Prey and Mercy

V. A Goddess Can Hold Secrets Too

"Will you stop tapping?" Milena grabs my hand and shoves it under the table. "Some of us are trying to pay attention."

I've been nervous since the start of the week. This morning I tried to pour myself a glass of orange juice when Leonora opened the kitchen door, causing me to let go of the glass pitcher. She gave me an earful over a pile of shattered glass and a soaked kitchen floor while I held back the frustration blooming inside my fingertips to strangle her...or anything.

I never told her what happened. I couldn't. Because I I knew she'd tell our mother that I only had so much time. No doubt the both of them would ruin their lives trying to save me, begging gods that don't listen to spare my meaningless life. There's no guarantee I could ever become mortal anyway; the fifty-fifty chance failed my father. It left my mother alone with a half a life she couldn't remember.

Class goes on without me because I'm not here. I'm inside my head...being dragged down the marble floors of the pantheon with bloody feet and a gag holding back my screams.

A piece of paper glides across the counter in front of me, Milena's loop cursive asking a question I'm not in the mindset to wrap my head around.

Do you know what you're wearing to the Banquet tonight?

Nope. I scribble back. Something black I guess.

My response gets me an eye roll. She crumples the paper in her palm, setting it to flames, before going back to work. I'm supposed to go dress shopping with her downtown tonight but I already know I'm going to bail before she can ask again. I'm hoping Idris is enough to settle her temper.

The first banquet, the one no one really cares about, is mandatory. The second one, the one Milena is asking about, that's where the hype lies. Only right now I'm interested in neither. They're always the same anyway.

"Can anyone tell me me when the veil was put up and, if you were paying attention, why?" Mrs. Lampshire has a forgettable face and an even more forgettable voice.

She teaches the most humdrum of histories to the senior classes of the academy but who really knows how long she's been here. Mortal plagues, falling gods, the loss of faith in our "mythological" culture don't interest me enough to not snooze her nasally voice away.

Of course, Marjorie raises her hand. "It went up in the early seventeen hundreds and has been up ever since. Vlasis Siskoulis and his daughter Natassa put it up in order to create a parallel world in which the gods could go without fear of prosecution of faith and display their abilities without endangering mortal lives. Not to mention, Natassa was being pursued by a mortal scoundrel that wanted to abuse her powers so the gods granted her father a gift that instill stability of the gods."

"And why did the gods choose these two unlikely lesser gods?"

"Because of their sacrifice of one-hundred gods per crest that allowed them obtain immeasurable power. Vlasis slept with the god of creation and abandoned her, stealing their daughter to worship the goddess's twin sister instead. Natassa was always meant to become powerful so he believed the sacrifices would jump the process and that some day his daughter would take the throne. The veil was secretly meant to protect them only Natassa was stabbed in the back before she could do any real damage and her father kidnapped, taken back to the mortal realm to be tortured for all of eternity by the goddess of creation. It seams fit, he broke her heart and her trust first." Milena smiles triumphantly.

Mrs. Lampshire nods her head and tells the class to turn their books. Marjorie and Milena are always competing to be right or at least more right than the other so it's no surprise that I spot them sending death glares across the room.