Page 72 of The Castle & the Cloister

Instead, she held Justus closer and ducked her head, kissing his downy hair and breathing in the sweet, milky scent of him, as she’d once done with her daughter.

“Soria Aurelia says you’re good to this little prince.” Dolenza moved to a mat at Raea’s feet and lowered herself onto it, patting the place beside her. With a little reluctance, Fia did as was expected, and settled at her Matria’s side. “She says it isn’t just duty; you’re as attentive to him as if he were your own. According to her, you’ve taken pains with Celina since returning, and the child loves you as well. It seems you have a way with Invers. Their Priest follows you like a hound, and even Orden speaks highly of you.”

“Matria, I want to make my fidelity oath,” Fia said. The memory of how Orden had looked at her after she used the blooded touch rested in her like an arrow shaft. There’d been raw desire in him, of an inexplicable sort, for Fia knew how he cherished his queen. “Now, if possible. I’ve done what you asked and more. Your three-day errand cost me dear—Miriel forgot me, and I was far more certain of myself when the summer began. But I’m still sure of this—I belong at Raea’s cloister.”

Dolenza gave Fia a troubled look, and she knew at once what it meant. But so great was Fia’s regard for Bright Raea, and for the goddess’s chief representative, that she fought back all the fire and willfulness of her nature, keeping still and forcing her voice to remain even.

“You’re not going to hear my oath. What is it in me that you find so unfit for a place here? Is it my temper? Because Soria Marabeth can rival me for that. Is it that I’m impatient? Soria Aline has never waited with good humor for anything.” Fia twisted her hands into the fabric of Justus’s light linen wrapping, the struggle for calm requiring physical effort as well as mental. “I know I am not what most postulants are—I’m ignorant and backward, and more accustomed to cruelty than kindness,but I can be what’s needed, I swear. Didn’t I leave everything and go, when Raea called me to the battleground in Corrin? Didn’t I make it here, with nothing but faith to feed me half the way? And I went away again, when you ordered it. I did not want to, but I obeyed all the same, and I can see the wisdom in your sending me. Honoria and the world outside its borders seem larger and more precarious now—I realize how much depends on the Beloved Three, and on those who keep to their ways and do their bidding.”

It was a testament to how far Fia had come and how much she had learned, that she was able to maintain calm and acknowledge her own shortcomings, as well as the prudence in the sacrifice Dolenza had required of her. When Dolenza turned to Fia, the postulant was startled to find her Matria’s eyes bright with tears.

“It isn’t a question of your obedience,” Dolenza said. “Nor of your heart or will. Not anymore. It is my obedience, my heart, and my will that stand in the way. And I cannot hear your oath yet. Not until I’m certain of myself, and of the goddess.”

“Why?” Fia demanded, her voice finally quavering with restrained passion. “Why must everything always go so hard for me? I’ve seen no such reserve in you about other postulants. Matria, I don’t understand.”

“I wish I could explain,” Dolenza said. “But I can’t. You must simply weather this, and trust that it is for the best.”

“For whose best?” Fia shot back defiantly, her true nature finally rising to the fore as she scrambled to her feet, chest heaving. “Because I don’t think it can be for mine.”

“I have other interests to consider besides your own,” Dolenza said. “Fia, that isn’t fair.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Fia said. “Fairness isn’t something I’ve ever found in life, even when I came looking for it here.”

“Child, be reasonable,” Dolenza called as Fia stalked across the chapel. “You haven’t even been honest with me about why you crave office here so desperately. If I swore to keep you and Miriel in comfort for the rest of your days, safe without the bother of a vow, would you accept such an offer?”

Fia stopped in her tracks, her pulse rapid and unsteady. She thought of how she’d stood before Orden, unrepentant over her use of the touch.How she’d killed a man for Ariana’s sake, and would do it a thousand times over to spare her friend. The way she’d pushed Nikolau into a service he did not desire, by using their daughter as a pawn. How everything she knew of motherhood, she’d learned at her own mother’s knee—a vocation not of kindness but of cruelty.

Fia saw Nira in herself far too often. In her temper and her ruthlessness, if not in her wit and dogged loyalty to those she cared for.

“I require Raea,” Fia said when she could master her voice and be certain it would not shake. “Matria, she tames the worst in me. I cannot be what Miriel needs, nor yet the sort of woman who is fit for good company, without the yoke of our goddess.”

Dolenza rose. She swept across the chapel, meeting Fia at its center. There, she reached up and brushed a thumb across her postulant’s cheek, smoothing away an errant tear.

“Have you ever heard me voice a complaint about your wildness, or declare you unfit company for those in this cloister? No. And you never will. None of my reserve is the result of some flaw in your nature, Fiametta Raeana. But I am forced by Bright Raea to wait, and so I must ask you to wait as well. Can you do that?”

“How shall I occupy myself to pass the time?”

Dolenza was silent.

“You heard what Gileta asked of the Priest?” Fia whispered.

“Yes.”

Looking down at Justus, Fia thought of Orden Inver dead, and her heart broke within her. Never had she expected to find such compassion within herself, when considering the death of Honoria’s unwelcome king. But the child she tended and Ariana and even the Priest had changed her, unveiling difficulties and complexities she had not anticipated. It would hurt Ari to lose Orden. It would endanger her also, as well as Justus and the Priest. And Fia would hate to see any of them in pain.

“Do the Beloved Three require that service ofme?” Fia asked, the question quiet as a moth’s wing in the dark. “Is that why Raea would keep me unbound?”

Dolenza shook her head. “I cannot say. All I can tell you is that they require this: to act in accordance with your truest nature. To love without reserve. To offer life and healing to this world by any means necessary.Byanymeans, do you understand? You’ve shed blood to heal before—perhaps it is Raea’s will that you do so again.”

Fia sighed as Justus shifted a little in her arms. “What if I don’t know Raea’s will? Or what if I interpret it wrongly?”

“It is for you to divine the goddess’s intention for your life. Only experience can guide you in this. I cannot.”

Dolenza’s rejection and counsel rang in Fia’s head as she returned to her small, silent cell, where the walls seemed to close in around her. She was choking on unspent frustration and indecision. She ought to leave, she knew. If there was no place at Raea’s cloister for her, she should shake the dust of it from her heels and never look back. She could make a life elsewhere for herself and Miriel.

But her treacherous heart yearned for what was denied her. She wanted to stay—to hear the morning bells ring sweet across the harbor, the laughter of sorias and chatter of children in the courtyard gardens. She wanted the measured pace of prayer and devotion and duty, the knowledge that her existence counted for something. More than anything, she desired Raea’s bridle of compassion and mercy, to guide and check her as she moved through life.

The cloister was the only safe place for her, even as it remained beyond her reach.