I blinked, ceding the battle of wills before it had even begun. Crumpling to the cobbles, ready to press my forehead to the stone and beg until my voice gave out and the ground swallowed me whole. “Y-Your Grace, I—”
A cool, pale hand settled on the back of my neck, washing me with a ki so pure and true, it hurt to be near it. “Be still, my little rogue. All is well.”
Goddess, her voice! How had I failed to note its beauty? How had I mistaken such hypnotic serenity for malice?
“Annabelle, darling. Go on ahead,” the High Priestess murmured, petting sweat-damp hair back from my face. Her perfect, sacred knees marked by the alley’s filth as she soothed me. “We’ll be along shortly.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the other said, though I didn’t see her depart. Could see nothing but the purity radiating from deep within her mistress. And with each frantic beat of my heart, that same perfection eased the hurt of rejection. Urging me to forget one Captain Asher Rawlings, the betrayer who had nothing to say for himself, for in his place? Where he once stood at my back, spinning a web of lies?
Nothing but shadows.
He was gone.
Chapter 4
“So.”
I didn’t lift my cheek from her thigh. Couldn’t bear to meet her eyes or wipe the scalding tears from my own.
Cool, gentle fingers threaded through my hair. “What’s your name, child?”
“Mila.” I cleared the torment from my throat. “My name is Mila, Your Grace.”
She snorted, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in her silver skirts. “And your surname?”
Eyes squeezed shut around the burning, salty ache, I shook my head. To reveal such a thing was… it was… I couldn’t…
Stroking my hair, the High Priestess hummed under her breath, sending ki pulsing through me… so soothing… “Your name?”
I blinked. “Tannovic.”
“Ah.” She patted my back, laying a twisted length of my hair over my shoulder, then moved to stand. Breaking away, she took her ki with her. “A senator’s daughter. I should have known.”
The blood rushed from my face so fast, my head spun. Leaving me gaping up at her, sprawled on the cobblestones. “Goddess, what—howdid you—”
“So youhaveheard of the Goddess, then?” Her laugh echoed through the hollow space in my chest. “I shall have to commend your father on his exemplary parenting skills.”
“P-Please, Mistress, you can’t—”
“What I cannot do, my little rogue, is leave youhereafter what you almost did to that Caledonian soldier.” She cast a glare over her shoulder, at the path he must have taken, and so missed my shocked flinch. “And neither can I miss this meeting, much as I wish I could. No, our prime minister would enjoythatentirely too much.” She pursed her lips and with a sigh, clapped the commoner’s grime from her hands, then reached for me. “It’s far from ideal, but you’ll have to come with me.”
I scrambled to my feet, unbalanced. Overwrought. “Go to the Senate with you? I can’t possibly—” I shook my head, retreating until my back bumped the wall, scrubbing the tears from my cheeks.
“Come now. You can’t get into any more trouble than you’re already in,” she said, matching my retreat with a cheeky smirk. “And I’ll do everything in my considerable power to cut this meeting as short as I can.”
“You don’t understand!” Heart trying to punch through solid bone, I reached for my pendant and came up empty. Scarcely managing to contain the scream clawing the back of my throat bloody, I said, “My Glaith. It’s… I must have dropped it.”
“Oh, the Glaith cannot save you from what you are, girl. Not for long, anyway. You were already breaking through, though I wasn’t certain until I tasted your ki myself.” She smirked, collecting my hands in a touch laced with false serenity. “We’re lucky I sensed you when I did. I shudder to think what would have happened to that young man had I been too far away to intervene.”
And there it was. He’d managed to play the victim and escape with his secret intact—with my pendant, no less, the stinking, evil Elite bastard. Teeth clenched hard enough to make my gums squeal, I tried again, enforcing the captain’s lie, if only soIcould be the one to tear it down and watch it burn. “Mistress,please. My father said there would be Elites at that meeting. I can’t—”
“Of course you can, and you will,” she returned, spinning on her heel in a swirl of silver skirts, the strength of her grip belying that delicate frame.
“But the Glaith—”
“Glaith dependency is not something I tolerate in my Priestesses, Mila. It fosters weak and lazy Priestesses at a time when trust in the temple and the divine arts are at an all-time low.” Pausing at the threshold between dark and light, private alley and crowded market, she straightened my simple tunic, and said, “I will shield you from the worst of your… affliction. And then we shall have a little chat with your father about his duties as a Tritan citizen and a parent. Come, Miss Tannovic. The Caledonians await.”
I flinched, unable to refuse as the High Priestess herself marched me to the Senate.
