Page 31 of We Were Eternal Once

“You don’t know the number, yet you recognize her name?” I ask.

“Some are more known than others. Your maker is…infamous,” Theon says.

Infamous. “How so?”

“My turn,” he says, wagging a finger at me. I must suppress the urge to break it off once more. “How old is she?”

“I don’t know. Why is she infamous?”

“You don’t know?” Theon furrows his brow.

“No. Do you know how old your maker is?”

“Yes, and that counts as a question.”

My lip curls in disgust. I hate this game. Why did I want so deeply to meet another of my kind, if this is how they are? Perhaps it is because he is a man and a scholar and thinks himself more important than he is. Perhaps I should show him how insignificant he really is.

“Where did she find you?”

“Delphi.”

“At the temple?”

It’s my turn to be cruel about the rules of the game. “Why is she infamous?”

Theon pretends to sigh again. I roll my eyes.

“She is infamous because she was there at the beginning. Not the first, but perhaps the third. There’s nothing written, just stories told from maker to fledgling. Our ancestors predate written word. She’s in every story.” He pauses, weighing his next question. “You were at the temple in Delphi?”

“I was.”

“Were you an oracle? A priestess? A royal woman?”

“No, no, and no—I was a servant. A temple rat. And that’s three questions. Is your maker here in Alexandria?”

“No. He is likely in Athens.” Theon frowns. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but I hold up my finger in the same mocking way he did. His glower is delicious.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is he not here with you?”

“He doesn’t want to be,” Theon says, irritated. “He is his own creature, he can do as he pleases without me.”

“Are there no scrolls in Alexandria with knowledge of our kind?”

“None that I have found, and I have been here for decades.”

Perhaps this meeting wasn’t useless. It saved me sneaking through these shelves, constantly worried I’d be caught.

“So your maker…she is here, then? In Alexandria?”

“Stop calling her that. Her name is Aletheia.” Though should he call her by her title? Mother of Silence. What does that even mean?

“Is Elder Aletheia here in Alexandria?”

“Yes. What does Mother of Silence mean?”