“We did the same. Adults. Soldiers. Children, but not children,” Odette adds. “The man you saw me talking to last week, that was my nephew Gregoris.”
Eudora buries her face in her hands. “Because the west chose to resist, Nevina changed the terms. We must supply a true child. A baby.”
“Joyna knows we will one day come for him,” Tempest adds. “Someday we will raise an army big enough to bring down this kingdom, and I will free every shade they took from us.”
“I visit Gregoris regularly. He gives me information about the royals, and I reassure him that we will get him out eventually. He’s old enough to understand.”
They’re planning an uprising. They want to take back their kingdom. I’ve known since Bolvet that the people of Stygarde were not happy with Nevina and Brahm, but I had no idea that they’d seriously considered a violent rebellion.
Eudora waves a hand. “Nothing but dreams and fantasies. Ones that could get us all killed if overheard by the wrong ears.” She cuts an incriminating gaze in my direction.
“Hey, I would never?—”
“If Eloise weren’t on our side, she wouldn’t have chanced antagonizing King Entrydal like she did today. Honestly, girl, I feared for you,” Tempest admits.
“I’ve never been any good at putting myself first.”
Eudora raises both hands toward Thanesia’s statue. “The fact is, we don’t have the men to rise up against them, and the ones we do have are starving and in no way strong enough to fight such a battle. So, can we focus on the problem in front of us? If the villagers of the west are not able to celebrate the Harvest Festival, we can’t make our sacrifices. If we can’t make our sacrifices, we will lose the protection of the goddess. She is currently our only means of survival.”
I don’t mean to, but a sound comes out of my throat. It isn’t quite a laugh, but it isn’t respectful either. Closer to a scoff than anything. Three faces turn to me with varying degrees of confusion and disapproval.
“It’s just that…” I shift awkwardly from foot to foot. “I mean, where I come from, gods don’t readily get involved in people’s lives. I mean, she’s never actually, like, manifested and given you food, has she?”
Now their eyes narrow, Eudora’s brows peaking in a look of abject disappointment. “She’s not a believer.”
“I didn’t say that!” I insist. They each look at me with tipped heads and pursed lips. “I’m a vampire, okay? I’m not even from this world. I didn’t know Thanesia existed until a few weeks ago. I’m not trying to be a skeptic. I just think that if you’ve survived this long, it has more to do with your personal abilities, your grit, than being blessed by this goddess. And certainly, if she’s watching what’s been going on here, she’d be sympathetic to you missing one Harvest Festival.”
The wind picks up again, and lightning cracks across the sky the moment the words are out of my mouth. I have to admit, the coincidence shakes me. Tempest looks upward in alarm. “Careful, Eloise,” she whispers. “That was uncomfortably close to blasphemy.”
I stare into the night sky. That was a coincidence, wasn’t it? “I… I… I’m not an atheist or anything. Don’t get me wrong.” Hell, I’ve literally been to the underworld and spoken with spirits. But I can’t reveal that to these women. They won’t understand. Especially since I’ve lost my magic. “I just… Could you tell me more about how she helps you in the west?”
Eudora takes a deep breath, gazes lovingly into Thanesia’s face, and places her hand lightly on the goddess’s oversized sandaled foot. Her eyes glint with unshed tears as she says, “We’ve been close to death many times in Zephrine. Every person in every village has looked through the veil into the Darklands. But we pray. And she responds. We’ve had stags wander into our village. Grain has grown in the middle of the street. We’ve existed on nothing but spiral cactus for weeks. We’ve survived for decades cut off from the capital. I wouldn’t dream of missing the festival. She deserves all our praise.”
The way Eudora looks at Thanesia is heartbreaking. It’s a look of complete faith, complete trust. Emotion swells in my throat, and I swallow around the lump. What Nevina is doing is evil. I won’t let her win.
“What if we move the festival out of the castle?” I ask.
“Nevina will never go for that?—”
I cut her off with a shake of my head. “No. We still throw the one we’ve planned. Those of us who can attend still go to the one sponsored by Nevina. But we don’t stay. Instead, after we’ve shown our faces an acceptable length of time, we go to the real festival, one we hold deep within the forest. Maybe somewhere on the outskirts of the black lake. It will have to be simple, but it will be genuine. All shades can attend. Nevina and Brahm will never know.”
Tempest and Odette exchange glances.
“There are practical considerations. It will be difficult to create a second altar and a second sacrifice,” Odette says.
“I’m sure we could find a second set of musicians,” Eudora says hopefully.
“The one in the courtyard is early, and Nevina did say the sacrifice shouldn’t go to waste. Perhaps shades from the north could offer to take it off her hands,” Tempest offers.
“But what about Thanesia herself? We’ve spent weeks constructing an effigy of her out of fruit, flowers, and red wheat. The festival is in seven days. We’ll never be able to recreate it in time,” Odette says.
I look at the statue and then back at the castle. Not too far. “Has Nevina seen the effigy?”
Tempest sniffs. “No. She barely looked at any of my illustrations.”
I walk to the side of the statue and lift. It’s incredibly heavy, but I’m able to shift it a quarter inch before my strength gives out. “What if we used this one in the courtyard? A few trusted men could move it inside. Odette, could your florist create a string of flowers and harvest wheat that we could drape over her?”
She grins. “I can do better than that. A flower-and-wheat-embellished net should be easy enough. They’ll never know where she came from.”
