“For want of a queen or something to command, I’ll just be ‘Nova’ for now.” Nova smiled at her.
“See that she’s taken care of,” Shiro said to the girl and then turned to Nova. “I’ll let the others know you’ve arrived.”
“Feel free to take your time about it,” Nova told him.
Shiro left them in the hallway.
The servant, a young girl called Ai, gave her the abbreviated tour: bedroom, bathroom, assorted empty rooms that had evidently been only recently reanimated to host guests in hiding. Nova barely listened beyond the mention of a bath that had been prepared, and stripped as soon as the bathroom door was shut behind her.
She sank into the deep tub slowly, and a week’s worth of dirt peeled from her body like a layer of skin. Pearls of scented oil became tiny iridescent islands floating in a murky film of trekking filth. She closed her eyes and breathed in the steam.
She was finally still long enough to fret over leaving Yemi behind in enemy hands. Her fury over having done it had fueled her march through the mountains, but now she was able to just worry.
Nova’s thoughts drifted to Van. She had never been the target of such a plan before. An obstacle between a villain and Yemi, sure, but never the endgame herself. There would be more of this when she and Yemi finally married. She dunked her head beneath the surface and held it there for the length of a sigh.
“Nova?” Cutter’s deep voice on the other side of the door vibrated into the room.
“Can we pretend I’m not here for another hour?” Nova groaned.
“Where is she?” Cutter called.
That’s a no, then,she thought and climbed reluctantly to her feet, nearly apologizing to what warmth remained in the water for being unable to use it properly. She was keenly aware of the fine tremor in her hands as she collected a towel to dry off and wrap herself in.Either food or sleep had been next on her agenda. Cutter’s inquisition hadn’t even made the list.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“With Ursla.”
“What?”
Nova groaned and began applying moisturizer from a waiting apothecary bottle. “Yemi went with her voluntarily to Abyssa. I couldn’t follow.”
She could almost hear him breathing fire through the door and opened it before he had a fit and knocked it down. He stared down at her in wide-eyed rage.
“How could you—”
“Not the time,sir.” She gritted her teeth and pushed past him into her room, where she found Selah leaning against the doorframe.
“Oh. Hello,” Nova said.
“Glad you made it,” Selah replied.
Nova discarded her old clothes and wet things in a pile near the door and sat atop a heavy wooden drawing table to tie down her hair while Cutter loomed in the doorway. A large, square bed stacked with Luzon’s famed gold brocade bedding beckoned her. She smiled just thinking about falling unconscious in the middle of it tonight.
Selah approached with a worried expression, inspecting Nova’s body for what she was sure were points of concern. “Do you mind?” the witch asked. “You look a little—”
“I look alot,” Nova said and nodded quickly, assuming that a Selah inspection came with tinctures and potions that made for even grander sleep.
“You don’t understand.Shedoesn’t understand the Obé’s power.” Cutter seemed beyond unsettled, frantic even, about not having eyes on Yemaya. Nova couldn’t fault him, but she also wasn’t willing to allow him to send her into a panic. Yemi washerjob, not his. Not anymore.
“What he means is there is a risk,” Selah said calmly, massaging pressure points along Nova’s arms and neck. “Or there was, when thefaith was still strong. Her followers would offer her their bodies, and she would… occupy them, often for minutes at a time. It—”
“She wouldmassacrethem from within!” Cutter roared as he paced the floor. “Throw themselves from cliffs, cut their own throats, gut themselves with shards of glass, and the Kept collected the bloodied pieces for temple windows.”
“It was something of a parlor trick,” Selah started again in her more soothing tone. “But they became known as blessings, even the ones that resulted in deaths. The ones who survived, many of them became the priests of the Kept.”
“And by taking her there, you’ve served her up.” Cutter pointed a finger violently at Nova.
She scoffed and brushed Selah aside. “I’m sorry, have youmetYemaya? See, if you had, you’d know I’d have had to kill her to keep her from going. We saw the blessings. We get it. We were attacked on the way by people under her control. But what you’re talking about is an issue for the faithful, and we know Yemi’s a gleeful heretic. She’s not offering herself up to the witch. I was there. She’s getting an army from the sea queen—her great-aunt.” She wouldn’t tell them about Van. She wouldn’t treat her cousin like a point to be made.
