“Well, of course we’re meant to join and make more of us, and if we can take comfort in it, all the better.” A sprightly smile illuminated her round cheeks and pointed chin, then faded as she knit her brow. “But in the temple, pleasure was not offered freely. Novices younger than me were used by whatever great lords and warriors took a fancy. I heard them screaming from the bath, saw them thrashing in the water when the lords forced them down on their…laps. And I had to bring towels to wipe the girls’ blood, and oils to anoint their skin, so they could be sent into the bedchambers to glorify Arrosa through the night.”
I well knew such crimes happened. I had warned Jullian of them, sworn to protect him. I wished she would speak of something else. All manner of unseemly urges seemed waked in me this night.
“One night when I was ten, a lord tired of the priestess who serviced him in the bath. He bellowed that he preferred a younger body. He saw me hiding in the corner and demanded me. And he got me. For a sevenday. Even though I could offer him no temple blessing. Even though I could not read to him from the temple writs or recite the lays of love.”
Her simple statement of evil gave weight to her story that indignant diatribes could not. I believed her.
“Afterward, I ran away. If I had taken vows, like Sila, they would have come after me, and I would have had to cut myself as she did to undo the swearing. But I was just a bath girl…”
“…Yet your parents refused to take you back—their gift to the goddess.” No need to ask what had happened to her after. I had been fifteen when I ran away, and the ways to feed oneself so young were very few. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it does not…cannot…justify—”
“But I am not sorry! Don’t you see?” She twiddled with the lamp, retracting the wick so its fire dimmed, confining the pool of light to the table and her red-gold complexion. “Had I stayed a bath girl at the temple I’d not have met Sila. I’d not have learned of the Gehoum, and how we must make ourselves humble before them. I’d not understand the need for cleansing and repentance or to tear down the false structures of learning and privilege that make one man’s will more powerful than the purity of a girl.”
I had learned long before that when a certain note crept into an otherwise reasonable argument, it paid a man naught to continue. The fanatic’s gleam shone in Malena’s soft brown eyes, and she was never going to agree that her slaughtering children in the name of her uncaring Gehoum was no holier than a lord’s raping children in the name of his own pleasure.
“I’ve eaten all I can bear,” I said, setting down the tasteless porridge. I wanted this woman out of here. Long-buried memories of drunken soldiers and their rough, fumbling hands, of filthy alleyways and painful humiliations, had gotten tangled with images of bath girls and swimming brown eyes and soft copper-hued limbs. “Tell your mistress and her monk that sad stories and beds with quilts will not make me their willing captive. Let them come and tell me what they want of me.”
I saw no use in pretending cooperation. Gildas knew me too well. I just needed to keep their eyes on me and away from the captives down below. But what if I found a way to get Osriel out of here, yet had not secured Jullian? I shoved the thought away as soon as it appeared. I had two more days.
Malena set down her spoon, picked up my wine cup, and joined me at the window. Her round cheeks bloomed with health. “Dear Magnus,” she said, pressing the cup into my hand. “The holy one has sent me to tell you what she wants of you.”
Her lips parted slightly. Soft. Waiting. I drained the cup in one gulp, and her smile blossomed in fragrant sweetness like moonflowers. A gust of wind whistled through the iron grate, and she shivered.
“And what is that?” I said, relishing the potent richness of the wine. Malena was so small…so fragile in the thin white shift that fluttered in the wind, giving shape to the ripened form beneath. I wrapped my arms about the trembling girl to shield her from the cold.
She wrapped her arms about my neck and pulled my head down so she could whisper in my ear. “I am your chosen mate.”
Chapter 22
“Chosen mate?” Increasingly thickheaded, as if I’d drunk a vat of wine, I could not seem to grasp her meaning.
“Mmm. The world shall be renewed.” Her fingers stroked my neck and teased at my ears.
My body swam with lust. My mind swam with the wine and unfocused danger, and I knew I should stop what I was doing. I just could not remember why. Even as I voiced the question that might elaborate the risk, my gloved fingers found the ties that held her flimsy shift closed, and I pulled.
Goddess Mother… Her breast tasted of ginger and honey.
“I am the holy one’s gift to you…prepared…purified…ah…” The soft catch in her throat as I pushed the gossamer fabric downward and shifted my mouth from one sweet curve to another drove me out of my senses. I drew her to the bed and lay beside her. As she unfastened my buttons and laces, I imagined vaguely that I should stay her hand. But instead I loosed her hair, inhaled her rising scent, and traced the line of neck and jaw and mouth with kisses, inhaling her sweetness as a starving man devours the first spoonful of sustenance.
“Why would the goddess send a gift to me now?” I whispered, my words buried in Malena’s smooth belly, as somewhere above my head her trembling hands unbuttoned my gloves. “I’ve failed to honor blessed Arrosa for far too long, though I am ever her servant in mind.”
The girl’s laugh echoed the song of larks, until she freed my hands and gasped again. I took full advantage. My fingers explored silken breasts, smooth flanks, and swollen lips, while my mouth continued its downward trek. “Careful, lady,” I mumbled, as her quest to strip away my layered garb grew insistent enough to tear skin along with fabric. But I was as eager as she. More.
“Ah, Magnus, they told me you might—But I never—” Her voice quivered…caught in a sob…as her fingers traced a path on my naked back. “They are so beautiful. You are so beautiful…”
Of a sudden my back bloomed in exquisite fire. Her fingernails had transformed to steel blades that slashed a path of agony across my skin. The pain drove me into frenzy.
I buried myself in her. Heedless…mindless…I strove and thrust and drowned in sensation that sent coils and spirals of lightning to every quat of my skin. Were the dissolution of the world appointed for the culmination of my act, I could not have stopped. And the explosion, when it came, had naught to do with sweetness or shared pleasure. Only need.
Laughter eddied about my head, swirling, dipping…changing pitch from low to high and back again. Sluggish, sated, incapable of movement, I sat with my fire-scoured back against the curved wall of my tower prison, my head on my knees. Wine lay sour on my tongue, though I could remember only one cup.
“Well done, child.” The higher-pitched voice. Sila Diaglou. She had said this three times. I couldn’t understand it. Why weren’t they angry?
The two of them—priestess and monk—had burst through the door and pulled me off the girl. Was it Malena’s strangled cries and strident weeping had brought them or was it my bellow of completion? They were gentle enough, supporting me stumbling toward a window and lowering me to the floor. But since then, my head had grown so heavy I could not lift it. Nor could I persuade my tongue to speak such apology as I wished. Sorry…sorry…sorry. Never do I take without giving…or so I intend…never, never would I take pleasure in forcing…in injury…
The tide of shame drenched me yet again, swirling my meager thoughts into confusion. The girl had screamed and wept and begged. How could she not be injured? Why did they laugh? Gildas’s robust chortle was unmistakable. Even Malena’s moans and whimpers had yielded to girlish giggles.
A bitterly cold wind raked my naked skin. Sapphire light danced beneath the flutter of my eyelashes. My gards entirely visible…I tried to draw in my limbs…hating to be so exposed…hating for them to see. But I could scarcely twitch my fingers.