Amryn stared right back, forcing her expression to remain neutral even though her heart was thudding painfully in her chest. “You knew my father?”
She felt an unmistakable stab of grief as Lisbeth said, “Yes. I knew him.”
Amryn’s throat was dry, her lungs too tight for words. From the corner of her eye she saw the guards had paused as well, maintaining a respectful distance. But her focus was on the woman standing before her.
Lisbeth’s mouth was a firm line, at odds with the sorrow rising within her. “Before I completed the rites to become a cleric, my name was Lisbeth Lukis.”
Amryn stopped breathing.“You’re . . . my aunt?”
“No,” Lisbeth said, a new curtness entering her voice. “We are not related by blood. Even so, your father was as dear to me as a brother.” She resumed walking,and Amryn was left to follow, tugged forward by a combination of curiosity and shock.
They were nearly to the end of the long pool when Lisbeth released a low exhale. “Your father and I were both abandoned as infants on the same church steps, mere months apart.” She peeked over at Amryn. “When an infant or nameless child is abandoned to the church’s care, the clerics who serve as caretakers give the child a name from a saint, and—because the Divinities don’t want any soul to flounder—the church also assigns a surname. A different one is used each year. Based on the child’s surname, one can determine what year the babe was left to the church.”
“I didn’t know that.” Saints, Amryn hadn’t even known her father had been abandoned as a child, let alone raised by the church.
“Ferrin and I grew up together at the Holy Orphanage of Daersen,” Lisbeth said. “And we both made the choice to become initiates when we turned twelve.”
“My father was acleric?” The mere idea was as shocking as it was absurd. How did a cleric come to marry an empath?
“Your father never became a cleric.” Lisbeth’s tone hardened along with her emotions as she continued.“He never completed the rites. Before he could take his final oaths, he met your mother.” The disdain she felt for Amryn’s mother was unmistakable. While the hatred was old, it still burned inside her.
Amryn’s mouth was dry, but she managed to ask, “How did they meet?”
Lisbeth lifted one eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head. She’d been too young to wonder about such a thing when her mother was alive, and after her death, she’d never thought to ask Rix. Frankly, she’d lost all interest in her father after he’d betrayed them to the knights. But she was suddenly desperate to learn more about her parents. She needed to understand how her father—a man who had once been abandoned—could abandon his wife and children. How a man who wanted to be a cleric could turn his back on everything he’d believed and marry an empath, and yet choose to betray her so completely.
“Please,” Amryn said, her voice a little hoarse. “If there’s anything you can tell me about them, I want to know.”
Lisbeth’s forehead creased. “I’m not sure I’m the most appropriate person to share this story. I was never fond of your mother.” An understatement, if her emotions were any indication.
At this point, Amryn didn’t care. “I’d like to know their story. You knew them in a way I never did.”
Lisbeth still seemed a little uncertain, but she dipped her chin. “Very well.”
They exited the courtyard and started down another path lined with hedges, though this one had wooden beams and lattices that formed a tunnel over them, flowering vines clinging to every surface.
Lisbeth took a moment to gather her thoughts. Amryn could feel the blur of her emotions as memory drew her back. “Ferrin and I were serving the church in Ferradin,” she began. “We were nineteen years old, only a year away from making our final oaths. Our mission was to strengthen the faith of newly converted souls, since Ferradin had recently been brought into the empire. From the first moment Ferrin saw your mother . . .” She shook her shaved head, sadness and regret filling her. “I knew a part of his soul was already lost to her. One instant. That’s all it took.”
Shadows played over Lisbeth’s face as they walked under the arching canopy of blossoming flowers. She eyed Amryn. “If I believed in witches, I would have thought your mother was one. Aileen Varden bewitched Ferrin with a mere smile, and he couldn’t strike her from his thoughts. He could barely focus during our prayer hours or scripture study. All he could think about was her.”
