My teeth clenched, and I tried to control my anger and deny it. But Lorn was right.
“Well, I will just train her harder,” Mother said.
“The kind of training she needs can’t be done here. I should take her with me and train her the way I do Honor.”
“No,” she said vehemently. “Not Aura.”
I felt a moment of affirmation, that my mother stuck up for me, but the feelings quickly dissipated as she continued. “She’s not like her sisters. She won’t survive your training, Lorn. As much as I tried to train them to be ruthless and use their anger as armor to protect them from the hate of the world, Aura is as pure as the snow.”
“Her empathy is her weakness,” Lorn argued. “Remember, I’m the one that conducts their tests and chose their course of training. Maybe I made a mistake.”
“I disagree. Her empathy is her strength. But she is hiding under a cloud of insecurities ever since she came back from Isla. She’s safer here at home.”
“You can’t protect her forever,” Lorn said.
“Not forever; just a little longer.”
“Lorelai, you need to tell her about her mother. What if that man is here because he knows what you did?”
“Stop, Lorn.” The pain was clear in my mother’s voice. “I can’t tell her yet.”
Mother. A word that I only associated with the woman standing before me, one who looked nothing like me. My real mother, just a figment of my imagination, a sentence in a story of my life. I knew about my birth mother.
She had died. Mother Eville found me abandoned in the woods and raised me here. In Nihill, the town whose name literally meant nothing.
I peeked around the corner and watched my normally stern mother, her raven-colored hair cascading down her back, become choked up with emotion. Lorn stepped forward and wrapped his hands around her waist. She leaned into his chest for comfort and wiped the tears from her eyes. A few moments later, she pulled away uncomfortably.
There was no way to deny that Lorn and my mother were in love, but for some reason, they put up a front and hid it from us.
I debated sneaking back upstairs, but I heard a groan and froze my foot in the air.
“He’s waking up,” Lorn said.
I heard fumbling and leaned forward to see Lorn pull a knife and keep it below the dining table, out of sight.
Mother stepped forward and leaned over the man. She pressed a finger to his forehead. “Somnus.”
The man blinked and his head dropped back to the table as he fell under her sleeping spell.
“You should have let me question him,” Lorn muttered.
“No, not tonight. I have no desire to hear anything he has to say. As soon as he is well, I want him gone from our lands.”
“What if he’s come here for help? What if he is looking for the missing heir?”
“If he is, then he will have to look elsewhere. You know as well as I do, that nothing good ever comes out of the kingdom of Rya.”
Chapter Three
When I came down the next morning, the stranger was gone. The table was empty and set for breakfast. All signs of last night’s medical emergency had disappeared with the rays from the morning sun.
Mother flitted around the kitchen, like a butterfly too afraid to land or stay in one position for long. The smell of cinnamon bread filled the air, and I knew she must have requested the special baked treat from Clove, our brownie. Clove cleaned our home during the night, stoked the fires, and made sure that there was always fresh baked bread every morning. In return, she lived under our floorboards during the day because brownie’s eyes were very sensitive to the light.
Thumping came from behind me as Maeve bounded down the steps. She skidded to a halt and blurted out what I was too shy to ask. “Where’s the stiff?”
I gasped at her insult.
Mother’s brows furrowed. “He’s not a stiff. We’ve moved him to the barn. Lorn is guarding him.”
“What does he want?” Maeve asked.
“It’s none of your business,” she chastised. “Once he’s better, he’ll be on his way.”
Maeve plopped down on her chair and sighed dramatically until she saw the cinnamon bread, and her mood improved.
Rhea and Honor came down next. Rhea was deep in thought, scribbling in her journal, and Honor cast a wary look around the room. As soon as Honor saw Lorn’s absence from the kitchen, she excused herself to go out to the barn to be with him.
“How come she gets to go out there, but not us?” Maeve pouted.
Mother gave a cross look. “Because Honor’s training is under Lorn’s purview, and she is the only one I’ll allow near the stranger.”
Rhea’s quill scratched along the page in her journal as she answered, “That’s because Honor secretly knows how to kill someone in a hundred different ways.”
“Not true,” Maeve countered.
Rhea paused her writing and looked up. “‘Tis.”
“Aura?” Maeve looked to me for confirmation.
“I . . . uh. I don’t know. I can’t read Honor,” I lied. “Nor do I want to,” I added under my breath.
Maeve scooted her chair closer to mine and cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered conspiratorially. “Well, you probably already know all the details about the man in our barn. So spill.”
Under normal circumstances, I would say yes. A person’s thoughts would be so loud and unguarded that I could easily pluck their deepest secrets from them, but the stranger’s were eerily silent. Even growing up in a household full of eight women, it was a constant buzz of incoming feelings, thoughts, and bursts of colors from their emotions. But over the years, I learned slowly to filter them out at will. Except for Mother’s. I often would try to read her mind, and for my trouble would end up with a migraine. Lorn always knew when I was reading his thoughts or targeting him. He would grin and purposely think of odd images or thoughts as silent jokes until I stopped trying and avoided him on purpose.
Mother sat down at the table and cleared her throat. “Let us give thanks.”
We bowed our head and prayed over our meal. I kept my eyes open, and Rhea recited our blessing. Mother was staring out the window toward the barn. She swallowed, and I got a flash of blue paired with her expression. Worry.
I took a slice of bread, dropped it on my chipped plate, and picked up the butter knife. “Maybe you wouldn’t worry so much,” I gazed at my mother knowingly, “if you let me near him. You know I could figure out why he’s here.”
“No,” she said sharply. “You will do no such thing.”
“Why not?” Maeve argued. “I think it’s a marvelous idea. Let Aura at him and she’ll crack his mind like a walnut. She’ll figure out where he’s from, his favorite food, and if he has any dastardly plans to kill us.” Her lip curled into a mischievous smile.
I dropped my knife, and it clattered on the plate. Rhea frowned. Her quill stilled, and she looked over at our mother warily. Maeve was always challenging our mother, poking her. Seeing if she could get her to show her teeth, and this morning was the same.
Our mother looked at Maeve and one solemn eyebrow rose as we waited for the repercussion. “There’s no need to trouble Aura. She’s already been through enough. If the stranger poses any threat, I will see to it he is taken care of.” Mother glanced at me and quickly averted her eyes.