“I really missed you over the winter, Cat,” Marguerite says. “So did Mother Agnes. I think it hurt more than she’d ever admit when you stopped coming to see her.”
“Funny that she would lecture me on my pride, then,” I reply dryly.
We walk almost a block before she speaks again. “What did you argue about?”
“I asked her about my parents, and she wouldn’t tell me who they were.”
Marguerite shakes her head. “But she doesn’t know who any of our parents are.”
Apparently, the prioress hasn’t let her secretary know about the file tucked between holy books that lists every foundling in her care and their known or suspected origin. I’d snuck in to read it when we were eleven and received quite a shock at some of the secrets it contained. She certainly never treated any of us girls differently that I could tell—even Marguerite, who’s the previous high altum’s child by Sister Alix. Any favoritism my friend received was by her own merit, but I suspect Mother Agnes’s knowledge was the reason the abbey received a massive grant to expand when we were young.
My name wasn’t listed in the file, however. Not even with a blank spot next to it.
“She knows,” I said. “I heard her talking to Magister Thomas the day he asked to hire me.”
“Maybe you misunderstood.”
I roll my eyes. “You’ll never believe ill of anyone, will you? But no, I’m not mistaken. She said she still had hopes that my family would accept me.”
“That doesn’t mean she knows who they are, Cat.”
“Except that she also warned they would hold him accountable for any harm that came to me,” I say. “And how would she know that if they hadn’t told her so?”
We turn the last corner as I’m speaking, and the vine-covered walls of the Selenae Quarter stretch out for several blocks in either direction. That’s when it hits me:Theyhave been watching me, even coming out of their neighborhood after dark to do so. Or perhaps just Gregor watches, but enough that he communicates with Magister Thomas. Becauseheis my family.
I’m Selenae.