J. Ward - Lover Enshrined

He remembered what Cormia had looked like tied down naked, a white sheet falling from above and pooling at her throat to mask her face. He had torn the thing down and been horrified to meet her tear-filled, terrified eyes.

She’d been gagged.

He looked up to the ceiling, where the draping that had covered her face had been hung. There were two tiny gold hooks embedded in the marble. He wanted to take them out with a fucking jackhammer.

As he stared upward, he randomly thought back to a conversation he’d had with Vishous right before all the shit had gone down with this Primale business. The two of them had been in the dining room at the mansion, and V had said something about having had a vision of Phury.

Phury hadn’t wanted deets, but they’d come out anyway, and the words the brother had spoken were oddly clear to him now, like a recording replayed: I saw you standing at a crossroads in a field of white. It was a stormy day… yeah, lots of storms. But when you took a cloud from the sky and wrapped it around the well, the rain stopped falling.

Phury narrowed his eyes on those two hooks. He’d torn the sheet down from there and wrapped Cormia in it. And she had stopped crying.

She was the well… the well that he was supposed to fill. She was the future of the race, the source of new Brothers and new Chosen. The fountainhead.

As were all of her sisters.

“Your grace.”

He turned around. The Directrix was standing in the doorway of the temple, her long white robe brushing the floor, her dark hair coiled up high on her head. With her calm smile and the peace that radiated from her eyes, she had the beatific expression of the spiritually enlightened.

He envied all that serene conviction.

Amalya bowed to him, her body lean and elegant in its Chosen dress code. “I am pleased to see you.”

He bowed back to her. “And I you.”

“Thank you for this audience.” She straightened and there was a pause.

He didn’t fill it.

When she finally did, she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I thought perhaps you might wish to meet some of the other Chosen?”

What kind of meeting did she have in mind, he wondered.

Oh, just a bit of high tea , the wizard chimed in. With cunnilingus sandwiches and sixty-nine scones and handfuls of your nuts.

“Cormia’s doing well,” he said, deflecting the meet-and-greet offer.

“I saw her yesterday.” The Directrix’s tone was kind but neutral, as if she didn’t agree with him.

“You did?”

She bowed low again. “Forgive me, your grace. It was the anniversary of her birthing, and I was required by custom to give her a scroll. When I didn’t hear from you, I appeared to her. I tried to reach you again during the day.”

Good Lord, Cormia’s birthday had come and gone and she’d said nothing about it?

She had told John, though, hadn’t she. That was what the bracelet had been for.

Phury wanted to curse. He should have gotten her something.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t respond.”

Amalya righted herself. “It is your purview. Please, worry not.”

In the long silence that followed, he read the question in the Directrix’s kind eyes. “No, it’s not done yet.”

The female’s shoulders sagged. “Has she denied you?”

He thought back to the floor in front of his chaise. He’d been the one who had stopped. “No. It’s me.”

“No fault could ever be yours.”

“Untrue. And trust me on that one.”

The Directrix walked around, her hands worrying the medallion around her neck. The thing was an exact copy of what he had on, only hers was suspended from a white satin ribbon, and the chain to his ball was black.

She paused by the bed, her fingers lightly brushing a pillow. “I thought perhaps you would like to meet some of the others.”

Oh, hell, no. He wasn’t passing over Cormia for a different First Mate. “I can guess where you’re going with this, but it’s not that I don’t want her.”

“Perhaps, though, you should like to meet another.”

This was clearly as close as the Directrix was going to get to putting her foot down and making a demand that he either have sex with Cormia or get another First Mate. He couldn’t say he was surprised. It had been five long months.

God, maybe it would solve some problems. Trouble was, taking another First Mate would be tantamount to laying a curse on Cormia. The Chosen would see her as having failed, and she would feel the same way, even though that wouldn’t be the case at all.

“Like I said, I’m good with Cormia.”

“Indeed… except might you perhaps be more likely to engage if it were a different one among us? Layla, for instance, is quite fair of visage and limb, and she is trained as an ehros .”

“Not going to do that to Cormia. It would kill her.”

“Your grace… she suffers now. I saw it within her eyes.” The Directrix drifted over to him. “And moreover, the rest of us are trapped within our tradition. We had such great hopes that our functions would return to where they have always been. If you take another as First Mate and complete the ritual, you release all of us from this burden of futility, and that includes Cormia. She is not happy, your grace. Any more than you are.”

He thought of her again on that bed, tied down… She hadn’t wanted this from the very beginning, had she?

He thought of her so quiet in the mansion. He thought of her not feeling comfortable enough to tell him that she had to feed. He thought of her saying nothing about her birthday. Nothing about her wanting to go outside. Nothing about those constructions in her bedroom.

One stroll down a hallway didn’t make up for all he’d abandoned her to.

“We are trapped, your grace,” the Directrix said. “As it stands now, we are all trapped.”

What if he was holding on to Cormia because, if she was his First Mate, he didn’t have to worry about the whole sex thing? Sure, he wanted to protect her and do right by her, and those were honorable truths, but the ramifications protected him as well.

There were Chosen who wanted it, wanted him. He’d felt their stares when he’d been sworn in.

He had given his word. And he was getting damn tired of breaking oaths that he’d made.

“Your grace, may I ask you to come with me? I wish to show you a place here in the Sanctuary.”

He followed Amalya out of the Primale Temple, and the two of them were silent as they walked down the hill toward a thicket of four-story white structures with columns.

“These are the Chosen’s living quarters,” she murmured, “but you and I are not bound for them.”

Good thing, he thought, glancing over.

As he passed by, he noted that none of the windows was glassed in, and he imagined there was no reason for the bother. There were no bugs or animals…no rain, either, he guessed. And what the lack of panes meant, of course, was that there were no barriers between him and the Chosen who stared back at him from their quarters.

There was one female in every window of every room in each of the buildings.

Oh, Jesus.

“Here we are.” The Directrix stopped in front of a one-story structure and unlocked a pair of double doors. As she opened them wide, his heart fell.

Cribs. Rows and rows of empty white cribs.

As he tried to keep breathing, the Directrix’s voice grew wistful. “This used to be such a place of joy, filled with life, teeming with the future. If you would only take another- Are you unwell, your grace?”

Phury backed away. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t… breathe.

“Your grace?” She reached out.

He jerked away from her. “I’m fine.”