J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

“He’s been living off deer.”

“How long have you known about him?”

“Found him two days ago.”

“Price,” Wrath said, still looking at his brother.

“Well, here’s the thing.” As the king cursed, the man, Lassiter, laughed. “It’s not a price, though.”

“What. Is. It.”

“We’re a two-for-one deal.”

“Excuse me?”

“I come with him.”

“The fuck you do.”

The man lost any levity in his voice. “It’s part of the arrangement, and believe me, I wouldn’t choose this either. Fact is, he’s my last chance, so yeah, I’m sorry, but I go with him. And if you say no, by the way, I’m going to level us all like that.”

The man snapped his fingers, a brilliant white spark flaring against the night sky.

After a moment, Wrath turned to John. “This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-”

“Okay, that was so not my fault-”

“-that wiped out two-thirds of the human population.”

“I’d like to remind you that you don’t like humans.”

“They smell bad when they’re dead.”

“All you mortal types do.”

John could barely follow the conversation; he was too busy staring into Tohr’s face. Open your eyes… open your eyes… please God…

“Come on, John.” Wrath turned back to the Brotherhood and started walking. When he came up to them, he said softly, “Our brother is returned.”

“Oh, Christ, is he alive,” someone said.

“Thank God,” someone else groaned.

“Tell them,” Lassiter demanded from behind. “Tell them he comes with a roommate.”

As one, the Brothers’ heads snapped up.

“Fuck. Me,” Vishous breathed.

“I will so pass on that,” Lassiter muttered.

Phury walked through the glowing white expanse of the Sanctuary, going over to the Scribe Virgin’s private entry. He knocked once and he waited, willing a request for an audience.

When the doors opened, he expected the Directrix Amalya to be the one who greeted him, but there was nobody on the other side. The Scribe Virgin’s white courtyard was empty save for the birds in their white-blossomed tree.

The finches and canaries were out of place, and all the more lovely for it. Their colors were bright against their background of white branches and leaves, and hearing their calls, he thought of the number of times Vishous had come over here with one of the fragile things cupped in his palms.

After the Scribe Virgin had given them up for her son, the son had returned them to her.

Phury went over to the fountain and listened to the water fall into its marble basin. He knew when the Scribe Virgin appeared behind him, because the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“I thought you were going to step down,” she said to him. “I saw the path of the Primale unfolding for another’s footfalls. You were supposed to just be the transition.”

He looked over his shoulder. “I thought I was going to step down as well. But, no.”

Odd, he thought. Beneath the black robes that shielded her face and hands and feet, the glow of her seemed dimmer than he remembered.

She drifted over to her birds. “I would have you greet me properly, Primale.”

He bent down low and said the proper words in the Old Language. Also paid her the service of staying in a bow, waiting for her to release him from the supplication.

“Ah, but that is the thing,” she murmured. “You have already released yourself. And now you want the same for my Chosen.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “You need not explain your reasoning. Think you I know not what is in your head? Even your wizard, as you call him, is known unto me.”

Okay, that made him uncomfortable.

“Rise, Phury, son of Ahgony.” When he did, she said, “We are all products of our upbringings, Primale. The constructions that result from our choices are laid upon the foundation set by our parents and their parents before them. We are but the next level in the house or paver in the path.”

Phury shook his head slowly. “We can choose a different direction. We can move ourselves along a different heading of the compass.”

“Of that I am not sure.”

“Of that I must be sure… or I’m not going to make anything of this life you’ve given me.”

“Indeed.” Her head turned toward her private quarters. “Indeed, Primale.”

In the silence that stretched, she seemed saddened, which surprised him. He’d been prepared for a fight. Hell, it was hard not to think of the Scribe Virgin as anything other than an eighteen-wheeler in black robes.

“Tell me, Primale, how do you intend to handle this all?”

“I’m not sure yet. But those who feel more comfortable here can stay. And those who want to venture forth to the far side will find a safe haven with me there.”

“You are abandoning this side for good?”

“There is something I need on the far side, something I have to have. But I will be back and forth. It’s going to take decades, maybe longer, to change everything. Cormia is going to help.”

“And you shall take only her, as a male does?”

“Yes. If the others find mates of their choosing, then I will accept all their female offspring into the traditions of the Chosen and urge Wrath to take their males into the Brotherhood, whether they are born here or on the far side. But I will have only Cormia.”

“What of the purity of the blood? The strength that comes of it? Are there to be no standards? The breeding was deliberate, to beget strength from strength. What if a Chosen chooses one not of a Brotherhood line?”

He thought of Qhuinn and Blay. Strong boys who would be stronger males over time. Why shouldn’t they be in the Brotherhood?

“It would be up to Wrath. But I would encourage him to accept the worthy regardless of lineage. Courage of heart can make a male taller and stronger than he is physically. Look, the race is failing, and you know it. We’re losing ground with every generation, and not just because of the war. The Lessening Society isn’t the only thing killing us. The traditions are, too.”

The Scribe Virgin drifted over to the fountain.

There was a long, long, long silence.

“I feel as though I have lost,” she said softly. “All of you.”

“You haven’t. Not at all. Be a mother to the race, not a warden, and you will win everything you want. Set us free and watch us thrive.”

The sound of the chiming fountain seemed to swell, growing louder, as if catching the drift of her emotions.

Phury looked at the falling water, seeing it catch the light and twinkle like stars. The rainbows in each of the droplets were impossibly beautiful, and as he watched the flashing gems in every fragment of the whole that fell back down, he thought of the Chosen and whatever individual gifts they possessed.

He thought of his Brothers.

He thought of their shellans.

He thought of his beloved.

And he knew the whys of her silence. “You won’t lose us. We will never leave you behind and forget you. How could we? You birthed us and squired us and strengthened us. But now… now is our time. Let us go and we will be closer to you than ever before. Let us take the future into our hands and shape it as best we can. Have faith in your creation.”

In a rough voice, she said, “Have you the strength for this, Primale? Can you lead the Chosen even after all you have been through? Your life has not been easy, and the road you are contemplating is neither level nor well of surface.”

As Phury stood on his one leg and his prosthesis, and thought about the days of his existence, and weighed the mettle of his marrow, he came up with only one reply.