The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

27

Pandora

“ W hat do you mean you’re like them?”

“Come on, Pandora,” Marzipan says with another chuckle. “We both know there’s no need to resort to silly questions. You know exactly what I mean. But if you want me to just come right out and say it, fine. I’m—”

I slam a hand over her mouth, fearing that the walls will catch wind of our conversation.

Marzipan still mutters out a slightly smothered “Blessed” against my palm.

“But it doesn’t make sense ,” I hiss. “You’re so young . From what I’ve studied, blessings don’t manifest early in life. My uncle didn’t uncover his until his early twenties. Same with Aunt Venus. Age aside, though, you’re also not—”

“Urovian?”

I stop to study her face at the recognition of it, shaking my head. “This isn’t normal.”

“Right, because speaking every world language would be totally customary if I were across the Damocles instead.”

There it is . There’s her spark. There’s her spunky attitude that finally reminds me just how grown she feels despite being so young.

“I just . . . don’t see how it’s possible,” I finally articulate.

“It’s pretty neat, actually. My brain digests a person’s native tongue and translates it in real time to what language I speak most dominantly. And then, while it makes it feel as though I’m responding in Kionan—the language I converse most dominantly in—I’m actually speaking the language of whomever I’m conversing with. For instance, you communicate in Urovia’s most dominant linguistic, but in my head, it’s like I’m talking to someone from back home.”

“No,” I say softly, enthralled by the concept of her blessing despite not intending to ask quite literally how it works. “I mean how can you, a Mosacian , be blessed? History clearly stated that Mosacia had been so strict about the ways people could worship, not to mention what they worshiped, that they had to migrate . . .”

Marzipan sighs. “Look, I’m not going to assume you’re clueless, given a Crown Princess would likely be well educated regarding her homeland’s religion and roots. Still, I know this is all a shock, so I’ll try and explain everything without bombarding you. Maybe you should . . . uh . . . sit?” she says, the last word coming out on a question.

“Good point,” I mutter, situating myself on the edge of her bed.

“Okay. So, as you know, a blessing can be passed down through appointments. If there’s only one Blessed individual with that particular talent, upon entering the Beyond, they are able to select a successor—someone to take on their blessing after they’re gone. However, history has shown that if a woman is bestowed the blessing and she has children, her offspring—male or female—are statistically shown to inherit those gifts also. The only outlier among these recordings, of course, is Venus Deragon.”

I try not to feel a tinge of guilt, or fury for that matter, when Marzipan says her name.

“We know now that the late Queen Merrie had clairvoyance, but seeing as her son already possessed the gift, she decided to bequeath her blessing in a way that granted Venus divine connection, an entirely new trait. There’s almost never been anything like it, and there will likely never be anything like it again,” she says with the sort of finality I’d expect out of the revered Holymen in the Royal Domain, not a teenage girl.

But then, the addition of a single word slowly registers.

“Almost?” I whisper.

To her credit, Marzipan smiles before she releases a steadying breath. “You’ve likely read the documented accounts. Eight patriarchs experienced the supernatural after praying with enough reverence to woo the divine beings into bestowing each of them with a unique blessing. But did history ever record why they were praying, or what they were praying for ?”

“I was taught, like most scholars, that they wanted deliverance from Mosacia’s constricting rule—how they prohibited religious expression. So they cried out to the forces above and—”

“Can you cite that?” Marzipan inquires.

“What?”

“Can you cite that? Can you clearly cite a piece of history that lays out, in perfect detail, that that’s what they were praying for? That they specifically wanted deliverance from Mosacia’s oppression.”

I dwell on the thought for a moment . . . but come up short.

Uncle Jericho always stated it as if it were fact, but I’d never seen anything. Still . . . there has to be—

“There’s not,” Marzipan says, reading the look in my eyes like she can translate my inner thoughts, too. “I know, because my mother and I scoured every library in Urovia for documentation on it, and we found nothing. We began to grow suspicious, as we didn’t know Mosacia’s side of the story. Of course, living in Urovia at the time, we knew it would be nearly impossible to understand the Mosacian perspective, not with the barrage of U. Herald editions and the surge of public nationalism since the re-conquering of the Empire. Still, Jericho and Venus didn’t live across the Damocles, which meant that we had a better shot of uncovering the truth if we could find the means to leave in secrecy.”

Marzipan doesn’t have to say the rest aloud for me to understand where this story’s headed. There are no secrets with Jericho and the Saints, no ways to slip through the cracks. His visions always find those that might stir up trouble—even if the trouble they’re starting is for a just cause.

I glance around the room, and the state of her house says it all. Marzipan is an orphan. No adult belongings. No mixed scents of bodies that could occupy the space with her. I fight the wince overtaking my bones as I dare to say to her, “Tell me everything.”

