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“It’s true,” she admitted.
“But you don’t have magic,” he sputtered.
“That is false,” Keres continued. “Her powers have been damaged in some way. We are going to take her out of the city to repair them. Cleora is a professor at the Emperor’s Academy and has graciously agreed to help us with the matter.”
“Isn’t she … Daijan? Doesn’t that fix it?”
Kerrigan raised her hand up, and no magic came to her fingertips. “Doma can’t gain powers from other Doma.”
Constantine looked sick. “You really are Doma.”
“And you were going to sell me to the senators.”
He coughed violently, looking at Keres with alarm. “Well, I never intended …”
Keres waved him off. “I don’t need an explanation. Thank you for taking care of her.”
“She didn’t make it easy.”
Fordham snorted. Kerrigan just grinned.
Keres laughed. “I suspect not. Any daughter of mine must have a strong will to survive in this world.”
“Sorry to ask, but what is it that you wanted of me?”
Keres touched a finger to her lips. “Not me. But her.” She pointed to Danae, whose eyes widened in alarm.
“You’re going to hate this,” Kerrigan said.
Fordham looked to the ceiling. “Would it be you otherwise?”
Constantine just turned uncertainly between them all. “What? What is it?”
“It’s Danae.”
He stilled. “No.”
“She needs a teacher.” Kerrigan gestured to Cleora, who was standing quietly out of the way. “I have a teacher.”
“The Doma will …” He trailed off, as if realizing one was standing in their midst. “You promised.”
“Let her decide,” Kerrigan argued.
Danae stiffened as everyone turned to her. “I … what?”
Keres stepped forward then. Constantine made to block her path, but there was nothing he could do against the daughter of the emperor. Nothing any of them could do. Kerrigan had put Danae into Keres’s path, knowing full well that she and her father had both wanted to remain as anonymous as possible. That they had sacrificed everything for that anonymity. But it wasn’t going to last forever, and unless she was trained, they would lose everything.
Her mother tipped Danae’s face up to meet hers. Their eyes touched, and Keres’s eyes went gray and almost colorless to match Danae’s. The girl gasped in surprise at whatever was being shown to the Doma. The same way her mother had seen what the Red Masks had done to her. The same way she’d discovered Fordham’s powers.
Keres broke the connection and stepped back. A furrow formed between her eyebrows. “Oh, child …”
“You can’t have her,” Constantine roared. “I don’t care who you are!”
A tear tracked down Danae’s cheek. “She was so beautiful.”
“She was,” Keres said, ignoring Constantine’s outburst.
He muscled between them. “She’s just a girl,” he said, his voice turning to pleading.
Keres tilted her head. “I don’t know what you think I would do with her.”
“What your lot did with all the truthtellers of my people.”
“I did nothing to them.”
“No, but your father did enough,” he snapped.
Keres acknowledged this. “I am not my father. I have no interest in taking her as my own. I will not make her Daijan. Kerrigan has argued that she needs to be trained, and I agree. Cleora will train her.”
Cleora’s eyes rounded. “Train … a truthteller? I don’t know the first thing about truthtelling.”
“But you know the ways of the spirit, and isn’t it just an extension of spiritcasting?”
“I … I …” Cleora sputtered, suddenly put off in her own subject. “We’ve never had one before. We were never permitted to study them.”
“I am giving you permission.”
Cleora straightened then, as if seeing Danae for the first time. A new subject. A new research project. A new pupil. “I wouldn’t be able to publish any of my findings if you want to keep her from He Who Reigns.”
“Agreed,” Keres said immediately before Constantine could balk.
“But I would do it regardless.”
“Do you want this, Day?” Constantine pleaded. “Is this your choice?”
Danae looked up at her father before meeting the eyes of Cleora, Keres, and then Kerrigan in turn. Kerrigan shot her a reassuring smile. She’d broken a promise to keep this secret, but she had to believe it was worth it.
Finally, Danae agreed, “Yes, I want this.”
“Then, it’s settled. Danae will go with us to Rhithymna to work at the academy. Kerrigan, Fordham, and I will stay at my cousin’s home nearby so that we can be accessible to your findings.”
Kerrigan looked around at the room of people she had learned to trust in this horrible world. No one was perfectly satisfied by the answer to their problem. How could they be with so much up in the air and the potential for disaster? But it was a step in the right direction. A way for Kerrigan to finally find a way home. Not to mention … get to know her mother. A possibility she had never considered.
37
The Light
CLOVER
Clover draped the sheet across her bare breasts. Hadrian slept soundly on one side of the bed. His chest rising and falling with ease. A lock of blue hair falling out of his face and revealing one of his severely pointed ears. Darby lay on the other side. She was still in a white chemise that made her midnight skin almost glow. Her knees were tucked up to her chest, and she had one hand reaching out for Clover, as if already aware that she’d left the sanctuary of their embrace.
