Without giving Marilou any chance to choose, Viya hooked their hands together and set off toward the residential hall.
The servants around them, long used to an interaction between the two so plain it barely counted as one, kept their heads down and went on cleaning.
Not one of them looked up at this peculiar "couple."
"Why are you walking so slowly today? Is it uncomfortable when I pull you along?"
Viya walked in front, her ring finger lightly hooked around Marilou's hand, her voice flat and even.
"No. I'm just a little sleepy."
"Sleep when we get back."
Marilou nodded and let out a long breath. Good. Her wandering mind hadn't been noticed. Ordinarily she would never make such an amateur mistake, but today her head was full of one question: why was Viya suddenly taking her to meet her mother?
She had always been harmless as a lamb and never argued back. But that was an act.
She had thought about running, once. The sheer pull of the contract had stopped her.
Think about it. A woman who won't let you touch her and hands you money to spend: where else in the world does a deal like that exist?
Nor did Viya have the perverted hobbies the caged birds in other books had to endure. Keeping her was much like keeping a pet.
Eat her fill and sleep, sleep her fill and eat, and when she was bored, sit in a deck chair eating grapes a servant passed her and watch a sky that never changed.
Marilou had assumed the contract term would slide by in exactly that sort of quiet.
But lately Viya had been seeking her out more and more often, and asking more and more of her. She would drag her out into the streets at night and then vanish.
Marilou would stand where she was and wait, and only once the crowds had mostly gone would Viya come hurrying back, apologizing, saying something had come up at the Temple.
She had never apologized for that sort of thing before.
And that wasn't all. Marilou kept waking to find a key Viya had forgotten sitting in her room for no reason. With that key she could walk out of the Temple entirely. It was rather too careless.
There was another time when a newly hired servant came in loudly saying, "Marilou, are you really willing to spend your whole life shut in here? I've got a soap formula. The two of us could get out and pull off something big."
Marilou scratched her head. She had heaps of the stuff in her cupboard. Was soap supposed to be some rare treasure?
There had been plenty of jokes like that, and Marilou put them all down to Viya being unusually careless.
Except that lately they had been coming thicker and faster.
Marilou raised her head and realized Viya had brought her to the third floor of the hall. She had never once been permitted up here.
"This is the third floor, isn't it? Your Holiness, can I... can I really go up?"
Marilou stopped at the head of the stairs, eyes wide, hands and feet at a loss.
"Today is an exception. Come on."
Viya was as cold as ever. Marilou breathed out and took the chance to look the third floor over. What met her eye was a long corridor with a scattering of servants pushing mops along it.
Oil paintings hung on the walls, mostly portraits of the Saintesses and Holy Sons of ages past.
It was called a residence, but it looked far more like a working office.
"There are illusion wards through here. You had best stay close to me," Viya said quietly.
Marilou nodded and stuck close, her gaze skimming the murals. She remembered seeing something similar in several of the buildings she'd passed before entering the Temple.
Where they stood counted as the living quarters. The Temple was roughly the size of the imperial palaces she'd seen in television dramas.
The corner of the Temple ordinary people were allowed to see held little more than the servants' quarters and the buildings where food was handled.
The Saintess's living quarters sat deep inside, and from outside there was no telling what the buildings in there even looked like.
The first time Marilou came, they had put a hood over her head, precisely so she couldn't learn the way in.
Only once you were tame enough did the hood come off.
The stained glass on the wall threw pale blue light into Marilou's eyes and blurred her vision. She lifted one small white hand, and through the gaps between her fingers she found that Viya had disappeared at some point.
She turned around and found Viya frozen where she stood, her face a mass of black lines. Marilou looked down. She had been walking along holding a servant's hand.
The servant in question had gone bright red, with no idea when the young mistress had taken hold of her.
Marilou might be no more than an accessory as far as Viya was concerned, but not one of the other servants dared treat the young mistress carelessly.
When the servant realized whose hand she was holding, she was scared out of her wits and didn't dare say a word.
"Young mistress, I was only passing by. I'm so sorry!"
The servant fled at a trot. Not much of the frost on Viya's face showed any sign of thawing. She only made a small sound in her throat.
"Since you're in such a hurry, walk by yourself."
Viya moved quickly ahead of her, and Marilou swallowed and hurried to catch up.
"Excuse me."
Marilou knocked and pushed the heavy wooden door open. The room inside was fully furnished, and on a brown antique sofa sat a handsome woman in a blue fleece top.
She looked rather like Viya.
Marilou guessed this was Viya's mother. She didn't rush to speak; getting it wrong would be mortifying.
Viya drew out a folding chair, smoothed her skirt, and sat down on the sofa.
"Honored Mother, this is my wife."
Viya's voice carried almost no feeling in it, as if she were introducing an object rather than a spouse.
Her mother, by contrast, was noticeably gentler.
"So this is the girl you've been hiding, the one you'd never let your mother meet. She does carry herself well. Hello. My name is Vilianne."
"Good day, Lady of the House."
Marilou's voice was very soft. Without listening closely it was hard to tell she had spoken at all.
She was hardly going to call Viya's mother by her actual name; an honorific was the safer course.
"There's no need to be so distant. I called the two of you here because you're both getting on in years. Viya, how much longer do you plan to hide her? The child is grown. She'll have to be seen sooner or later."
Vilianne meant Marilou's age. She had barely met the girl, but of course she knew all about her daughter taking a concubine for a sham marriage.
In her heart she didn't want Marilou to leave. Three years was long enough to warm to a dog, after all.
She refused to believe her own daughter's heart was carved out of stone.
Allowing her not to marry a man in the first place had been a matter of thinking that if it truly came to it, a girl would do for a lifetime as well.
Instead the pair's marriage had gone straight to its final form: separate bedrooms.
How was affection supposed to grow like that? Vilianne was no former Saintess; she merely held a post or two in the Kingdom. And her daughter was that rare thing, a Saintess who owed nothing to bloodline.
She had been chosen by the Saintess Stone at the Rite of the Saintess.
Which was exactly why the family the title should have stayed in loathed Viya utterly, and why everything she did was studied under a magnifying glass.
Fortunately her daughter had done well enough by her that, apart from marrying a girl, not much gossip ever got out.
Viya bit her lip. "If that's all this is about, I'll be going, then?"
"Wait." Vilianne cut her off and produced a letter. "Your eldest sister is back from the front. She heard you'd married, and she wants to come and see her little sister."
Viya's expression stalled, and without thinking she tightened her grip on Marilou's hand.