“If I’m not very, very careful, Iwilllose control again.”
Heat blossoms between my thighs. If I let myself fall into the insistent, simmering arousal, I start feeling lightheaded.
Hoping it’s just the elevation, I make sure to drink water on our mid-morning break. It doesn’t help much.
The entire second half of our class is dedicated to Summer’s End and the Festival of Eisha.
The Examination of Prelation takes place on the twenty-second of Harvestmoon. It determines which acolytes will enter apprenticeship under the high priestesses. The test is not optional—not that I’m planning on passing it.
I’m not too proud to keep from sabotaging myself, serving my year as acolyte, and going home.Wherever the hell that is.
Summer’s End itself, the autumn equinox, occurs on the following day.
“The temple will officially close to the public at dawn. This is when the Binding Ceremony happens,” Ghisele solemnly informs us. “On this holiest of days, the betrothed will be spiritually joined to the goddess.”
Allegedly, this binding is significant enough that the Five will arrive the night beforehand, bear witness to the ceremony, and not leave until the evening of the twenty-fourth.
The apprentice goes on to describe how there’s a full week’s worth of revelry down in Karsyn. We’ll even get to attend ourselves the night before the Binding Ceremony.
My first full day as acolyte ends as it began—with dreams of shrieking birds that morph into delirious nightmares.
Aweek passes, then two. Emberglow rolls into Stormdrift. Although we don’t like it, my friends and I get used to the betrothed girls’ dazed state.
I don’t dare carry on with Sadrie anymore.
She asks about visiting me in my rooms before lights out and invites me to hers on separate occasions. But I can’t shake our close calls in the Archive and cloakroom.
With the sisters doing random room checks at night, and only three of us on the fourth floor—not counting the priestesses and wherever Ghisele sleeps—there’s too great a risk of getting caught in the act. Or losing track of time and drifting off naked with Sadrie in my arms.
Outside of class, I don’t interact with Elodie at all.
Once or twice I’ve seen her and Maida talking, their heads bowed together in deserted corners or at the end of a shadowy hallway. They startle when they see me coming. One day, Elodie’s expression gives me the distinct sense thatI’mthe topic of conversation.
Chores are the only time I see her beyond the annex walls, and then only as a blurry figure behind the flower greenhouse’s condensation-streaked glass. She isn’t in there every day, but her roses might as well be her children with how she dotes on them.
The days grow longer but seem colder and gloomier. Mist blankets the temple grounds in a dense layer that barely thins at the height of the day and leaves everything feeling constantly damp.
Something inside of me is changing.
Like my first days after the ritual, I’m plagued by vivid, nonsensical dreams. I come to confused and pacing in my bedroom, wringing my hands with tears streaming down my face.
I can’t even say what I was dreaming about.
All the while a quiet anxiety steeps and stews within me. And the unremittinghunger.
A voracious appetite I can’t articulate burns me from the inside out. It’s as though I’mscorchingfrom sheer want thatnever stops and never improves, although I do learn to block it out.
An unsettling restlessness grips me. It comes in fits and bursts in a way that can only be described asepisodes.
This is the other aspect of my reluctance to take Sadrie up on her very generous offers. It’s an aspect I don’t want to acknowledge.
My half-remembered nightmares become a nightly occurrence. Most mornings I wake up feverish and achy, but I’m put right by noon. Sometimes abrupt nausea overtakes me, and I hurry to the nearest washroom to dry heave. An hour later, I’m wolfing down my dinner like nothing happened.
Nighttime is the worst for it, though. I awaken from deep sleep, dizzy with ice-cold perspiration plastering my shift to my body. My sleeping mind shapes my nightmares into reality, and I rouse myself from clawing at phantoms.
During the first days of Stormdrift, the episodes intensify.
I drift off in my bed only to wake up hours later, crouched in the corner, half-delirious and drenched in sweat. Feeling like ants made of molten lead are crawling all over me. Fists clenched in my hair, loose strands stick to my arms and legs and lie scattered on the floor around me. The root bulbs are still intact as if I’ve yanked them out, but I have no memory of it.
