Will she be back?
She is beyond the wall. She is dead to us now.
No, she will not be back.
My sister Venda is one of them now.
Sisters?
I translated the last passage again, certain I had made a mistake, but it was true. Gaudrel and Venda were sisters. Venda was once a vagabond too.
And then I read more.
Let it be known,
They stole her,
My little one.
She reached back for me, screaming,
Ama.
She is a young woman now,
And this old woman couldn’t stop them.
Let it be known to the gods and generations,
They stole from the Remnant.
Harik, the thief, he stole my Morrighan,
/> Then sold her for a sack of grain,
To Aldrid the scavenger.
I closed the book, my palms damp. Stared at my lap, trying to understand. Trying to explain it away. Trying not to believe it.
It wasn’t just any child that Gaudrel told this history to.
It was Morrighan.
She was a girl not chosen by the gods, but stolen by a thief and sold to a scavenger. Harik wasn’t her father, as the Holy Text claimed. He was her abductor and seller. Aldrid, the revered founding father of a kingdom, was little more than a scavenger who bought a bride.
At least according to this history. I wasn’t sure what to believe.
Only one thing felt certain in my heart. Three women were torn apart. Three women who were once family.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
RAFE
Calantha and Ulrix dragged me to the stables. I was to have another ride through their miserable city, the only advantage being that I could search for another way out, though it was looking more certain there were none.
Vendan riders were swift, and the lost days burned in my head. I went through every military strategy Sven had ever drilled into me, but none of those strategies had ever included Lia and the risk to her.
These thoughts were consuming me, so I didn’t recognize him at first. He dumped dried patties into a bin near the stables. His clothes were dirty and torn. When I followed Calantha and Ulrix into the stable, my eyes had passed over him, focusing instead on my own horse in the first stall. One of the chievdars had claimed him for his own. He was well cared for and groomed, but it goaded me that he would now serve Venda.