Page 20 of Skysong

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Chapter 10

Oriane’s father did not come the next day, or the one after that.

She had been disappointed to learn from Terault that Marcel had delivered no written response to her message, only a verbal one: her father would be on his way soon. Her disappointment turned to worry as time drew on and still there was no sign of him.

‘He should be here,’ she murmured on her fifth morning, as Andala helped her dress before her dawnsong. Had something gone wrong on his journey? Her heart lurched to even think of it.

‘How did you leave things with him?’

Oriane turned around. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t imagine he knew you intended to come here. Or, if he did, that he would have let you come alone.’ Andala’s dark eyes bored into hers, shrewd, unreadable, until Oriane tore herself away and moved to the window. She stared out into the darkness, as if hoping to spot her father in the lantern-lit gardens.

‘He knew that I wanted to. I had told him I just wanted to see it – the city, the people, perhaps the palace from a distance. He … he asked me not to go.’ She swallowed. ‘I did it anyway.’

Could that be the reason her father had not come? Was he so hurt, so betrayed, so angry with his disobliging daughter that he had ignored the king’s invitation? The possibility had hovered in the back72of her mind these past days, quiet, insidious. She had ignored it then. She found she couldn’t do so now.

‘Don’t feel bad.’ Andala had joined her by the window, looking down into the gardens as if she, too, were waiting for someone to arrive. ‘We aren’t beholden to our parents forever. We all deserve a chance to choose our own lives and live them.’ A pause, barely the length of a breath. ‘Sometimes it’s better if they let us go.’

Oriane studied her profile. She wondered if it was her own parents Andala thought of as she spoke. Would it be too familiar to ask?

‘Good morrow, my lady,’ Andala said, before she could. With a curt nod she was gone.

Oriane sighed. When she turned back to the window, she could no longer see the gardens below, only her reflection, insubstantial and strangely foreign, staring back at her from the glass.

Five days turned into six, which turned into ten.Don’tfeelbad,Andala had said. And, consciously or not, Oriane found herself taking the advice.

Each morning she sang her dawnsong, and each morning more people witnessed it. The king was always there; Hana, Kitt and Terault, too. The seneschal seemed to have taken on the duty of presiding over her ‘performances’, bringing a few more guests to each one. The slowly growing crowd made Oriane nervous.

It also excited her.

Sharing her song was a joy. There was no other word for it. The atmosphere in the room as she did so – she had never experienced its like. The rapture, the reverence on people’s faces … It was energising. Galvanising. There was an alchemy to having an audience, as if all73she had needed to turn her transformations from ritual to gift was a handful of people to share them with.

Still, she had not quite learned how to interact with these people. One woman, clad in a grey gown tied with a sash of sky blue, had fallen prostrate before Oriane, tears visible in her eyes before she lowered her face to the marble floor. ‘I thought the day would never come,’ she said. ‘The day when a goddess would walk among us.’

Goddess. The word echoed strangely through the room. Was that what they thought she was?

‘I hope our guests’ fervency does not make you uneasy, my lady,’ Terault said later, after the spectators had been ushered away.

‘It does, a little,’ she confessed. ‘Not that I am not grateful for their kindness. I just … I am not used to this sort of …’

‘Veneration?’

Oriane nodded. ‘That word the woman in grey used,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Goddess. I am not sure I deserve such a title. I don’t wish to deceive anyone about what I am.’

The seneschal pinned her with his pale grey eyes. ‘You have been what you are all along, my lady. It is not you who has been deceptive.’

Before she could ask what he meant, Terault changed the subject.

‘I am sorry your father still has not arrived.’ His voice was gentler than usual, and rich with sympathy. ‘I can imagine that he might find it difficult, to share his only child with the world, to deviate from the plan he must have had for your life.’

The plan.

Her father had made a plan, hadn’t he? He’d told her about it himself.To keep you away from those who might do you harm.

Orfromthosewhomightloveme,Oriane had replied.74

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