The priestess briefly thanked Sláine for blessing the couple before moving on to Lucretia’s portion of the ritual. “I now present the offering for Lucretia, the goddess in charge of blessing the couple with many years of good fortune and wealth.” She held up two gold coins, one for the bride and one for the groom. “We offer up one coin from each side to represent the starting wealth they each bring to this betrothal. We place them together into this blessed coin purse so that you will multiply them and bless this couple with wealth for as long as they share this pouch.” She then slipped the two coins into a small leather pouch that was embroidered with Lucretia’s runes.

The priestess then walked over and stood behind a large, permanently affixed stone chest, embedded with gems in the shape of a scale. She gently opened the chest to reveal an abundance of gemstones in a large variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Also mixed in were plain stones with varying types of textures and shapes. “We now ask Lucretia to guide my hands as I gather the rocks that will predict the amount and type of years of fortune the couple will face together.”

Lucretia looked on as the priestess closed her eyes, dipped both hands into the stone chest, and carefully mixed the gems and stones. Lucretia didn’t have to actually do anything during this portion—the stone chests of her temples were already ingrained with small portions of her divinity. She could just sit back and let the chests do all the work for her. It also was a bit more entertaining this way, since the estimates would be a mini-surprise for Lucretia, as well.

Lucretia could interfere and have a say in the estimated yearly fortunes if she really wanted to, but that would require more work on her part. Plus, sometimes the sharper priestesses noticed and made it a bigger deal than Lucretia usually meant it to be. This engagement was already dramatic enough as it was, so Lucretia just sat back on her floating yellow moon and watched on to see what her disconnected piece of divinity decided to predict for the couple’s wealth in the future years.

The priestess was finally done mixing the rocks and had cupped her hands together to scoop up the stones and gems that would predict the couple’s future prosperity. She opened her eyes only after she had fully lifted the handful from the chest. Next, she brought the gathering of rocks to the altar, gently placing them into a pile behind a large scale to separate the gems from the stones. Once she was done separating them she then counted each pile individually, making sure to note how smooth each of the plain stones were, as well.

While the types of gemstones represented how much of each type of prosperities the couple would encounter throughout their marriage, the plain stones were debatably more important and interesting to the mortals, since each plain stone represented a single year of the couple’s marriage. The smoother the stone, the smoother the year would be financially—with any holes in the stone representing the loss of wealth. Though they couldn’t predict the correct order the stones went in, it gave the mortals a rough estimate on how well off the couple’s union would be.

As the priestess announced the results of the prediction, Lucretia was genuinely surprised. Every couple that had partaken in the engagement ritual almost always had stones that had imperfections—like holes or sharp edges—yet the heirs of Frotleikr and Silvius only had stones that had been completely smoothed out by years of sitting in rivers.

Not only that, but the couple had also received an abundance of different gemstones in the mix as well. Lucretia observed the pile of gems. She immediately saw her personal favorite—citrine—but there also were amethysts, diamonds, emeralds, garnet, jade, pearls, rubies, and both blue and orange topaz. Considering who they were the heirs of, Lucretia had assumed she would see a few of those gems, but to actually see so many of each gem was mind-boggling even for her, the goddess of wealth—especially considering this was before she had officially made a decision to pass on her blessings. She would still have time to change her mind, at this point, in most engagement rituals.

The goddess of wealth’s only thought was wondering how immaculate their future financial advisor had to be.

The priestess carefully slid the gemstones into the same leather pouch as before and then placed it on one side of the scales in front of her. She then piled all but one of the other rocks on the other side of the scale. “Lastly, we place the couple’s starting wealth on Lucretia’s Scales, so that we may ask Lucretia to balance any future years of poor fortune with years of favorable fortune.” She turned her head up towards the pale yellow moon where Lucretia sat. “If you accept these offerings and wish to impart your blessings, let it be known.” She then placed the final stone on the scale and watched it sway back and forth.

Lucretia stood up from her seat and floated down towards the two toddlers. The piece of her divinity that she had imbued into the stone chest seemed to have already made the choice for her; she would impart her blessing upon the couple and their future fortunes.

The goddess of wealth traced her own runic symbols on the back of the toddlers’ hands, right where her brother had traced his; this time the symbols that swirled on the back of their hands were yellow. She then traced the runes on the leather coin pouch, lighting them up briefly, and finally placed her hand on the altar where there was a picture of a scale. There were gasps from the mortals behind her as the image of scales lit up. Now two symbols on the altar were aglow.

As she floated back up to her wooden moon, she observed not only the mortals, but the other deities as well. The mortals still had various degrees of excitement and anxiety fluctuating on their faces, but Lucretia already predicted those reactions—her true interest was in how her fellow deities were reacting.

The floating stars where the others were seated were quickly swirling every which way as different groups formed to gossip. A few would then split off to chat with other gossip-mongers. There seemed to only be excited buzzing coming from the various gods and goddesses. Lucretia even caught whispered snippets about a betting pool some of the deities had started before the ceremony had even begun.

Lucretia knew there would be more of an upset than usual since everyone gathered when Ianthe showed up, yet the cacophony of the deities' voices was a bit overwhelming. The mortals were lucky, in a way, that they couldn’t hear the voices of the deities.

As Lucretia settled into her seat—her part in the ritual officially over as soon as the priestess had thanked her—she thought she could hear some quiet whimpering from somewhere, but she couldn’t place where she was hearing it from. Before she had a chance to investigate further, she noticed her sister standing up beside her.

“Quiet! All of you quiet down!” Ianthe called out, louder than Lucretia had heard any other time she had observed Ianthe’s anger—well, any other time except once, but that time was also out of sorrow.

Instantly all the deities shut their mouths and quieted down. Lucretia was reminded yet again of the amount of power and sway her older sister had. She often forgot, since Ianthe stayed cooped up in her personal temple run by the witch tribes, but it was a prime show of the fact that the only deities that didn’t shy away from Ianthe’s orders were their parents—the exact two deities that were the only ones not actually present. Of course, if either of her parents actually came down to attend this “simple” engagement ceremony, they would all have a lot more issues and worries to fret over than simply the attendance of Ianthe.

Ianthe sat back down upon her pale purple wooden moon after giving a contented nod towards the others. Her frustration made sense to Lucretia, since she was sure her sister wanted to be able to actually hear what gifts the mortals were going to offer up to receive her blessings towards the engagement. Still, she was glad Ianthe left it at that once the deities had all smothered their conversations and gossip immediately. Ianthe was known for her unforgiving nature after all—well, at least ever since. . . Lucretia shook her head slightly. She didn’t want to recall the incident that caused the moment when she had considered Ianthe at her angriest. At the moment, Ianthe seemed to momentarily be in a good mood for some reason.

Lucretia looked at her sister curiously through the corner of her eye. There were too many strange happenstances occurring for what was supposed to be just a small affair of two heirs getting engaged—not even their marriage ritual, but their engagement ritual. On top of that, Ianthe seemed to be happy? Just what did Ianthe know that no one else did? It couldn’t just be that the couple were born under their mother’s star sign—there had been other couples like that in the past, and Ianthe had no reaction to them.

There had to be something more to this, and Lucretia wasn’t sure if she wanted to know, or if it would be better to remain ignorant.