Rhea wants nothing more than to kill her father. But not just because he's any run-of-the-mill scumbag. No, he's a god. And he's the one who cursed her with being a goldblood -- half human, half godling. Good for her, she's willing to do anything to...
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THE NEXT MORNING, I SLEEP IN.
We usually don't have assignments back-to-back. We risk too much if we individually appear too often at the same time as mysterious deaths.
It's a luxury I don't usually allow myself to indulge in, but I feel especially tired.
When I finally get out of bed, breakfast is already over in the parlor. I eat by myself at a table meant to seat forty, the only sounds in the room my clinking china.
I'm not particularly hungry, but I've already gone a day without eating and it's foolish to go any longer. It would look suspicious to those around me, and it's not good for me either.
I found out the hard way when I was twelve, and the Mistress placed me in the basement. The basement is a place one only talks about in hushed voices in dark corners as the embers from the fire die out. It's the place we go for punishment.
There's only two reasons we're sent down there: failure to kill, or failure to obey.
And as the Mistress saw it, a demigod wasn't a regular human. They didn't need to receive humane treatment.
Thinking of what I endured in the basement makes me lose the little appetite I had, and I push my food away.
A servant comes and clears the table, and I excuse myself.
There's a few girls in the sitting room, sprawled out on couches or playing cards around tables. The rest are either asleep, in their rooms, or on assignments.
"Rhea."
I look over at a slight girl with long blonde hair. She looks like a wisp, one that could be easily blown away by an errant wind.
"Zella," I say, making my way over to her.
She's our resident poisoner. Despite the way she looks, her poisons are frightfully deadly.
She reaches a lazy hand out to me, and I examine the scars and boils that lance her palm. "I wasn't careful and accidentally spilled some on myself this morning," she says by way of explanation.
I nod. "You should be careful," I say. I say that as much for her sake as for her health. The moment she loses her usefulness — the moment any of us do — we are discarded.
We don't know how, since the dead don't speak.
I sit on the couch next to her, bringing out my dagger to sharpen as we talk.
"No assignment," she says carefully. It's not a question.
"No," I say, not looking up at her. "There was one yesterday."
