The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 67

Shortly after Anne and Lady Corvina left, that little girl, Liza, had returned to the drawing room carrying a stack of books so large they barely fit in her arms.

Liza slammed the books down on the coffee table and began to flip through them, explaining her research process at length.

Eva, sitting on a nearby chair, was barely listening. Out of the corner of her eye she was watching an image of Anne walking through the garden with that hateful Lady on her heels. They had just entered a hedge maze. They seemed to be talking of inane things.

Eva was just glad that Anne was wearing the lapel pin she had given her so the surveillance spell was active and Eva could keep an eye on them.

"So why do you think that is?" asked Liza, turning to look at Eva with large eyes sparkling with intellectual excitement.

"I'm sorry, what was your question?" asked Eva.

Liza rolled her eyes and picked up one of the books, shoving it into Eva's hands. "Look," said Liza. "In the oldest records of the saints, divine magic was always associated specifically with an ability to see hidden truths, either about what is, what was, or what is yet to come. The first and second saintesses were revered as oracles, specifically. There was never any mention of them performing physical miracles."

Liza then grabbed a second book and stuck it on top of the first one in Eva's lap. "With the third saintess, that's when miracles started to be mentioned. She was portrayed as a hero of the empire, helping the army in battle through her miracles. In more recent books, the focus of divine power always seems to be this style of miracle and not on visions or hidden knowledge at all. Why is that?"

"Well..." said Eva. "Diving magic is a gift from the Goddess, right? So perhaps the Goddess gives different gifts to different people, depending on what the world needs most at that time."

"Maybe..." said Liza. "But if that was the case, I feel like there would be a wider variety in specific abilities, instead of this clear progression from 'visions' to 'miracles.'"

"The Goddess works in mysterious ways..." said Eva, dismissively. She was still watching Anne out of the corner of her eye. Anne and Lady Corvina seemed to be having a more serious conversation than before. Corvina was crying.

"Fine, you don't know the answer either," said Liza, with a huff, taking her books back. "It just bugs me because the descriptions of miracles seem really similar to older descriptions of what you could accomplish with true magic, but whatever. All the info I can find on true magic is so vague. Do you know what mana is?"

"What?" said Eva, turning her full attention to Liza for the first time.

"Do you know what mana is?" Liza asked again, flipping through some of her other books. "I understand that true magic is powered by mana, but none of the books I've read have ever said what mana actually is. Maybe that's why true magic has been lost. Maybe if someone could figure out or remember what mana is, we could all use true magic again!"

Eva watched the little girl carefully. She clearly had a sharp mind, and she was so full of excitement and curiosity. She also had a stable life and a wealthy, loving family that genuinely cared for her.

Eva felt a twinge of something like sadness and grief and loneliness and... jealousy.

This pissed her off a bit because those were all emotions that she should have successfully repressed years ago.

Eva wondered vaguely how Bishop Geist must have felt, way back when, when she'd discovered the grubby, abandoned Eva, hated or ignored by everyone other than her one true friend, scrounging around the abandoned wings of the church, reading forbidden books, asking many of these same questions.