“Pandora—”

“No, Marzipan. I need to know. I’m not in Broadcove anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back, not even if I wanted to. Just because I share blood with them doesn’t mean whatever you’ve endured and the things they’ve done are justified. So, please, just tell me .”

I don’t wish to pry—especially not in a harsh way—but I cannot fight the internal nudge to acknowledge the long-gone presence of her family like a divine conviction. That, and I want to be the person Marzipan hopes I am. Truly.

And so, Marzipan, for the first time in what little amount I’ve known her, begins to wilt.

“Mama passed me the blessing, but she died of an infection two . . . no, three years ago, now. It was Daddy, however, that died in our efforts to relocate. I was thirteen. I don’t dwell on it often but, between me and you, I miss them in a way that no language seems to be able to describe fully. Every day.”

My stomach twists at the similarities between us—only I cannot fathom a world where I had to go at things entirely alone . . . without Mother.

Saints, who would I even be without Geneva Deragon?

“My voracious appetite for literature came from Mama, but my heart for communicating with new people was all Daddy. He always instilled the importance of not overlooking even the lowest of life forms at first glance. It didn’t hit me until a squirrel bid me good morning once that I realized he meant the notion literally .”

Marzipan laughs at the memory. Meanwhile, I marvel at the fact that she can translate the language of animals on top of every human dialect. Then again, Venus idolized a tiger she domesticated as a castle pet in my early childhood. Sometimes, I swore that they understood each other, somehow.

“Daddy had such deep compassion for people, one that really rubbed off on Mama and me over the years. So when Mama started noticing the missing pieces of Urovia’s origin story that she’d been studying, Daddy was the first one to suggest we migrate, go learn more from the source. He made plans for one of the cargo ships to smuggle us across the Damocles late one night. Mama and I made it on the ship, but Daddy . . .”

I can’t go back in time and change her reality, yet my very marrow wails no, no, no.

“No one came after Mama and I, which means he likely confessed to being the last in his family line to bear the blessing of Many Tongues. He died for a lie. For us . And while Mama and I could’ve hardened our hearts in response, we knew that Jericho’s violence meant we were on the heels of something big. Something important.”

My heart stalls and my stomach drops. “ Jericho’s violence.”

It’s not a question—just a shock. Jericho hadn’t killed a Urovian citizen in years, not when Venus had replaced his dirtied hands with her own. But to kill a Urovian after all that time . . . and a Blessed one, at that?

What the hell were they hiding?

“That’s why I live here, in the Sacred City. Not out of fear, but in efforts to right a wrong without any chance of being silenced,” she says carefully. “Because of the laws, no one can cause me harm until I settle down and start a family outside of Vesta, passing my blessing onto the next generation. Until then, it’s my sole responsibility to tell as many people as possible the truth about this city. This continent. This gift that I have.”

I can hardly bear the weight of what I fear is coming.

“The deities commemorated here in the Temple of the Shine . . . they’re Mosacia’s attempt at searching for the divine. Not because they are devout, but because they are desperate ,” Marzipan explains. “They look to these beings recorded in history as their masters because they don’t remember that the Saints were true. That they loved humanity enough to bless them with a divine thread back to them.”

My voice breaks. “The blessings existed to prove to the world that they were real?”

“Yes, Pandora. That was why the patriarchs were praying so fervently that day,” Marzipan says, her eyes grave and wild. “They and the rest of Mosacia had believed that there was no hope beyond the natural course of human life—nothing beyond the grave worth believing in. Not even the deities they still worship now felt enough to them. And from their desperation, the Saints had answered their pleas . . . and the patriarchs responded by hiding what they granted them from the rest of the world. By building a new world and rooting it in their selfishness.”

I think I might be sick. Might heave up whatever meager amount of food still rests in my body right onto her floor.

“Tomes on Mosacian Root History, along with countless personal journals, had been preserved here in the Sacred City. And after Mama and I spent the better part of a year dissecting them all in their various translations, we discovered that the blessing of Many Tongues came nearly two centuries after the patriarchs received their initial gifts. Bestowed specifically on a Urovian family of meager wealth and boundless curiosity. It was clear to Mama and I why the Saints had picked them— my grandparents several times over. Because just as the Saints’ blessings had wandered across the Damocles once before, they expected this new gift to do the same. And knowing how Jericho nearly kept it from doing just that, it was vital that it did.”

So much anger and resentment and confusion thrums to life, heating the blood in my veins.

But Marzipan merely sets a steady hand over my own, looking into my eyes with such warmth and peace. A sensation I haven’t felt in so long. It washes over me like a rolling tide.

“Our gift wasn’t bestowed on us to strengthen their arsenal.” Marzipan smiles. “It was created to help restore the divided lands. To remind the world that there is life after death, joy after an early end. And I intend to devote my life to sharing that with anyone who will listen.”