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“There have not been anyfactsin this wild tale you have brought me!”
He held up a finger. “The world is being shaken by tremors.”
“Yes, as it has been in the past!”
He nodded. “The last bad burst of quakes was ten years ago. Remember that.” He held up a second finger. “Alastair Alayne, who is not the most romantic of men, married a young woman with a mysterious background who knew almost nothing of her own heritage.” A third finger. “They had two children. One was a boy who died under tragic and unusual circumstances ten years ago.”
“Yes, he was hit by a gridcar—” Her voice trailed off.
“But you never got to see his body. Because he wasn’t killed accidentally. He was taken to the temple where he was drained of blood to appease the god.”
And even though this entire story was farfetched, ridiculous, overwrought, impossible—at that moment, certainty clicked in place for Madeleine, and sheknew.“Logan,” she whispered.
“His death bought the city another ten years of stability,” Reese continued. “But everyone knew the tremors would start up again. Well—everyone who was privy to this terrible secret. The heads of the Council families and the elite members of the priesthood.”
“My father and Heloise. Of course,” Madeleine said tonelessly. Oh, if there was any malevolent scheming to be done over the course of decades, she would count on the two of them to conduct it without shirking. But then her heart faltered. “Harlo?” she said in a small voice. “He knew?”
“Harlo,” said Reese, “oversees the whole operation.”
Madeleine nodded twice, the motion jerky and uncertain. She tried to say something, but suddenly she felt her balance give out, so she sat down abruptly in the window seat. Her fingers curled around the edge of the embrasure as she attempted to hold herself upright. “Yes, of course,” she said. “If this ritual is designed to appease the god, naturally the high divine would be involved. It’s just that he—I’ve always loved him more than I loved my father. He’s been so good to me.”
“He’s had reason to be good to you,” Reese said. “The safety of the world rests on your shoulders.”
She looked up at him. She felt, suddenly, so lost and frail and tiny and alone. “So then he—they—all of them. They plan to—to—kill me? To feed my body to the god?”
He crossed the room in three strides and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his once more. Impossible that anything could be reassuring in a moment like this, and yet his touch was just the tiniest bit comforting. “Oh no. No no no. They need you alive. You have to produce thenextgeneration of children who will be sacrificed to Cordelan.”
In her head she heard what her father had said when she warned him that a hasty marriage would make everyone think she was pregnant.I wish you were.
Hewantedher to produce sons and daughters who would be slaughtered in the name of religion. He had known what fate awaited his own children before they were even born.
What kind of monster can plan to bring a child into this world merely to send it deliberately to its death?she wondered.No wonder he never loved me. How could he bear to? And even knowing what lies in store, he wants me to have children with Tivol—
Tivol—
The pain was so sudden and so real that she doubled over. Reese was still gripping her hands and so she folded over his arms as well as her own while her heart stopped and her lungs emptied and her ribs seemed to pierce every internal organ.
“Madeleine,” Reese said urgently, creeping closer on his knees. “Maddie, what is it? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I cannot believe I had to tell you all this—”
“Tivol,” she gasped, still bent in half. “He knows. Doesn’t he?”
Reese was silent a moment. “I can’t be sure. But my guess is that he does.”
“He wants to marry me and father my children and then send them off to die—”
“He believes—he must believe—that it is a good thing. The right thing. The only way to save the world. He must believe he has been given a terrible and solemn duty.”
She rested her forehead on their clasped knuckles and tried to breathe without panting. She thought Reese might be right. Tivol had probably known this dreadful truth since they were quite young. To some extent it explained why he seemed so frivolous now, so determined to pursue light pleasures. His future would be grim enough. She briefly felt a surge of pity for him—but it was almost instantly obliterated by rage.
“I hate him,” she said, pulling herself upright, her back absolutely straight. “I hate all of them.”
Not letting go of her hands, Reese scrambled up from the floor and perched next to her. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I hate them all myself.”
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why they haven’t been breeding me like a prize bitch for the past seven or eight years. I could have produced a wholelitterof children by now. Why wait?”
“If I understood correctly, there’s some chemical that has to form in your body before you will bear children whose blood is of the right composition.”
“Well, I suppose I must thank Cordelan for that particular grace,” she said with heavy irony. “But how do they know that I—oh.”
