Page 55 of Summer of Sacrifice

He cleared his throat and sat up straighter, pointing to her scribbles. “This that you have here, scratched out, is one of the places I saw in my studies of the realms. I remember it because my grandfather had a horse with the same name when I was a boy. Alban. It is said to be the capital of a land called Orford.”

“In another realm?” Seleste was beginning to feel as if she’d had one too many glasses of wine.

Cal nodded with a little shrug. “Could it be possible?”

Seleste shook her head, amazed. “I don’t know how this letter could have come to be here in our realm, but I am willing to entertain even the most mad of theories.” Something sparked in his eyes at her words and Seleste’s stomach flipped. “I was wrong about you,” she murmured without thinking.

Cal huffed a laugh. “Is that so?”

“I must admit that I thought you a bit spoiled and rude, at first.”

He chuckled, the sound descending into a deep sigh. “I keep to myself mostly. I don’t fit into this world of the beau monde.” The last words were said with sufficient mocking. “I—” He looked down at his hands, where he was picking at his thumbnails. “I want to be a surgeon. And my family doesn’t understand it. Medicine is not a place for a lord. I’m supposed to spend my days at gentlemen’s clubs and gaming rooms, not lecture halls and surgical theatres.”

“Aristocracy can be a cage.”

He looked at her curiously. “A cage for those within, a tyrant for those without.”

Seleste swallowed, something between them pulling taut.

“Forgive my saying so,” he said softly, his eyes searching, “but you are not what I expected either.” She watched his throat bob as he swallowed. “I find you exceedingly interesting.”

She smiled coyly, one dark eyebrow raised. “For a maid?”

He started. “No?—”

“For a woman, then?” she teased further.

“As a person.” The seriousness of his tone and the intensity of his gaze pushed her teasing away. “Where did you learn of existentialism”—she grinned at his exaggeration of the word—“and cyphers?”

Seleste folded her hands in her lap, missing the tinkling sound her bracelets made when she was home and not in a maid’s uniform without them. She heard Winnie whisper caution, but threw her voice to the wind, letting it get lost in the sea. What were Summer nights with a handsome boy for if not vulnerability and deep conversations beneath Madam Moon and her sparkling fellows?

Life is meant to be lived, Sorscha’s voice whispered on the lazy waves.

“My parents died when I was just a girl. I was taken in by the kindest soul I’ve ever known, and she taught me anything I wished to know.” Seleste smiled fondly. “She was incredibly intelligent and cultured, to boot.”

Cal looked at her for a long moment before saying, “Why here, then?”

She knew what he meant was: why are you a maid, then? And that was not so easily answered.

She shrugged. “Intelligence does not equate to a full stomach for a woman, let alone one of colour.” The truth in a far broader scope.

His cheeks flushed in the moonlight and he looked down, sifting sand through his fingers. “I’m sorry. That was foolish of me. My father persistently mocks me for being too idealistic.”

A little pang shot through Seleste’s heart. “A better realm has to begin somewhere.”

Cal’s gaze met hers again, his blue eyes sharp, full of something she couldn’t quite decipher. “I agree.” That gaze dropped to her lips briefly before he cleared his throat and stood, brushing sand from his lap. “I shall escort you back to your room, Lady Seleste.”

She laughed at his usage of a title she did not bear, and he helped her up.

Chapter

Eleven

AGATHA

How long had they been in Achlys? Time was indiscernable. Agatha could still hear their voices—their daughters. She could still, just at the edge of her consciousness, make out more memories. Snippets of time spent in the dining hall of the Palace of Achlys. Small moments of laughing over coffee with Nyxia and Athania, the former sitting before her now.

Agatha sniggered. Having coffee with goddesses was still an absurd concept. Even as she sat with one at a lavish dinner table. Even as she had memories assaulting her of being a goddess.

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