Page 27 of Golden Queen
"Well, fuck," I heard behind me. He was indeed laughing.
"Absolute fucking self-entitled jackass prick," I muttered.
I left him at the brothel and walked away down Antevemer Street, looking for a carriage for hire. It was becoming harder to find one as the streets filled with more and more people arriving for King's Day.
The added people meant relative safety, though. I was able to walk all the way to the castle without ending up on a single empty street. I stayed vigilant for any sign of the people who had pursued me, but I met with no one who didn't seem to be out and about for the city-wide party that was underway.
With my hood pulled over my hair, I entered the Presarion's cathedral as just one more of the penitent worshipers who found themselves in need of the refuge of the gods' temple during the night.
The gate at the head of the long corridor that led to the castle was manned by sentries in gleaming gold armor at all hours, but I didn't take the gate. As usual, I crept along the back wall, past the alcoves that held the marble statues of the gods and the little benches for parishioners to pray and reflect.
I passed the statue of Niktos, the god of darkness, holding his long broadsword out before him. His statue was the only one in the cathedral that had any color.
His large, spread wings were a dark, shadowy gray. The paint was swirled over them to look like they were made of smoke, and then they were flecked with white, green, and blue to create stars and constellations.
Niktos was also the only god in the cathedral who had been depicted nude. I often found my eyes wandering to the nether regions of the statue,where his marble cock hung limp, but sizable, between the muscular carved thighs.
I checked out Niktos' equipment as I passed. As usual, I felt a bit of shame for how sacrilegious it seemed to admire his impressive architecture. But really, if they didn’t want people to admire him, they should have hidden his large, well-muscled form beneath a long robe—as the rest of the gods had been carved.
The Dagda and the Morrigan, the king and queen of the gods, were behind me at the head of the long chamber. Their statues had been carved from one enormous block of granite.
Their spread wings overlapped to form a shape like an 'x,' where Danu's crowned heart symbol lay at the intersection.
I did not need to see the dead gods’ symbols to have dread slicing through me as I remembered the little caged elderwood seed that lay in a drawer in my chambers. It was said that Amundur and Danu had gifted the world with the elderwood trees before they ended up dead on the fields of Windemere, with their blood watering the golden seeds planted by their angel servants.
I didn't know if any of it was true. The history the Presarion taught was a convoluted mess of conflicting theologies. The gods had died—sacrificing themselves to save the world and imprison the false god and his demon army in Chronus—beneath the godsgrass. But they were also alive—sending messages that only the priests and priestesses could pass along to us. They were served by angels, but they alsowerethe angels.
I had never seen any sign that they were more than the creation of the Presarion themselves, even if Nightfall supposedly did have possession of the God King's elderwood sword. It was said to be hidden somewhere in their hoarded treasure because it was too powerful for any but Amundur to wield.
Who was to say it wasn't just some ordinary sword that some ordinary man had found in some ordinary cave? It wasn't like anyone alive would be willing to touch it to test the theory, after all.
There was no doubt in my mind that the gods were dead, though. The first King of Windemere, Edgeon, had lit their funeral pyre himself for all the world to see. And if they were dead, that meant they had probably never been gods at all.
I was admittedly angry and sullen as I stalked through the cathedral, each so-called god looking more and more false as I passed. By the time I reached the door in the corner, I felt mentally exhausted.
I looked around to be sure I wasn’t observed before I released the small catch on the side. It didn't look like a door at all. It was disguised as a sectionof the wall so that the nobles and courtiers would not need to be reminded of the servants who stalked the halls of Albiyn Castle.
I assumed it had once been frequently used before the Presarion had begun assigning housekeeping duties to their young acolytes. The change suited my purposes perfectly, as I would not have fared well meeting anyone as I climbed back to my chambers.
The stairs led to a disused section of servant’s quarters and to a hallway with a single door that opened up to a tiny balcony.
It took little more than a scramble onto the balustrade for me to pull myself up and be walking across the roof tiles in the direction of my rooms.
Tatana's little brother, Set, had been the one to learn how easy it was to scale up and onto the roof. The boy stalked the halls of the castle like a wraith—always underfoot on some task for the kitchens, or else forgotten and allowed to roam at will. He was eleven and small for his age. It was easy for him to blend in with the countless other young castle serfs.
My chambers were dark when I entered. My ladies had long since found their own rooms, and only Tatana remained. She had fallen asleep in my bed, something she often did, even though she claimed to prefer her cot in the corner of my wardrobe.
"It's cozy," she would say, even though I knew the room grew chilly in the absence of a hearth.
The truth was that she didn't want me to know how often the nightmares still plagued her—ones of Markus and his cruel hands—others of her home where the scent of moonflower pervaded even her dreams.
She once admitted that the dreams of her home were the worst, since she would wake in Albiyn, certain that she would never again see the shores of Elysium. That crushing blow was somehow harder to bear than the ones landed by my sadistic uncle. But that had been in the days before I made my deal with him—the days before I sacrificed my pride for her safety.
I studied her as she slept. She looked so peaceful, her skin unmarred by the dark circles that had once plagued her from lack of sleep.
Not for the first time, I hated,absolutely hated, every single member of that fucking Council of Eldermen aside from Arkadian.
The council had been no help to Tatana. Even the Baroness of Khiebol had refused to intervene to prevent the regent from taking his pleasure with her. To them, she amounted to little more than a slave.
