I’d been about to slip out of the shift but paused. “You’re cousins?”
Little Hazel nodded. “Their mama is my aunt Genevieve.”
I took in their blond hair once more. It was as pale as corn silk, just like all of my siblings’. And their eyes…I wanted to laugh that I’d not noticed it before. Those were Mama’s blue eyes shining brightly from their little faces.
“Your mother’s name is Genevieve?”
Genevieve. My oldest sister.
Though I’d not seen her in years—ten years,a voice in my head acknowledged—my heart swelled as I heard her name. I turned to little Hazel. “And you, who is your mother?”
“Mathilde,” she answered, handing me my petticoats, wholly unaware of the revelation unfolding within me.
“Mathilde,” I echoed, feeling my blood sing with wonder.
These were my sisters’ children.
These beautiful girls were my nieces!
“How are they?” I asked, hurrying to throw on my chemise. “Your mothers?”
I had a sudden urge to see them, to invite them to Alletois. They could bring their children and stay with me at the cottage. We could play in the wildflower fields with Cosmos and I would take mysisters out for afternoon tea at the village bakery. It wouldn’t matter what our past had been; we could begin a new future, a new chapter. I nearly laughed imagining it all.
“Dead,” the oldest girl said, staring at me as though I were incredibly stupid. “They’re dead.”
“Oh.” My dizzying daydreams crashed as reality set in.
Amandine had said these girls were orphans, that they’d been brought to the Rift after their village had been overrun, its townspeople massacred.
Their mothers, my sisters, were dead.
“I’m so sorry, of course,” I murmured, feeling flustered that I’d let myself be carried away in imagining all that would never be.
I wanted to tell these girls who I truly was to them. I wanted to promise that I’d take them from the Rift once my messy business with the king was at an end, take them back to the cottage and care for them, raise them, love them, but I stopped short.
I couldn’t care for these children. I didn’t know if I’d be able to return to Alletois. Not after killing the king.
No. I’d have to run, have to flee the palace, flee the capitol, perhaps even flee Martissienes itself.
A series of bells rang throughout the temple, and the priestess frowned. “That’s the call to evening prayer,” she explained. “I must leave you now, but someone else will come and sit with you.”
Footsteps echoed in the hall just outside the room, and she brightened.
“Here he is now,” Amandine announced, and I quickly slipped my dress over my head, letting the embroidered linen fall into place.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” I began, memorizing each of the girls’ faces. “I—”
“Let us leave Hazel to her rest now.” The priestess reached outand smoothed a benediction over me, tracing her fingers over my brow, cleaving my face into segments, just like those of the gods she served. “Blessings on you, Mademoiselle Trépas, and may Félicité’s fortune shine brightly upon His Majesty.”
I thanked her once more and straightened out the sheet. I was unaccustomed to being the one in the sickbed and found I disliked having so much attention thrust upon me.
“Fortunes and blessings upon you,” said the new postulant from the doorway. He carried with him a smudge stick that filled the air with a black agar–scented haze.
“And upon you as well,” I said, turning to him.
Amandine placed a hand on the doorframe, barring the new arrival’s entrance as she whispered instructions to him. I could see the top of his head bob with assurances before he pressed his fingertips together and offered the priestess a low bow as she turned to leave. He was much taller than her, with pale skin and sun-lightened hair.
Before entering the room, he flicked the smudge stick at each corner before setting it in a bronze bowl just inside the threshold.
