“Please come in from the rain,” Brigitta urged her.
The young nun shook her head. “I must not tarry. I’m to take Luciana to Mother Ginessa’s office.”
Luciana’s breath caught. The nobleman was there.
Sister Fallyn looked her over and clucked her tongue. “Heavenly goddesses, yer hair is a wild and tangled mess. Ye should braid it again afore ye meet—” She winced.
“Meet…?” Luciana gripped the bloodstained towel as a sense of foreboding pressed down on her. Something was about to happen, something she wasn’t sure she wanted.
Sister Fallyn peered over her shoulder at Mother Ginessa’s office and mumbled to herself, “Perhaps she should know afore, so it won’t come as such a shock…”
Luciana stepped back. Thunder rumbled overhead, making the air around her feel charged with tension. The skin on the back of her neck tingled.
Sister Fallyn turned to face her. “Aye, ’tis best to tell ye now. The man who just arrived is yer father. And he’s come to take ye away.”
Luciana gasped. The towel fell from her hands and fluttered to the floor. A father? She looked at her sisters, and her heart clenched at the sight of their stunned expressions. They must have heard the same thing she had. Even so, she didn’t want to believe it. “Nay. I don’t have a father.”
“That’s right!” Maeve latched on to Luciana’s right arm. “She’s an orphan. We all are. Mother Ginessa said so.”
Brigitta took hold of Luciana’s left arm. “She’s not going away. Her home is with us.”
Sister Fallyn sighed. “I know how close ye are to one another, but there is no help for it. Luciana’s father has the right to take her with himself.”
Luciana swallowed hard. “How can I have a father?”
With a grimace, Sorcha muttered under her breath, “Mother Ginessa lied to us.”
The other girls gasped, and Sister Fallyn quickly raised her hands. “Don’t judge her harshly. She was only doing what Luciana’s father asked her to do. He wanted Luciana to be raised as an orphan, so she wouldn’t wait her whole life for a reunion that would ne’er happen.”
Luciana stiffened as if she’d been slapped on the face. “Ye mean he didn’t plan to e’er come back for me self?”
Sister Fallyn winced. “I’m only making matters worse. Come along, so ye can hear what yer father has to say.”
And just like that, with a few words from her father, everything would be resolved? All these years her father had been alive. Nineteen years. How could nineteen years of being unwanted suddenly disappear as if they’d never happened? Anger swelled inside her. “Why should I see him? He abandoned me.”
“That’s right.” Maeve tightened her grip on Luciana’s arm. “She’s staying with us.”
“He’s yer father.” Sister Fallyn motioned impatiently with her hand. “Come now. Show some respect. Don’t leave himself waiting.”
Respect? Luciana’s anger twisted in her gut. How could she respect a father who had never planned to return for her? She should reject him, just as he had rejected her. He should feel the pain—
A twinge of shame pricked at her. Since when did she knowingly try to inflict pain on anyone? She’d been raised better than that. Even though it was not her parents who had raised her. “Is my mother alive, too?”
Sister Fallyn sighed. “I don’t know. Ye’ll have to ask yer father.”
“She’s not seeing him,” Brigitta cried. “She’s not leaving us.”
Luciana’s eyes filled with tears. How could she not remain with her sisters, as much as she loved them? But if she refused to see her father, he might leave and never come back. She might lose her only chance to meet him.
“Are ye not curious about himself?” Gwennore asked.
She was curious. But what would she say to a father she’d never known? Why did ye not want me? Was it because she was Embraced? Had he sent her here to protect her? But why make her believe she was an orphan? He could have come to visit her. He could still have been a father to her. But he had completely rejected her.
And why did he suddenly want to take her away? This was the only way of life she’d ever known. Her sisters were her family.
“Are the rest of us orphans?” Sorcha demanded. “Or was that a lie, too?”
Sister Fallyn turned pale as she hesitated. “I don’t know. But I do know this—if Mother Ginessa lied to us, then she had a very good reason for doing so.”
“Perhaps she was protecting us,” Gwennore suggested. “Because we’re Embraced.”
Sorcha huffed. “I don’t care what the excuse might be, I don’t like being lied to!”
Luciana took a deep breath, her decision made. “I would know the truth.” No matter how much it hurts.
As she stepped toward the door, Maeve and Brigitta reluctantly released their grip on her arms. She stopped at the door and looked back at her adopted sisters.
Sorcha still looked angry. Gwennore attempted to smile, while Brigitta sniffed. Maeve looked so young and lost with the tears streaming down her face that Luciana thought her heart would break in two. As the oldest, she’d been the one to dry Maeve’s tears when she’d scraped a knee or hold her in the middle of the night when she’d had a bad dream.
“Chee-ana,” Maeve whispered, using the shortened version she’d called Luciana when she’d been too young to manage her full name.