Frederick nodded again, offering no further insight.
“Could I just…” I trailed off as he crossed his arms, an impassable mountain too formidable to argue with. “Could you let him know I came by? Once he’s awake?”
Frederick promised he would and silently shut the door before I could muster any other request.
I stared at the door, memorizing the woodwork, and tried to process my next step.
We were supposed to tell Alex today.
Everything that was meant to happen today hinged on Alex knowing everything we did.
With a sigh, I left the south wing and made my way down to the first floor. I was too restless to return to my rooms. Too nauseous to attempt breakfast. I could feel the weight of every secret I learned last night pressing down on me, compelling me to act, but there was nothing to be done. Not now. Not without Alex.
I turned down hall after hall without purpose.
I passed by the same set of mirrors three times before I realized I was pacing in a circle, trapped in a hazy loop, just like Constance.
I needed to do something. Anything.
My thoughts were a tangled web of half-understood truths, half-formed plans, and layers of questions that had no answers.
Julien’s revelation about Gerard’s selected women ate at me.
It was clear Gerard was attempting to coax out some sort of power, some strain of divinity from the women’s bloodlines and pass it along to his altered progeny. But how did I fit into that plan?
I was different from most people, that much was true.
But I was not like those women.
There were no gods in my family tree, however manygenerations removed. The Thaumas line, for all its proud nobility, was wholly ordinary. I didn’t know why I could see what I did, but it wasn’t because of some sordid, secret tryst with the divine. I was mortal, through and through.
So why had Gerard chosen me?
And what did he hope my children might do?
I remembered Viktor’s musing from last night, that Gerard might be trying to speak to the gods. The older ones, long tucked away into the deepest parts of the Sanctum. The Denizens.
Why would anyone go to such lengths to speak to them?
He’d dosed expecting mothers with mixtures of poppies and betel nuts, water plants and funguses. Things grown in the depths of his poison garden.
Things like the laurel plant that had so affected me…
I remembered the wicked grin of the weeping wraith. How she’d moved. How she’d spoken.
I stopped my pacing, nearly tripping over my own feet, as I was struck with the conviction that she’d not been a hallucination after all.
She’d actually been there with us.
I was just the only one who could see her.
A goddess.
Or something like it.
I licked my lips, considering what this might mean.
The gods knew all.
