My body didn’t twitch even as my muscles strained. To twitch was to disappoint my Lord and to disappoint him was to suffer.
“Estrella,” he greeted finally, freeing me from the pain consuming my body. I rose slowly, keeping my face a blank mask in an attempt not to show him how much it had cost me.
“My Lord,” I murmured. Peering at him through my lashes with my head angled down the way he liked, I sank my teeth into the inside of my cheek to suppress the words I wanted to scream.
Words I wanted to throw in his face to wound him as much as he had wounded me.
“Lady Jaclen,” I said, greeting the frail woman who stood at his side.
She glared at me in return, her scowl heavy on the side of my face. She didn’t offer me her hand in the way our customs demanded, deeming me so far beneath her, she didn’t want to taint herself with the press of my skin against hers.
The message was clear to anyone who observed the interaction as they passed. I may have been how her husband chose to occupy his evenings more and more often, forgoing her bed altogether as her health declined, but I had less worth than the dirt beneath her jewel-studded silk slippers. “Still no husband, I see?” she asked, humming thoughtfully as she looked over my shoulder for the man she knew did not exist.
“No, my Lady,” I agreed, shaking my head subtly. Every month that passed without a formal declaration for my hand came as another blow to my family’s already low status.
What good was a daughter you couldn’t successfully marry off?
“Perhaps one day soon,” Lord Byron said, offering his flagging wife his arm. She leaned into him, allowing him to absorb her weight as she struggled to stay on her feet. With every day that passed, she grew sicker. With every day that passed, villagers whispered of what illness might have consumed her for so many years, and of who might follow to replace her after she finally passed.
Byron was a Lord without an heir, and the women of Mistfell postured and hoped for the death of his wife for the very same reason many of them barely tolerated me.
I had his favor, even if I didn’t want it.
Lord and Lady Jaclen moved into the Temple, leaving me to shove my dread down into the deepest part of me where no one could see. He’d said as much in vague words repeatedly over the years, but until the day his wife died, there was nothing he could do.
He was permitted mistresses, so long as they were not deemed virginal, and thus appropriate for marriage to other suitors. My most recent virginity test should have condemned me to a life as a mistress or Lady of the Night, but the doctor had deemed me pure. I knew it was a lie, and I suspected he did as well.
I just didn’t know why he’d hidden my secret, why he’d protected me from the harsh consequences for the things I did in the night, when my body seemed to come alive and hum with energy that I couldn’t restrain. Perhaps he’d protected the son of his friend, the only boy I’d trusted enough to be intimate with, even though Lord Byron would have benefited from the loss of my virginity.
Perhaps the doctor had acted out of nefarious purposes. I hoped I’d never learn the truth either way.
My brother and I leaned down, grasping my mother’s chair by the wheels and lifting it up over the step into the Temple. Moving inside, I took over steering my mother toward the right of the cavernous space and the rows of women who knelt on the cold, stone floor with their heads bowed as the Priests and Priestesses waited at the front of the sanctuary.
Stopping her chair in the aisle next to the space on the floor the other women had left for her, I moved around to her front. Taking each of her hands in mine, I guided her up and out of the chair as her legs trembled under her weight. Hugging her tightly to my chest, I used my entire body to shift her around her chair, shuffling her nearly limp legs over as I slowly lowered her to her knees.
I’d learned long ago that, even though she couldn’t feel the impact when she fell, I felt the stain of those bruises on my heart if I failed to move carefully enough. When her knees touched the floor beneath her, I lowered her until she sat on her heels and she lifted her palms to rest atop her thighs. Leaving her there, I took her chair to the back of the sanctuary where it wouldn’t be in the way of the Priests and Priestesses as they made their way around the room.
At the front of the room, one of the servants helped Lady Jaclen to her knees as well. Everyone knelt for Temple—gave themselves to The Father and The Mother—even the Lady of Mistfell.
I returned to my mother, lowering to my knees beside her. Everything in her body trembled, the difficulty of maintaining her position evident in the strained lines on her face. My palms rested on my thighs, facing up and opened to The Mother as my head tipped down to look at the floor in front of me.
Across the room, the men knelt on embroidered cushions the Priestesses had stitched for them by hand, as the Priest spoke to them in low tones that faded into the space between us. I stared at a spot on the stone floor that was lighter than the area surrounding it, fixating on it as the Priestesses moved between the rows of women. They touched a few as they passed, correcting posture with firm hands.
“Hmm,” Bernice, the severe High Priestess who’d once been my tutor, murmured as she passed by us. She didn’t touch me, knowing she had long since beaten my slacking shoulders and lazy elbows out of existence, but just the thoughtful sound of her voice in the air sent my heart pounding. It took everything in me not to flinch away from the blow to my shoulders that she’d conditioned me to expect.
“Look upon The Mother,” the tall, spare woman said, walking to the front of the room and taking her place next to the stone statue of a woman, which sat beside the statue of The Father. The Mother’s head was bowed as she knelt at The Father’s feet, her palms opened to the sky to accept the gifts he bestowed upon her for her obedience and dutifulness as his wife.
His love. His protection. His seed that she would take and use to create children.
“The harvest season ends tomorrow,” Bernice said, a smile on her face as she glanced around the group of women gathered. “The Father has communicated his wishes to the High Priest, and one of our own will give their life for the continued protection of the Veil. It is our turn, after the sacrifice of Mr. Daugherty last year.”
“Yes, Priestess,” I murmured, the sound of my voice echoed by those around me with the well-practiced words. “It would be our honor.” The words burned down my throat like acid, stinging with the noise of my betrayal.