The Sleeping Prince - Melinda Salisbury Page 0,108

were here with me, spying on me.

I find them in an alcove, hidden behind a carved wooden screen. Twylla sits stiffly, facing a large woman dressed entirely in black, like the Sisters, though with none of their eerie elegance. She must be the Sin Eater, Amara. Her eyelids are heavy, giving them the look of being hooded, her face round and waxen in contrast to her daughter’s obvious anger. I can see no resemblance between them.

“I thought you worked alone,” Twylla says as I take a seat beside her. The Sin Eater looks at me and I nod in greeting, feeling oddly relieved when she inclines her head to me, before looking back at Twylla. “I never thought you’d be friendly with nuns.”

“Nuns,” Amara scoffs. “They’re a reformed resurrectionist cult, and no matter what else I tell you, don’t forget this mess is partly their fault, too. We’ve all played our part.”

“I don’t understand. What are they to do with us – you?”

Her mother gives her a long look. “They are the Sisters of Næht. I am the Sin Eater, High Priestess of Næht.”

Chills run through me as she says the words; it sounds as though a hundred woman have spoken them.

“But she doesn’t exist, does she?” Twylla says. “For all your talk of Næht and Dæg, they’re not real. They never were.”

Amara stares at her daughter, who meets her gaze evenly.

“Actually, they were,” I say, my voice too loud in the reverent atmosphere. Amara turns and nods at me to continue, betraying no surprise at my knowing. “Their real names were Aurek and Aurelia.”

“Aurek and Aurelia?” Twylla asks. “The Sleeping Prince and his sister?”

“You know the story?” I ask, and she nods.

Then she turns to her mother. “I know all of them. I can read now.” She sounds both proud and defiant, and painfully young. “Go on,” she says to me.

“Well, the House of Belmis changed it all. Manipulated it to support their rise to power. They renamed Aurek and Aurelia Dæg and Næht to fit their purpose. Eventually they changed from siblings to lovers too.”

“Gods, imagine waking and discovering all of this. That your life has become a legend, and a much embroidered one at that.”

“You would pity him?” Amara stares at her daughter.

“No.” Twylla’s voice is icy. “He’s a murderer. Nothing excuses what he’s done. That’s why I plan to fight him. Lormere has had its fill of corrupt royals.”

“I wondered what it would take to remove the scales from your eyes,” the Sin Eater says softly.

Twylla’s lips curl into a snarl. “If, instead of merely wondering, you’d seen fit to tell me what I was walking into, I might have been better able to cope. Instead I swallowed every lie they fed me until it tore me apart.”

“I had no choice, Twylla. I am the Sin Eater—”

“Yes, yes, your precious role. I hope it takes good care of you when you’re old, because Gods know where my brothers are, Maryl is dead, and I will not aid you.”

The Sin Eater sits back, visibly stunned at the venom in her daughter’s voice, and I reel too. I have already seen the Goddess in Twylla, but this is a different kind of awesome. This is vengeance, and cruelty: a war Goddess. Fighting the High Priestess of Næht. I shiver again, caught between these two women who seem to have forgotten I’m here.

“I tried to tell you, many times, that our role was more than it seemed.”

“You fed me riddles in a room like a furnace. I was a child,” Twylla says, in a voice that’s deep and raw and broken. “How could I possibly have understood what you were telling me? How could I have guessed what the queen was truly like? Did you know the maids at the castle wouldn’t bring my meals to me in case I poisoned them? They wouldn’t touch my used plates and knives until they’d seen my guards hold them and not die. Throughout it all, my only friends – my only comfort – were your Gods. I lived like that, every day for four harvests, to find out that everything I believed was a lie.”

Twylla stands as though to leave but the Sin Eater grips her wrist, moving surprisingly fast, and holds her firm.

“Let me give you some truths. Decide after that if you can fight your war without my knowledge. Then if you want to walk away, I will not stop you. But you are the last of us and