Page 54 of Kissed By the Gods
“They don’t tell you when you’re unnamed that you’ll lose your love for books. There’s no patience for poetry in this life of blood and death.”
Personal journal of Ward Caelen in Year 416 of the Eternal Wars
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I can’t believeI’m only now leaving the infirmary,” I grumble to Elowen as I pack up my meager possessions in someone’s old leather satchel. It’s so light, nearly completely empty.
Most of the things in it have been gifted to me in the two weeks since I got here—the clothes from Ryot, a book of poems from Faelon, some dried flowers from Elowen. I’m even wearing Ryot’s shirt from that first day. I haven’t given it back; and he hasn’t asked for it.
Elowen laughs as she works at the table behind me, mixing tonics and grinding herbs into powders. The softness of crushed chamomile and bitterness of some root drifts through the air. She turned the little table in here into a temporary workstation. She said it was to keep an eye on my scar, but really, I think she didn’t want me to be alone. She’s worked in here every night, and we’ve talked about everything from the books we’re reading to the herbs she harvests. Elowen is soft. Too soft.
“The Synod isn’t exactly made for receiving guests, Leina. There wasn’t anywhere else to put you until now,” she says. “Until you had a home.”
Home. She doesn’t use that word like it’s a weapon—there’s no sarcasm or cruelty in her voice. I don’t think she even has it in her to be cruel. But it slices like a dagger.
Home is a little cottage on the edge of the woods. Home is the smell of lavender on the breeze, the way it curls through the open windows to mingle with the scent of fresh-made bread. It’s the soft creak of the rocking chair that had more years than I did.
Home was family, but all that’s gone.
This is not home. It could never be.
The Synod is my battleground. It’s my chance to remake myself, to become someone strong, someone unbroken by grief, by the weight of oppression. Someone who can help my people fight back.
Because the gods are finally listening. After all those years with my mother on her knees, her face pressed into the ashes, begging for their intervention, for justice, for scraps, the gods have finally answered.
And I won’t waste this chance. I won’t waste her sacrifice.
I will take everything they offer here—every lesson, every weapon, every whisper of power—and I will shape it into something terrifying.
No, the Synod will never be home.
But it’s a beginning.
Elowen turns, her eyes crinkled in the corners as if she’s concerned, like she can sense my turmoil. “What is something that reminds you of your home, Leina? Something that brings you joy?”
Well, fuck. I guess I am an open book. Still, there’s something about her that prompts me to answer honestly. “Lavender,” I tell her.
She smiles at me, wide and beautiful, an offering of friendship. I offer her a little one in return and then shove the too-large blue tunic and brown trousers that Ryot gifted me intothe bag. Elowen’s eyes fall to the shirt, and she tilts her head to the side.
“I’d wondered where that had gone,” she said, a teasing lilt in her voice.
I stare at her in horror, realizing that he must have gotten the women’s clothes from the healer. And he didn’t even ask her.
I yank the shirt and pants out of the bag and shove them at Elowen. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Ryot gave them to me. I didn’t know they were yours.”
Instead of taking the clothes, her hands close gently over mine, wrapping my fingers back around the fabric.
“I don’t have a need of them, Leina,” she says. “I’d like you to have them. Though we should probably take up the trousers. I’m taller than you.” She grabs them from the top of the satchel and starts to mess with the hem.
My eyes round in horror. “You can’t sew my clothes!”
“Why not?” she demands.
“You’re a princess, Elowen!” Though, even as the words tumble from my mouth, I wonder why that should matter.
