The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,17

before.

I am only Lia now. From this day forward.

It felt like a baptism. A deeper kind of cleansing. Water trickled down my face and dripped from my chin. Terravin wasn’t just a new home. Dalbreck could have offered that, but there I’d have been only a curiosity in a foreign land, still with no voice in my own destiny. Terravin offered a new life. It was both exhilarating and terrifying. What if I never saw my brothers again? What if I was a failure at this life too? But everything I had seen so far had encouraged me, even Berdi. Somehow, I’d make this new life work.

The creek was wider than I expected, but I stayed in the calm shallows as Pauline had instructed. It was a clear, gentle pool no more than shoulder deep with slick river rock dotting its bottom. I lay back and floated, my eyes resting on the filigreed canopy of oak and pine. With dusk settling, the shadows deepened. Through the trunks, golden lights began to flicker in the hillside homes as Terravin prepared for the eventide remembrances. I was surprised to find that I listened expectantly for the songs that ushered in the evening throughout all of Morrighan, but only the occasional hint of melody caught on a breeze.

I will find you …

In the farthest corner …

I paused, turning my head to the side to hear better, the burning tone of the words more urgent than any of the holy remembrances of home. I couldn’t place the phrases either, but the Holy Text was vast.

The melodies vanished, plucked away by a cool breeze, and instead I listened to the whoosh of Berdi’s brush as I vigorously scrubbed my back. My left shoulder burned where soap met wedding kavah, as if a battle raged between the two. With each pass of the brush, I imagined the lion crest of Dalbreck shrinking back in terror, soon to be gone from my life forever.

I washed away the suds with a quick dip, then twisted around, trying to view the lion’s demise, but the small section of kavah I was able to see in the dim light—the vines swirling around the lion’s claw on the back of my shoulder—still bloomed in all its glory. Ten days ago, I was praising the artisans. Now I wanted to curse them.

Snap!

I dropped down into the water and spun, ready to face an intruder. “Who’s there?” I called, trying to cover myself.

Only an empty forest and silence answered back. A doe perhaps? But where had it gone so quickly? I searched the shadows of the trees, but found no movement.

“It was only the snap of a twig,” I reassured myself. “Any small animal could have made it.”

Or maybe a wandering guest of the inn, surprised to have come upon me? I smiled, amused that I may have frightened someone off—before they caught sight of my back, I hoped. Kavahs were a sign of position and wealth, and this one, if examined too closely, clearly spoke of royalty.

I stepped out of the water, hastily putting on my fresh clothes, and then spotted a small gray rabbit darting behind a tree. A relieved sigh escaped me.

Only a small animal. Just as I thought.

CHAPTER SIX

After three days of keeping us in hiding, Berdi finally relaxed her tight grip, believing we were true to our word. No one had followed. She had an inn to think of, she reminded us, and couldn’t afford trouble with the authorities, though I couldn’t imagine anyone in a village like Terravin paying us any notice. She slowly let us venture out, running small errands for her, getting cinnamon at the epicurean, thread at the mercantile, and guest soaps for the inn at the soap maker.

I still had some jewels left over from my wedding cloak, so I could have paid my own way as a guest, but that wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore. I wanted to be engaged, attached to where I lived in the same way everyone else was, not an interloper trading on her past. The jewels remained tucked away in the cottage.

Walking down to the town center felt like the days of old when my brothers and I used to run freely through the village of Civica, conspiring and laughing together, the days before my parents began limiting my activities. Now it was just me and Pauline. We grew closer. She was the sister I never had. We shared things now that protocol at Civica