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“Clearly,” she remarked, ambling back to the stool. She sat down heavily, cheeks puffing with exertion.
I ignored the surprisingly strong tone of sarcasm. “Do you know what ‘starborn’ means?”
“Why you asking me?” She picked up a tuft ball, stabbing the needle through it. “You could’ve asked the Baron.”
“Because he’s busy, and I figured if you’re acaelestiathen you may know what that is.”
Maven shook her head, tossing the pincushion into a basket at her feet. “And why would you think that?”
Hell if I knew at this point. “Because I’ve heard it before, spoken by the Prioress of Mercy, and Claude mentioned it in . . . in passing.”
“Funny gal, you are,” she said, snickering. “Know so much and yet know so little.”
My eyes narrowed. “Hymel said something like that.”
“Yeah, well, that one knows too much.”
“What do— ?”
“Why don’t you get me a drink out of that red bottle?” She lifted a frail arm. “There. On the table by the door.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw it. I crossed the chamber, picked up the glass bottle, and pulled the stopper. The scent of whiskey was strong, nearly smacking me in the face. “You sure you want this?”
“Wouldn’t ask for it if I wasn’t.”
“Okay,” I murmured, pouring the deep brown liquor into an old clay cup. Bringing the drink to her, I hoped that the whiskey loosened her tongue and didn’t kill her. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” She wrapped thin, bony fingers around the cup, careful to avoid mine. She took a drink— a deep drink. My eyes widened as she swallowed, then smacked her lips. “Keeps my bones warm.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her chuckle wasn’t very much more than a puff of air. “I was like you once. Not some orphan scraped off the streets, but nothing much better. A poor farmer’s daughter, one of three with an empty belly but heart and head full of nonsense.”
My brows inched up at what sounded distinctly like an insult, but I kept quiet.
“And just like you, I was more than willing to trade anything to not go to bed hungry every night,” she said, staring at the candles along the wall as I sat on the edge of another stool. “Not to wake up every morning knowing I was going to end up just like my mama, dead before she entered the fourth decade of life, or like my pa, made miserable by the toll of working the fields. When I met Baron Huntington— Remus Huntington?” Her wizened features softened as she spoke of Claude’s grandfather. “I was more than happy to give him what he wanted in exchange for being kept fed and sheltered. Comfortable. He was kind enough, especially when I gave him a son his wife passed off as her own. I raised Renald though. He was still my boy— Claude’s father. I also gave him a daughter. Named her after my mama. Eloise. Raised her too. Somehow I outlived them all.” She laughed again, shoulders sinking before she took another drink. “Old blood. That’s my family. Our blood is old. That’s what my pa used to say.”
Slowly, she turned her head toward me. “You know what old blood is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s another name they like to call thecaelestias.Old blood. Meaning many of our ancestors can be traced all the way back to the Great War. Even before then. Can be traced all the way back to the first of them, those who were once the stars watching over us. Older than the king who rules now. As old as the one who came before.”
“First of them?” My intuition went silent, and that told me enough. “The Hyhborn?”
Maven nodded. “To the Deminyens. The watchers. The helpers.”
Thorne . . . he had called the ancient Deminyens that.Watchers.“What does that have to do with starborn?”
“If you stop making unnecessary comments, I’ll get there.”
I closed my mouth.
Maven laughed hoarsely. “Did you ever think about how strangecaelestiasare? For one to even come into creation? We come from a Deminyen— not their offspring. For acaelestiato be born, it has to be one of them and a lowborn, and ain’t that strange?”
I guessed so, but I didn’t want to speak.
“Think about it.” She looked over at me. “Deminyens can fuck half this realm and never have a child.”
