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“Fuck,” I whispered. In that moment I realized how much hope I’d still been holding out that I’d find her here. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Hallowyn looked as if she was choosing her words with care. “Your mother made a sacrifice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Sacrifice, like in the Adoration Rite?”
“No,” she said. “Not in that kind of rite.”
I clenched my teeth. “But it was a rite, then?”
She nodded slowly. “The most sacred rite there is. Few know of its existence—or its true purpose.”
“Well, I’m about to be one of those few. Tell me.”
Her gaze flickered, and I saw her working hard to maintain her composure. “Desdemona Drakharrow became what we call a Living Relic. The Bloodmaiden’s most faithful servant. And in a way …”
“What?” I demanded.
She licked her lips. “In a way she became like the Bloodmaiden herself.”
That stopped me cold. “Speak clearly. Much more clearly.”
“She is …” There was that hesitation again.
“Tell me. Or else, I swear by your precious Bloodmaiden that you’ll have an Inferni dragon filling your office if you don’t. Believe me, there won’t be room for us both.”
Her face tightened. “Women who become Relics are neither fully living nor are they permitted to die.”
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “How can she be neither alive nor dead? Where is she?”
“She volunteered,” Hallowyn insisted, “as many holy highblood women have before her. She exists in a long line of martyrs—”
“Don’t,” I warned her. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me my mother chose this. I know my mother, and I know she wouldn’t have left her family. She wouldn’t have abandoned her children. There is no way she volunteered.”
Hallowyn flinched. “I do not know the full terms of the arrangement. I was not high priestess at the time.” I hadn’t realized that part. “I only know that your uncle worked closely with my predecessor and with your mother.”
In other words, Viktor had coerced my mother into this. I suddenly realized the answer was obvious. No, my mother hadn’t volunteered. She’d done this to protect us, Aenia and me. Viktor had wanted her out of the way. He’d threatened to kill us. And with my father gone, my mother must have felt she had no other choice but to comply. To sacrifice.
“Where is she? Where did the rite take place?”
“To the north. At the edge of Sangratha.”
I cursed. “You mean the Bonewood?”
She stared. “Yes, the Bonewood. How did you—?”
“It doesn’t matter. I know about the Bonewood. Now, tell me, what does this have to do with the Veil?”
“I see you know far more than you should,” she said coldly. “The Relics seal the Veil. They keep the boundary closed. They exist on the threshold, feeding the Veil with their blood and … being fed.”
I stared at her. “What the fuck.” It wasn’t a question.
“It is a sacred arrangement,” she claimed.
“It makes no fucking sense.”
She looked displeased. “You challenge holy doctrine? You would blaspheme against the Bloodmaiden?”
“I’m blaspheming against my uncle,” I snapped. “But the Blood-maiden’s not looking so good in my books right now either.” I shook my head. “This makes no sense. My uncle is trying to tear the Veil down—that’s where my brother and Catherine Mortis are right now, at the borderlands, trying to destroy it. Viktor doesn’t want to protect Sangratha. He wants the realms to bleed together.”
