Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
None of this happens without me, which has made me crucial to every single meeting we’ve had, and in turn given me a sense of control.
But with the weeks of distraction, my grief has been shoved to the side. It’s been buried, compartmentalized, something horrible and dark that hovers just beneath my surface like a hole in the ground. It’s been waiting to swallow me alive.
And last night, as I lay in Andor’s arms in my bed, the ground opened up.
I cried and screamed and thrashed as the pain and sorrow ripped through me. Every moment of grief that I tucked away was unleashed on me at once. I should have known better. I knew I couldn’t escape it, I knew I had to make peace and look it in the eye every single day or it would try to destroy me.
Andor, bless his soul, held me. He simply held me when it felt like my body might shatter and I’d never be able to pick up all the pieces. He helped me stay intact and whole while the grief tried to eat me alive and spit me out.
Which is why he asked me this morning if I would have a session with Sae Balek, the Kolbecks’ Truthmaster. To be honest, the idea scares me. I’d only seen the holy man a few times while I’ve been here, and he’s always stared into me with those unseeing yet all-knowing eyes. I know that Torsten and Vidar have sessions with him several times a week, finding comfort or perhaps prophecy in the man’s chapel, but I have wanted to stay far away from anyone who had anything to do with the Daughters of Silence and the Esland government at any point, even if his spiritual guidance is benign.
But Vidar promised that the Truthmaster was good at helping people move through grief instead of burying it, and while Andor wasn’t a hundred percent sold on that idea, he did think the gold-eyed man could be an asset when it came to the heist. He might give us deeper info about the egg, about the details of the guard and government that I wouldn’t know, and more than that, I might be granted a vision that could help us with our goal.
“Are you ready?” Vidar asks me as we stand in the hallway with Andor, just outside the chapel. The sweet, heady smell of incense is already permeating the air through the closed door.
“I guess?” I say. “I don’t really know what to expect.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Andor says.
Truth is, I’m nervous. I would never admit that, especially not in front of Vidar, who has always been a bit of a grumpy enigma to me, enough so that I keep wanting his respect. Andor can tell, however, from the way he keeps reaching out for my hand and squeezing my fingers.
“It’s a very good thing,” Vidar says, briefly eyeing our hands before facing the door. “You need to keep your mind as open as possible.”
“Andor,” Torsten’s stern voice says from down the hall.
I look to see him by Steiner’s lab, beckoning for him to come over.
Andor sighs and straightens his shoulders before giving my hand another squeeze and walking off. He wasn’t planning on being in the room with me and Vidar anyway—Sae Belak is adamant about it only being open to earnest believers—but even so I hate to see him go.
I catch Torsten’s eye for a moment and he gives me the slightest nod. It’s a lot more recognition than I’ve gotten over the last few weeks and I’ll take it, only because his complete avoidance of me has been awkward to navigate. Like I’m a ghost in the room. Andor had told me that his father was somewhat impressed that I was going to see the Truthmaster, since it’s something that only he and Vidar do and the rest of the family abstains. I thought maybe he would think I wasn’t good enough for it, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Perhaps yet another reason that Andor suggested I do this: to build up goodwill with his father.
Not that I care. I abhor his father, and his uncle even more so. But I can’t live in a castle where the man in charge wants me dead and gone, especially when that man is my lover’s father. I hate having to look over my shoulder every time I walk down the halls. It makes me feel so small when he addresses everyone at the dinner table except for me, and even though I have Andor’s protection (as well as Lemi’s, and my own skills), I know it weighs on Andor to have such strain between his father and me, even if it’s all his father’s doing.
So I nod back at his father. He holds my eye for a moment and there is no kindness in his stare. But it’s enough for now.