed in the corner. Arrow sat alert by her side.

There sat my father, his arms thrown tightly across my mother.

My heart stopped. Have I lost her a second—no, a third time?

But her eyes were wide open, her pale oak face almost glowing.

“Noll?” she croaked hoarsely. “Come here, darling!”

I obeyed freely.