Page 8 of Summer of Sacrifice
Agatha’s Day of Birth. Grimm felt his wife’s heart sink, but none of the feeling reflected on her face.
“All right. Seleste, take the notes and anything else you might need to decipher the location. We also need you to return to Coronocco and ensure Empress Amira is prepared. We will need all the aid we can muster on the eclipse.”
Seleste nodded once, tucking away the notes Aggie passed her and the star map from Sorscha.
“Winnie, Laurent, and Eleanor,” Agatha addressed them, “continue training the Druids, but we need you to reach all our rebellion faction leaders and ensure they know what to expect going forward. It is also going to be your job to protect the goddess quill. Winnie will take possession of it when we return to Araignée after the coronation.”
The coronation. The moment his wife would finally, officially, be crowned Queen of Seagovia. An unavoidable event Agatha was dreading so deeply that Grimm’s own stomach had turned sour for how foul her mood was concerning it.
Laurent cleared his throat, adjusting his massive bulk in the chair far too small for him. Grimm almost thought he’d break the damned thing. “Wouldn’t Araignée be the safest place for the quill to remain? The compound has Lorelai’s wards around it, and I was under the impression Chresedia didn’t know its location.”
Agatha nodded, acknowledging the Cirque Master’s concern. “Yes, that’s true, but, unfortunately, we don’t know what sort of ways Chresedia has of finding Arielle.” She looked at Grimm apologetically, then across the table. “Or Anne. We mustn’t forget she has Anne’s blood for certain, and Arielle’s most likely. If the quill changes locations often, we have a better chance of keeping it safe.”
Solemn nods bobbed around the table.
“Tindle, Dulci, Emile, Augustus, and Anne. It’s time we prepare the people of Seagovia for what is to come. Chresedia bargained with Grimm to rule Seagovia, and we believe that is why she killed Fleurina. To open the way for Grimm to rule alongside her. We have yet to discern who her spies in the castle are, which leaves us with the only assumption that if she doesn’t yet know that Grimm abdicated the throne and offered her a phoney alliance, she will soon. And Seagovia must be ready.”
Tindle cursed so colourfully that Grimm tucked the crass phrases into his arsenal for future use.
“We’ve our assignments, then,” Sorscha said. “What about you and the princeling?” She jutted out her chin with a sly, wholly inappropriate look at Grimm.
Agatha ignored her Sister’s antics, but she was about to be very, very angry with him...
“Grimm and I will?—”
He stood abruptly, her words halted by the horrendous noise of his chair legs sliding against the floor. “We will be going to Achlys.”
“What?” Agatha said at the same time Dulci, Tindle, and Winnie said something similar.
Sorscha let out a gleeful gasp as if she’d just heard the juiciest rumour in all of Midlerea. “You can both just pop on over there, can’t you?” She looked around, bubbling with excitement. “It’s your home, after all, Lord and Lady Magie de la Nuit.”
Agatha looked to Grimm, incredulous, but it was Winnie who spoke next. “Does this give anyone else a migraine?” she asked rhetorically. “All the moving parts of this. Isn’t it written that The Primordial is a he? The original god before Hespa? You all make it sound like The Primordial is the Thirteen blessed by Hespa.”
Winnie paused to rub at her temples, and Grimm considered doing the same. He’d been taught the same as a royal child in the Church, by the very Grand Magus sitting mute at their table.
Seleste cut in, “The Primordial being a singular he did not begin until the tightening of the Church’s reins on government, and the rise of the patriarchy.”
Grimm blinked at Sister Summer. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises?”
A further surprise, Emile spoke up. “It was another ploy to erase the Sisters Solstice, I would presume.”
He had a point there. But why?
Seleste smiled warmly at Emile. “I’m inclined to agree. Prior to patriarchal indoctrination, the belief was that The Primordial is Hespa—Mother, Maiden, and Crone. Her essence was then parcelled out between the Thirteen gods and goddesses as She saw fit, creating the multi-faceted Primordial.” She flourished a hand at Agatha and Grimm. “She gave of Herself.”
Winnie still looked as if she had a lemon wedge in her mouth. “Right. Lord Night and Lady Magic are two of the Thirteen. And you have…what? Double Identities?” Laurent laughed at Winnie’s exasperated comment, and she looked at him sidelong. “I can’t keep up.”
“Are you two people each?” Eleanor’s face screwed up in thought with her interjection, looking at them down her nose. Grimm had oddly missed that insufferable sneer. “Or one god and one person…” She shrugged. “Albeit person is a liberal term for the likes of you two.”
“Goddess bones.” Sorscha pushed into the conversation, leaning back in her chair to place her feet on the table, her ankles crossed. “I’d love to remember any of my past lives. I was no goddess, but surely I was something saucy and interesting.”
Seleste put a hand on Sorscha’s leg. “Perhaps we let Aggie continue now, Sister.”
But Sorscha kept on going. No surprise there. “And weren’t Talan, Hissa, Monarch, and Belfry just the names they wrote to us under? Are they two people as well, since they’re your children?” She sniffed at Winne. “Damn. You’re right. My head hurts.”
“Enough,” Agatha snapped, irritation blooming on her cheeks in adorable red splotches. “No one is two people. We’re Aggie and Grimm. That is all. We are who we are. As for our daughters… I—I don’t know—” Her face fell, and Grimm jumped in.
“Our daughters were truly named Talan, Hissa, Monarch, and Belfry.” He swallowed hard, refraining from mentioning that Belfry was Athania’s family name. Alas, he knew Agatha could feel the pain twisted up in the name. “I assume that it was all another part of the mission to erase the Sisters Solstice from History, to claim they wrote under the names of their familiars.”