The lone guard considers asking me what my business is, but when he takes one look at my face, his mouth snaps shut. He, at least, does not yet know I was not sired by Mortain.
There is a single torch outside Crunard’s cell, the light cast by its oily flames feeble against the thick darkness of the dungeon. I move as silently as a shadow to him, then lean back against the wall to watch him unobserved. Although I make no sound, he lifts his head and sees me. Slowly, he straightens, his eyes meeting mine.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask.
He tilts his head. “I suspected, which is very different from knowing.”
“Did you suspect from the very beginning, when I first showed up in Guérande?”
“No. Then I knew only that you had been sent to silence me. It wasn’t until we were on the road the next day and I saw you in broad daylight that I noticed the similarities between you and the abbess.”
I hold his gaze, unflinching. “And did you also know then that you were my sire?” I cannot call this stranger father.
His entire body stills. Indeed, it does not look as if he is even breathing. And then something in his face shifts and he smiles, surprising me. “You are my daughter. Well, I had wondered. Your abbess was a virgin when she and I knew each other, and your age seemed about right.”
He stares at me with such a painful mixture of warmth and hope that I cross my arms, as if by that gesture I can ward off his affection. “You will forgive me if I do not greet the news quite as warmly. All my life I have been laboring under the assumption that I was sired by a god. To learn instead that I was sired by one of the kingdom’s greatest traitors brings me little joy.”
He shrugs. “And you will forgive me if I seem overzealous, but I have sat in the dungeons of Guérande for over three months now under the assumption that the very last of my children had been killed. To find that I have another is an unexpected mercy I never dared dream of. Even if she did try to kill me.”
And then it hits me. Not only do I now have a human father—but I once had an entire family. The thought brings a surprising twist of pain with it—that I learned this only after they were all dead is yet one more thing the abbess has stolen from me. “Why did she want you dead?”
The sly look is back on his face before I have finished my question. Clearly, any affection he may feel for his daughter will not be at the expense of his own hide. “To cover up her crimes, of course.”
“And what crimes would those be?”
“The crimes of not being a daughter of Mortain. Of having deceived not only the convent, but the crown. It is fraud. Surely you realize that. One can only imagine the punishment for such crimes.”
And though his words do nothing more than echo my own thoughts, I know in my heart there is more to it than that. I do not ask the question that hovers on my lips: How come you abandoned her and your unborn child to fend for themselves? Instead, I ask, “How did you come to reconnect with her after all that time had passed?”
His faint chuckle surprised me. “That was purely by accident. As much a shock to me as to her, I assure you. In my position as chancellor to the late duke, I was also his unofficial spymaster and liaison with the convent. Imagine my surprise when I paid them a visit and found my ex-lover posing as abbess.”
His mockery of her—when he had so callously abandoned her—rankles. “She was not posing as abbess. She came by that position through her own efforts and skill.”
“Ah, I admire loyalty in my children. That speaks well of you, Annith.”
I do not care for the sound of my name coming from his lips, nor do I care for the tenderness with which he infuses it. “It is too bad that you were not as loyal to those whose lives you so carelessly used and then discarded,” I say quietly. “Any loyalty I have learned has not come from you.”
My heart heavier than it has ever been, I turn and leave the dungeon.
I have a father. And brothers, though they are all most likely dead. Family.
The realization worms into me as I move through the palace corridors, trying to find my way back to my chamber, a place where I can be alone with my thoughts as the full weight of the abbess’s treachery begins to settle over me.
She stole so much from me. With the choices she made, she took one life and gave me instead . . . an imprisonment. Memories of my early years in the convent fly through my head like a flock of disturbed crows, each one dark and unsettling. All those special sessions with the Dragonette. All those harsh punishments when I failed her tests. And the abbess—Sister Etienne—stood idly by.
No. Honesty forces me to admit that is not precisely true. She often did intervene, when she could. Slipped me bread or cheese when I had been denied supper. Snuck a candle to me so I could light the darkness of my punishment. She was often the one to unlock the door when it was over so she could fuss over me a bit and be certain I was all right.
Oh, how surprised she must have been when her imagined refuge turned into such a series of labors and trials! Her well-laid plans for the two of us collapsing under the weight of the Dragonette’s spiritual ambition.
That thought causes my steps to falter as I realize—fully realize—how very hard that must have been for her. To have the haven she’d sought turn into such a grim reality. One she was just as powerless to alter as she would have been had she remained outside the convent. Her sanctuary where the two of us need never be parted turned into a nightmare.
Is that why she wished me to be seeress? So we would still never need to be parted? How did she envision that future? Did she honestly think she could nudge and shape my visions to suit herself?
Or . . . another motive occurs to me. Perhaps it was her fear for my safety that controlled her actions. Her fear that, since I was not sired by Mortain, I would be vulnerable as I enacted His will in the world. Or mayhap she was concerned for my immortal soul.
But it matters not, for what she did was wrong. Doubly so when she sacrificed others such as Sybella and Matelaine to keep me safe. She is not the injured one here, no matter how she might try to present herself thus.
The closer I get to my chambers, the more I realize that I am unable to face Ismae and Sybella in my current state, and my feet change course, taking the next passageway out of the main corridor. Because I am tempted to hang my head in shame at the lie I have been a part of, I force myself to hold it high and squarely meet the glances of any of the passing nobles or courtiers who look at me. They do not know. Not yet.