Page 84 of Kissed By the Gods
His gaze is still on me, waiting.
“I come here for answers,” I answer him. “I have many questions, and few answers.”
He nods firmly before he turns back to his map. He picks up a protractor and lays it across the map, measuring something out.
I take another step closer. “Why are you here?”
He doesn’t look up. “I, too, have questions.”
“Really?” I don’t disguise the surprise in my voice. There’s something about him that inspires honesty.
His lips press together. He’s either withholding a laugh or a biting remark. “You think because I’m old, I shouldn’t have any more questions?”
I flush. “No, of course not.” It’s a lie, though. That’s exactly what I thought.
He laughs, and the sound is even dustier than the shelves, like he hasn’t used that sound in a long time.
“The trouble, Leina of Stormriven, is that the older you get, the more you realize you don’t know. And I am very, very old. The only thing I am certain of these days is that I am certain of nothing at all.”
“How old?”
He smirks. “I have 312 years.”
I choke on something—dust maybe. The strangled sound that comes out of my throat is part shock, part awe. It’s an impossible age, but Ryot says the Altor who aren’t killed in battle—most are—can live long, long lives due to the bond with their faravar.
I take a last step forward, my fingers brushing against the table. He dips a quill into an ink pot and then it scratches across the paper as he draws out a line on his map. My eyebrows draw together as I realize he’s marked a line from Lalica—the biggest city in Selencia, further to the east—to my village, nestled against the Weeping Forest.
“What’re you working on?” I ask him. My voice is sharp, laced with anger. And fear. I don’t know why I thought they’d all forgotten about my family, about my brothers. No one has mentioned anything, and it seemed like any threat had passed. That my oath was all they wanted—the loyalty of the girl kissed by the gods.
Apparently not.
He drops the quill, muttering, like he’s complaining to someone else. “So full of questions, this one.”
He rubs a tired hand over his forehead before he meets my gaze. “You think you’re the only one with questions, Leina, daughter ofSelencia?” I almost start at his words—that’s what Thayana called me. My skin rises with gooseflesh. “You think you’re the only one who wonders—why now? Why did the gods bless a girl—a daughter of Selencia? The first time they’ve handed down a personal blessing in hundreds of years?”
He holds my gaze, unwavering. When I don’t answer, he continues.
“Unlike some of the others—I don’t wonder if there’s a reason,” he says. “I only wonder how long we’ve been ignoring it. I wonder what your existence means for us all—the Altor, the grounded, the Kher’zenn, the gods.”
The room feels smaller suddenly. The candle flickers as if it, too, is holding its breath.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I say. I don’t know why it feels like he’s accusing me of something.
His expression doesn’t change. “That’s the way of so-called blessings. To ones who bear them, they’re most often a curse.”
His eyes fall to the book I’m gripping against my chest like it’s a lifeline. His head tilts. “I thought I’d read everything in here.”
I clutch it tighter. “This was given to me.”
He leans back in his chair, fingering his long beard as the lantern throws his shadow against the wall. He stares at the book, with a look that makes me afraid he’ll try to take it from me. But I won’t let it go, not even if he whips me. I’ll fight him for it.
It’s the one thing that’s mine.
Then he sighs, and he drops his eyes back to his map. “Since you’re here, Leina of Stormriven, you’ll help me.” He points to a section of the map on Selencia. “What is this place?”
I tuck my book under my arm, and lean forward, hands pressed against the table. The Elder has recreated a new version of a much older map. The original map—it’s at the top of the table, under a glass—looks like it could be older than the gods. The Elder’s copy is full of lines and squiggles, and his haphazard scrawl crisscrosses the entire thing, with questions like, “Fragment?” And “Cradle—of what?” scratched in the margins. Arrows connect locations I don’t recognize to names I’ve never heard of. These obscure places are circled three or four times over in bright red ink. Other places, like Edessa and Elandors Veil, have been ignored.
He taps again at the blank stretch near the western edge of the border with Faraengard, drawing my attention back to his question. “Here,” he says. “This place. You grew up near it. What is it?”
