The Secret Keeper

.:Prologue:.

I was always a quiet person. Even as an infant, I scarcely ever cried… so unlike my sister, Angelique, who wailed from the minute she was born until she was old enough to babble semi-coherent sentences. Even then, though, her voice never stopped. She would ramble on incessantly for hours. She was only quiet when her mouth was full of food, for she often muttered even in her sleep. Mother often said that it was good I was so quiet, to balance out the headaches Angelique gave her.

Not to say Angelique isn’t a good daughter, or sister for that matter. She grew up from that annoyingly chattering little girl to a gorgeous, outgoing young woman. She still loves to talk (gossip runs through her veins) but now she has a large amount of suitors to talk to that never seem to tire of her voice.

But me? I’m still quiet… but one of us had to be. From the day Angelique was born, my mother knew it would be me. Aunt Tulia knew it would be me, too, only Aunt Tulia knew from the day I was born, three years before Angelique even made an appearance.

“Terra’s the one, Mari,” she told my mother an hour after my birth. “Terra is the one that’ll take my place.”

Needless to say, they were right. I was seventeen now… and I was the secret-keeper.

You may be wondering what a secret-keeper is. It’s exactly that… the one who keeps the secrets. Before I became secret-keeper, my Aunt Tulia held the job. She taught me everything I needed to know before I took over on my sixteenth birthday.

She had been preparing me since I was old enough to talk and understand. As the apprentice to the sole secret-keeper of the country of Melodia, there were a lot of things that I had to learn.

It was mostly easy. People would tell me their secrets; I would listen to everything without judgment. Then, I would use the ancient magic I would get when I took over to help in whatever way I could.

That wasn’t hard for me. I had grown up wanting to help others and ease their pain. No, the hard part for me was the conditions. As secret-keeper, I would be unable to get married and have children of my own. The heiress to my job would be one of Angelique’s daughters (it was necessary for her to have at least two), and it would be up to me to train her until she took over herself. The reasoning behind this was that husbands and wives have no secrets from each other. A secret-keeper had to live alone to be available at all times of day and night, whenever those who needed her arrived. With a husband and children, she could not devote all her time and efforts to the task she was set.

Being a secret-keeper was lonely. It was more than a job, it was a lifestyle, and the truth was, not everyone was cut out for it. Aunt Tulia had been secret-keeper for nineteen years; she had taken over for her aunt when she was eighteen and I had been born three years after. Though we had originally planned for me to take over when I was eighteen myself, she had practically begged me to start two years early.

“I can’t do it anymore, Ter,” Aunt Tulia had told me, looking pained. “I’m thirty-six years old, and I’ve never really lived. I’ve been alone in this house for nearly two decades, more than half my life. I hate to do this to you, but I want to leave. I want to travel. I can’t listen to any more secrets. I just… can’t.”

I had agreed to take over. Perhaps it was foolish; I don’t think I really knew then what I was getting myself into. I was young, I wanted to help people and I wanted to help my aunt… I didn’t think about much more than that. I didn’t think about the fact that secret-keeper was a lifetime job; the apprentice didn’t take over unless the secret-keeper before her died or disappeared. Not to mention that, since I was only sixteen, my sister Angelique was only thirteen, and I would have to wait for her to have two daughters and for those daughters to turn old enough to take over before I could retire and disappear myself. I didn’t think ahead… and though I knew I had a lonesome life ahead of me, I didn’t really comprehend what that meant.

On my sixteenth birthday, Aunt Tulia kissed us all good-bye and left (for the country of Diraeron, she claimed) and I moved into her old home, where I would be living alone for an untold but lengthy amount of time.

It only took me a week to realize that maybe I wasn’t ready. Even though the door could never be locked, it was safe (there were so many charms and protection spells around the house that anyone approaching with an intent to harm me or steal my property wouldn’t be able to come within a hundred feet) but that didn’t even occur to me. No, I didn’t know if I could handle the secrets. I had visitors ranging from crooks to noblewomen to children, telling me of affairs and murders and stolen toys. While some of the secrets were small, others were tragic, heartbreaking and life-changing. It took me two more weeks to adjust to the new lifestyle, to be able to fall asleep at night without crying, to be able to stop the constant stream of problems racing through my mind. The first month was the worst. I couldn’t even talk to anyone; I was the secret-keeper, and the secrets others told me weren’t mine to tell.

Somehow, over time though, I grew to love it. I saw that I was really helping these people, that all they wanted was someone who would listen, who they knew wouldn’t tell their closet skeletons to anyone. Now, at seventeen, I had been secret-keeper for a year and a half. Although some of the secrets I heard were still heartbreaking, the only thing that really bothered me was that I knew I had to spend my life essentially alone.

The problem was, I’ve been a dreamer my whole life. I loved fairy tales where people fall in love and live happily ever after. When I was young, I used to play “wedding.” Only now, I knew I would never be at a wedding of my own.

But sometimes, people have to give up their dreams in exchange for something more realistic. From the day I was born, I was destined to be the secret-keeper of Melodia. I was destined to help those in need. But somewhere, my destiny got knotted. Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps it was luck. Or maybe, just maybe, it was an ill omen of some kind, a warning sign of something to come. Whatever it was, though, my life turned upside down the stormy night that Gabriel Gavant came crashing through my door.