Rezen took a step nearer, and she forced herself to remain stationary. “We are blessed,” Rezen agreed. “But the circumstances are difficult to be called so.”
Amarys pulled the door nearly shut, her free hand making anxious work with her skirt. “Foundlings,” she murmured, clearing her throat as she did so as if finding it difficult to get the words out. They were hurried, and her eyes darting quickly about Penryn’s features, looking for some sign or reaction. “The elders were brought in when their parents died, and Rezen...” she glanced at her husband. “He wondered if it was time for us to do something good.”
Her voice was small, and filled with pain, and Penryn remembered Rezen’s earlier hintings. Her mother had not always done well, and required a great deal of care. Now she needed less so. It was a difficult gamble to have made, if her progress had only come at the introduction of multiple fledglings to a home where their caretaker was in a delicate state.
“Are you angry?” Amarys asked, her grip tightening on the door handle.
“Angry?” Penryn repeated, her voice feeling very far away. “By what right could I claim such a thing?” A part of her realised that was a response the sages had often given her when they wanted an emotion buried and she was slow in compliance. They would remind her of her place, of all that had been given to her, until she was calm enough to give the proper platitudes and speak of her gratitude with something resembling truthfulness.
The next touches were familiar to her, subtle even as they were against the small of her back. Grimult knew. Knew when her words were not really hers, but had been set into her mind from her earliest beginnings all the same.
She took a calming breath, and then tried again. “If there is anger,” she allowed, for it was there. Simmering in a low burn even now. “It is not for you.”
It was for the circumstances that had dictated her life until now.
For ways that were old and lacking in sense.
At sages who had made her upbringing all the more difficult, when, at the very least, love and affection might have been afforded before they sent her out into the wilderness, uncaring what happened to her once she had fulfilled her portion of duty.
Amarys did not appear convinced, and Penryn tired again to ascertain the source of her own feelings so she might be a little more forthcoming. “I am saddened,” she managed at last, giving a little shrug. “That we were not given such time together. But I am glad for your orphans that they have not met with even more misfortune.”
Some of the texts had insisted that within a clan, none were truly orphaned. By blood, perhaps, but all would find aid and kinship forged through other means.
The thought had dismayed her at the time, knowing that she would never be claimed by any clan.
But evidently, she had been wrong.
Grimult claimed her for his own, giving her his house and his clan when they wed.
Harlow insisted she was one of theirs, even if the sages would be horrified at the very notion.
She was for all of them, their entire people to look upon equal parts fear and respect.
She felt so very full, her heart near to bursting. For all her years of certainty that she would belong to nothing and to no one, she now had rightful claim to two clans. Parents who lived. Siblings by name, if not by blood.
And she would like to meet them.
“Do they know of me?” she asked quietly, wondering if she should introduce herself as merely a guest and deny any kinship, for their sake. She did not know how long they had made their home here, and she would not like to disturb any of their settling in.
“They do,” Rezen stated firmly. “All have known of you, after the first year. We tried to keep silent, as we were told, but that...”
“It was going to kill me,” Amarys finished for him, her eyes going to her husband with all the sorrow she had nursed alone. “To have to lie, to say that my baby had died when nothing could be further from the truth.” Her hand turned to fists and she stared down at the carpet, and there was no mistaking the anger that had crept into her features. “I might have buried a little one not meant for this world. I may have held her, and gave my blessings.” She raised watery eyes to look at Penryn. “What can you do for a child that is simply taken away?”
Penryn bit her lip, trying to keep her composure. She did not like that a very great part of her was glad that her mother had mourned for her. That the sages had been wrong that she had not been simply set aside, forgotten as she was abandoned to duty. Grimult had been right, and her love even now was fierce and protective, even when they had known each other so short a while.
Her mother took a shaky breath of her own. “And now to know that you were mistreated...” she shook her head, closing her eyes briefly.
Penryn frowned. She had given no such indication. Even now, she was not certain that she could call her upbringing such. She would pity another that had experienced the same, could rail at the sages for their cruelty in some areas, but in others.
“I did not know hunger,” she assured her, trying to offer what comfort she could. “I was warm every night, and I had clothes to wear, and as many books to read as one could hope to read in a lifetime.”
Many lifetimes, if she was honest, the sages known for hoarding every bit of written text they came upon.
“They brutalised you,” her mother
