Blood Ties

Chapter 3: Nadia

The temple was abuzz with gossip. Every priestess, acolyte, and even the maids could not stop talking about the foreign prince who had swanned into Milona and taken up residence in the city's finest residence. The grandest house in Milona was a former temple that had been converted into a villa by some wealthy nobleman who had promptly died after its reconstruction. The estate had been fought over by his two different wives and seven children before being vacated and left to crumble into a beautiful ruin, just like so many other buildings in Milona. It was all white marble and green ivy, with steps that drifted off into the ocean and gave the impression that a mermaid might wash up onto the tiles at any moment.

"I don't understand why everyone is so excited about this prince coming into town," Mari commented to Nadia. "It isn't as if there will be any chances for us to meet him. He is a prince, and unless he comes here to make sacrifices we shall never even breathe in the same air."

Nadia nodded vigorously, watching as Mari put her hair up and pinned it in place beneath the veil. Her own hair was long and heavy from never having been cut, but she had never been permitted to use pins to put it up, for fear that, somehow, the pins might injure her. Instead, she braided it every morning and finished the plait with a ribbon. It was yet another thing that separated her from the other priestesses who all wore their hair up in a bun.

"He's only a prince. What is so special about him, really? He just happens to have inherited the position from his father. If his father were a pig farmer, we would not be hearing all this talk and hubbub concerning him anyways," Nadia mused, lying back on the soft bed and sinking into the pillows. She stared up at the mosaic ceiling, which depicted spirals and a labyrinth of circular patterns that made her dizzy if she gazed at it for too long.

Mari laughed. "My thoughts precisely."

"Still, we shall have to perform more elaborate sacrifices now, because all the nobles want the prince to be present at their firstborn child's sacred rites or some other nonsense of the sort," Nadia commented, tracing the fringe on a tasselled cushion.

Her thoughts delved into her own first, sacred rites. She had been less than three years old, and her parents had taken her to the temple to have her fortunes read. They had not brought her back home after hearing her fate.

Upon her 'tis avowed,

A curse to make men cower.

Yet she shall be bestowed

Also with great power.

Should anything pierce her skin,

Should anything unnatural make her bleed,

Even if it is as small as a pin,

Ruin shall befall us, it has been agreed.

Those words had been drilled into her, every time she asked about her parents. That prophecy had been spoken over her in her infancy, which had dictated her entire life.

Matron Abigail poked her head into the room. "Five minutes until we leave for the festival procession, Mari, Nadia."

Ah, yes. The annual spring festival that involved the priestesses carrying torches to a massive pyre by the seaside, which would then be burnt to ash. She could still smell the mingled scents of fire and balsam and pine from the wood that was burned every year, to signify the death of winter and the beginning of spring. Every priestess would carry a torch and then, in order of rank, would place the torch onto the pyre. Then, when it was one great conflagration, they would chant the words that beckoned spring to come and bid winter farewell.

"Shall we go, Nadia?" Mari offered her arm.

"We shall, Mari," Nadia said with a solemn nod before they both laughed and went out.