Alvilda seemed genuinely curious. “What do you mean?”
“I … ” I bit my lip. “Did anyone—your grandparents, talking about their grandparents maybe—tell you of a time when men walked around without masking their faces?”
“No … ” Despite the flush on Father’s cheeks, he seemed to think I was the one who was drunk.
“You mean, like the tales of the first goddess?” Alvilda asked. “That’s just a story, Noll. A way to explain why thing are. But there’s no proof things were ever any different.”
Father shook his head. “Maybe they were. Long ago. But the legend of the first goddess must be a thousand years old.”
We three sat silently for a while. I felt stupid. A thousand years? You really think you traveled back in time a thousand years, and that the lord lived then and has lived to this day? How? It just can’t be. It felt real then, but now it’s just a memory.
Finally, Father let out a deep breath. He didn’t seem interested in my visions of the past. Not when his goddess’s life hung in the balance.
“Whatever you think of the lord, Noll, he saved your mother’s life.”
Both Alvilda and I turned toward Father.
Father traced a pattern in the sawdust on the table with his finger. “Everyone who got sick from that illness died, Noll. Every single one. And I think all of her stress over your refusal to love your man made Aubree susceptible.”
I grimaced. This revelation explained much of the unspoken strain between us after Mother’s “death.” My mother was his goddess, and whatever I was to him, nothing could match the worth he put on her health and happiness. He could feel free to blame me. I no longer cared. “Mother understood. She didn’t want to rush me. She wanted me to be happy.”
Father licked his dry, cracked lips. “But that’s only because she assumed you’d eventually Return to him. Like decent women do.”
Alvilda reached across the corner of the table and smacked Father on the back of the head. She sent me a satisfied smile.
Father rubbed his head and looked at Alvilda wearily. “That wasn’t a comment on you, Alvilda.”
Alvilda pounded her fist on the table. “I don’t care. It’s a darn careless thing to say about your daughter. What about a woman’s choice?”
Father shook his head. “What worth is a woman’s choice when it comes to the lord of the village? I’d hoped she would learn to love him. At the very least, that she wouldn’t wish for him to be as wretched as those in the commune.”
“The lord of the village does not move into the commune,” I said. Alvilda and Father both looked at me with puzzled expressions. I sighed. “And did Mother know what you had done?”
Father rubbed his cheek and stared at his empty bottle. “No, she was already beyond consciousness by then.” A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye; that eye seemed dark and lifeless with its dying flicker. “I didn’t know for certain until today that she truly still lived.”
“And does Elfriede know?”
Father continued to scratch his chin. “I think she knows enough. She probably pieced some of it together. She spent more time around the house than you after I told you your mother died.”
Probably because I spent most of my time outrunning carriages and deliverymen’s carts. And because she was there, almost always with Jurij.
I’d had enough of the tiresome discussion. I would say my goodbyes and be on my way. Back to that chilling castle, the closest thing I had to a home now. I stood to leave when the door burst open. Jurij and Elfriede appeared in the doorway, and before anyone could speak, Jurij swept me into his arms and held me tightly.
“Noll,” he whispered. “I didn’t know you came. We missed you.”
My hands moved numbly to squeeze him back. Elfriede, still in the doorway, wouldn’t look at me. She stood there, her eyes on the floor, one arm cradling the other against her chest. She hadn’t missed me at all. In fact, I imagined seeing her new husband in my arms was enough to make her wish she had seen the last of me when I rode off in the black carriage.
They never cared about me. Not Father, not Elfriede. They wanted me to stuff away all my hopes, all my feelings. I tried. I did. But if I’m going to accept that I’m the veiled lord’s goddess, as they want me to, then at least I’ll have one thing to remember before I lock all my happiness away.
I ran my fingers through the back of Jurij’s hair and kissed him.
The ground exploded. It cracked and groaned and roared to life. And I knew, just a moment too late, that it wasn’t the euphoria of my first kiss that made me feel as if the earth moved beneath my feet. It was actually moving and I was sent flying.
“Alvilda! Are you all right?”
I looked up to see a masked man in the doorway. He crouched near Alvilda, who must have fallen off of her chair.