Page 86 of The Half King
“How old was he then?” she asked.
Kian shrugged. “I don’t know. Roughly our age. It would have been soon after his Claiming Day.”
“Not too young to father children,” Daerick pointed out.
Twenty years ago. Mama had been a great beauty then. Even now, she turned the heads of many, young and old alike. She could have easily caught Father Padron’s eye. But something about the idea felt wrong. As pious as Father Padron was, she couldn’t imagine him being tempted by any woman.
“I don’t think it’s him,” she said. “I want to have a look at the records.”
Just then, something else occurred to her. She had assumed she hadn’t belonged at the temple and that was the reason she had never fit in there. But all gifts of magic, healing, and the Sight were given exclusively to second-borns. So if she was truly a priest—or a priestess—that meant shehadbelonged at the temple, just not with the Seers.
“If I’m a priestess,” she said, “then I’m a second-born. That eliminates Father Padron. Because unless he already had a child before he went to Solon, which I doubt, I would behisfirstborn, if not my mother’s.”
Daerick frowned in thought. “I’ve never heard of a priest fathering a child, so it’s hard to say. But you make a good point.”
Something else niggled at the back of her mind, a realization just beyond her reach. Several moments passed before she pieced together what she had been missing. The man she’d calledFatherwasn’t truly her father. She was a Solon in name only. That explained why the soothsayer had detected so little Solon blood within her. She must have inherited a hint of it from her mother but not enough to be of significance.
“I’m not a Solon,” she said.
Kian and Daerick peered at her.
“To break the curse,” she told them, “each noble dynasty has to offer their blood to the Petros Blade. We have a Calatris here with us, and we have a Mortara and a Petros…”
“But no Solon,” Daerick finished. “Flaming hell. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. We can’t break the curse until we travel all the way back to the castle. We need Cole Solon.”
“That slippery bastard,” Kian added.
“Our window of time just shrank by a moon,” Daerick said.
22
Before they returned to camp, there was one thing left to do.
“I want to experiment with my energy,” Cerise said. “Now, while Father Padron is gone.”
Kian nodded. “You won’t get another chance.”
“What about over there?” Daerick told her, pointing at a nearby sand melon patch. “You could try raising one from the ground. That seems easy enough.”
She didn’t know abouteasy, but a melon patch was a good place to start. She knelt on the ground in front of the thorny brush, studying one of the thin, exposed strips of rind peeking out from the dirt. Most of the melon was hidden underground. She couldn’t tell how heavy it was or if that even mattered, so she tried to imagine what a priest would do.
She focused hard on the melon, clenched her fists, and strained as if attempting to lift the gourd with her mind. The taste of metal filled her mouth. Power crackled across her flesh.It was working!She strained even harder. The rind shook. And then came a greatboom, and she shielded her face as the melon exploded.
Behind her, Daerick screamed like a monkey, and Kian laughed in shock. She turned to find them being pelted by chunks of melon raining down from the sky.
“Well, it worked,” Kian said as he picked a bit of rind out of his hair. “You raised a melon.”
“All the way to the sky,” Daerick added while brushing debris from his tunic.
“Don’t be discouraged, my lady of the temple. All things require practice.” Kian winked. “Just don’t use me as your next test subject.”
“I second that,” Daerick said.
Cerise shook the juice from her arms. She hadn’t expected instant success, but as she glanced around for another melon, she realized how heavily she was breathing. “That drained me.” She pressed a sticky hand to her chest and felt her heart pound. “When I opened the spring this morning, I felt stronger than ever, but now I’m exhausted.”
“And rightly so,” Daerick said. “You dispatched your first death, didn’t you?”
“Oh.” She sat back and crossed her legs at the ankles. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I suppose I did.”
