The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,153

on your tiny shoulders. I thought the name was an omen, the answer I was hoping for. Your father protested at the breach of protocol, but I wouldn’t back down.

“Afterward, it seemed I had made the right decision. From the time you were an infant, you were strong. You had a lusty cry that could wake all of Civica. Everything about you was vibrant. You squalled louder, played harder, hungered more, and thrived. I gave you the same freedoms as your brothers, and you ran freely with them. I was happier than I had ever been. When your formal schooling began, the Royal Scholar tried to tailor your lessons to nurture the gift. I forbade it, despite his protests. When he finally confronted me, asking for a reason, I told him the circumstances of your birth and my fear that the gift would bring you harm. I insisted he focus on your other strengths. He reluctantly agreed. Then, when you were twelve—”

“That’s when everything changed.”

“I was afraid and had to enlist the help of the Royal Scholar to—”

“But the Royal Scholar is exactly who you needed to be afraid of! He tried to kill me. He sent a bounty hunter to slit my throat, and he’s secretly sent countless scholars to Venda to devise ways to kill us all. He conspired with them. However you may have trusted him once, he turned on you. And me.”

“No, Lia,” she said, shaking her head. “Of this much I’m certain. He never betrayed you. He was one of the twelve priests who lifted you before the gods in the abbey and promised his protection.”

“People change, Mother—”

“Not him. He never broke his promise. I understand your mistrust. I’ve lived with it ever since you were twelve years old. It made me conspire with him all the more.”

“What happened when I was twelve?”

She told me the Royal Scholar had called her into his office. He had something he thought she should see. He said it was a very old book that had been taken off a dead Vendan soldier. Like all artifacts, it had been turned over to the royal archive and the Royal Scholar had set about translating it. What he read disturbed him, and he consulted with the Chancellor about it. The Chancellor had initially seemed disturbed too. He read it over several times, but then declared it barbarian jibberish, threw it into the fire, and left. It wasn’t unusual for the Chancellor to order barbarian texts destroyed. Most made no sense, even when translated, and this one was no different, except for one key thing that had caught the Royal Scholar’s attention. He retrieved it from the fire. It was damaged but not destroyed.

“I knew when he handed me the book along with the translation that something was very wrong. I felt queasy as I began to read. I heard the heavy steps of a beast once again, but by the time I got to the last verses, I was trembling with rage.”

“When you read that my life would be sacrificed.”

She nodded. “I ripped out the last page and threw the book at the Royal Scholar. I told him to destroy it just as the Chancellor had ordered, and I ran from the room feeling like I’d been betrayed in the most wicked of ways—tricked by the very gift I had trusted.”

“Venda didn’t trick you, Mother. The universe sang the name to her. She simply sang it back, and you listened. You yourself said the name seemed right. It had to be someone. Why not me?”

“Because you’re my daughter. I would sacrifice my own life, but never yours.”

I reached down and squeezed her hand. “Mother, I chose to make the words true. You had to have felt it in your heart too. You gave me a special blessing on the day I left. You asked the gods to gird me with strength.”

She looked down at my bandaged hand in my lap and shook her head. “But this—” I saw all the fears she had harbored for years crystallized in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you ever share this with Father?”

Her eyes shone with tears again.

“You didn’t trust him?”

“I couldn’t trust him not to speak to anyone else. A wedge had grown between us as far as the cabinet was concerned. It had become a contentious subject between us. He seemed as married to them as he was to me. Maybe more so. The Scholar and I both agreed it was too risky to tell