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We reach Athene’s door, and she opens it for me. “I didn’t say you were wrong.”
I step inside. “Thank you.”
“Nor did I say you were right.”
I stalk to the kitchen. “Then you also think I shouldn’t use my abilities to help stop a killer and free an innocent man from prison?”
“If you’ll stop putting words in my mouth, I’ll tell you what I think.” She stands in the doorway, crossing her arms over her chest.
I lift my cloak from the chair. The wool is toasty warm from being near the fire. “I’m listening.”
Athene raises her chin. “Gregor has no right to expect you toturn your back on the only world you’ve known and the people you love, but you need to recognize that he’s trying to correct what he sees as the biggest mistake of his life.”
“Would that be giving me up or trying to bring me back?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “Dark of Night, you’re just as stubborn as he is.” Athene drops her arms and steps forward to straighten my cloak as I work the clasp. “As for your gifts, I believe you have the right to choose what to do with them, but you need guidance. You need us. And we need you, too.”
I sigh. “Maybe I do. But there’s a more urgent need for me to stop a killer and free the magister.” My cousin is several inches shorter than me, and I look down on her. “And there are other matters I need to set right.”
Like Simon.
“Then you should do those things.” Athene unfolds the edge of my hood where it was turned inside out. “But like it or not, you are a bridge between Hadrians and Selenae. If you destroy that connection, you destroy yourself.”
It may be too late. “Is Gregor truly angry enough to never allow me to return?”
Athene steps back and shrugs. “You’ve wounded him, but family is more important to him than anything else. Why else would he have watched over you for so many years?”
“Because he promised my father he would?”
She shakes her head. “Because barely an hour after you were gone he regretted leaving you at the convent. He’s been waiting over seventeen years for an excuse to swoop in and bring you back, but neither the prioress nor the architect ever gave him one. That’s why it cut him so deeply when you said giving you up was the best thing he ever did for you.”
I never would have befriended Marguerite or worked for thearchitect. I never would have met Simon. “I’m not sure itwasa mistake.”
“And that hurts him even more to admit.”
I need to go before Gregor comes to make sure I’ve left. Wanting to say goodbye to Marguerite, I cross the kitchen and go into the sickroom, but she’s asleep. Athene discourages me from waking her, so I just squeeze her hand and kiss her nose. Then my cousin walks with me through the streets. The moon is gone, and I’m not certain I could find my way in the dark alone.
At the vine-draped alley leading to the road separating the Quarter and the Abbey of Light, Athene gives me a quick hug, promising to send word if Marguerite’s condition changes. Then she places something in my hand—the leather pouch with the voidstone.
“Gregor said I couldn’t take this,” I object, even as my heart beats faster with anticipation of practicing with it.
“He borrowed it from me, so it’s none of his affair what I do with it.” Athene nods at the small sack. “There’s a moonstone in there, too, though it’s almost spent. Be sure to keep them separate.”
Something she said earlier flashes in my mind. “You said voidstones were once used as weapons. How so? Because they’re sharp?”
Athene shakes her head. “A voidstone will absorb any magick you push into it through your skin.” She pauses as though what she’s about to say is awful. “But if it touches your blood, it willtakeyour magick. All of it. In an instant.”
I shiver imagining how it must feel. “Forever?”
“Thankfully, no. You can get the magick back by exposing your blood to moonlight again, like the first time, but it’s… like dying.” Athene shudders. “In the days of the Selenic Empire, thin arrowheads and blades of voidstone were designed to breakoff tiny pieces inside wounds, leaving the victim completely without magick. Those who weren’t killed shortly after often wished they had been.”
“Voided,” I whisper, understanding the term Gregor used earlier. “Is that what you do to Selenae who are cast out of the community?”
She nods. “Several pieces are put under the skin to prevent them ever using magick again. Many go mad without it.”
“Will Gregor try to do that to me?”
“It’s what he’s been trying to prevent,” answers Athene. “By our rules, it should have been done when he left you with the prioress, just in case you had magick, but he convinced our elders that you did not. If your origins become known to Hadrians, you will have to choose whether to be part of us or part of them.”