The high cleric’s lip curled. Amryn was certain the action was unconscious; Lisbeth seemed wholly lost in the past, her gaze taking on a distant glow. “Aileen and her brother, Rix, were close friends of Torin, the new young king of Ferradin. While the king visited the chapel as mandated by the emperor, and Rix accompanied him, Aileen did not. She stayed outside, talking with the locals in the markets instead of attending the sermons. We could often see her through the church windows. She was not easy to miss, with her flaming red hair.” Lisbeth’s eyes flicked to Amryn’s own fiery locks, but she was quick to look away.
“Ferrin’s eyes would stray to her constantly,” she continued. “When I caught him talking to Aileen in the market one day, he told me he only wanted to save her soul. I warned him that she had no desire to serve the Divinities, and that it would be better for him to focus on more willing souls.” She shook her head. “I tried. The Divinities know I did.” She sighed, her shoulders falling. “I should have tried harder. When he asked me not to tell our superiors that he was meeting her in secret . . . I should have done exactly that. But I didn’t. I thought no true harm could come to him. We were only going to be in Ferradin for a few more months, and I was sure all would revert to normal once we returned home to Daersen.” Shegrunted, the sound low and hard. “That assumption died when it was discovered Aileen was with child.Ferrin’schild.”
The bloodstone warmed against Amryn’s chest, probably responding to her chaotic emotions. Even though she knew this story ultimately didn’t have a happy ending, she was breathlessly hanging on every word.
“It was a scandal, of course.” Lisbeth’s hands curled to fists. “A holy initiate, on the cusp of becoming a cleric, getting a young woman pregnant? Not just any young woman, but a non-believer?” She made a sound in her throat. “Ferrin broke every sacred law of our faith. Every vow he’d ever taken as an initiate. He never should have touched a woman—evenlookedat a woman—in such a way. And now he’d fathered a child out of wedlock. Even worse, with a noblewoman high in King Torin’s court. When our superiors found out, they were understandably appalled. But Ferrin was a favorite in the church. They were willing to spare him the disgrace of such a public sin. They offered him forgiveness. All he had to do was repent and serve his penance without complaint, and all would be forgotten.”
“Penance?” Amryn asked, her voice sounding weak to her own ears. She was reeling from Lisbeth’s story. A story that bound her and the High Cleric of Craethen in ways she never could have conceived.
“Yes,” Lisbeth said. “They demanded he leave Ferradin immediately. They would send him to Palar to finish his training so he could still become a cleric. They planned to take Aileen to the temple in Daersen. They thought it best for everyone if she gave birth there, in secret, so she could be saved from the scandal as well. The child would then be raised by the church as an orphan, and Aileen could return to her life in Ferradin—with coin, if she promised to never speak a word of what had happened.”
Amryn tried to imagine her mother’s panic. Aileen would have been younger than Amryn was now, and she’d found herself unmarried and pregnant. Not only that, but with the child of an initiate of the church. A church that believed all empaths were monsters who deserved death. She had to have been so afraid. The clerics wanted to take her to a temple in Daersen. They wanted to take her baby away from her.
The mere thought of her mother’s situation—the terror she must have felt—made Amryn sick. And it made her wonder . . . Had Aileen loved Ferrin at that point? Had she trusted him enough to tell him that she was an empath? Or was she facing the full consequences of this on her own?
“The clerics laid out their plan to Ferrin,” Lisbeth said, interrupting Amryn’s swirling thoughts. “It was a path to redemption, but Ferrin wouldn’t listen. I had never seen him lose his temper before that night. In all our years together, he was always controlled. Calm. But I will never forget the way he faced the clerics in that chapel. With such fury, such . . .rebellion.” A shudder went through her, her eyes pinching shut. “He rejected their offering of forgiveness. He refused to give up Aileen, or their unborn child. He denounced everything on the spot. The church. The vows he’d already taken as an initiate. He renounced every dream he ever had of becoming a cleric—a high cleric, even.” Her eyes opened, and she pinned Amryn with her stare. “Ferrin chose excommunication that night, and he lost everything because of it.”
