I hardly knew her…but I did trust her, curiously enough. I believed wholeheartedly that she was merely an emissary of her god, nothing more. I closed my eyes and felt a hand take mine.
“You must not open them until I have given permission,” Florence warned. “Women have gone blind from this.”
Fear finally managed to creep its way in. “What can I expect…?”
Florence stroked my arm in a soothing motion. “The Lord of Night does not take lives for free, my lady, especially on behalf of women He has not known. The Lord will want to…acquaint Himself with you. You must allow this coupling; it will establish your alliance, allow you to freely access His pool of mana.”
“Are you saying…” I started, and then a wind blew that chilled me into silence. I reclined onto the boulder, its cool surface flat against my back. I squeezed Florence’s hand.
“Fear not. He will not touch you physically,” Florence promised. “You will not die. And I am here.”
You will not die.Why did that sound so threatening?
I dreaded the quiet, wishing that Florence might pray aloud or continue to soothe in some way. Now I was alone to my thoughts and the darkness, filling in the blanks as to what might be about to happen to me. A distant presence loomed, growing bolder with every heartbeat; an encroaching cyclops, or some other beast of equal size, stomped through the woods in a hunt. I could feel the earth trembling through the stone. My heart pounded harder as the questions built: why was I naked? What did she mean when she said that He would not touch mephysically?What was that sensation, like death itself was near?
“Maitre, I’m frightened,” my voice trembled, a sob rising in my throat. “May I open my eyes? Let’s end this. I will find another way—”
“Shush now,” Florence said, stroking my hand. “Breathe. You have nothing to fear.”
In the darkness of my eyelids, an image appeared. A person whose shape ceaselessly shifted, who was every color at once in great fluid transformations. It felt neither evil nor wholesome; in fact, it was distinctly absent of such energies, and all that I could feel was its breath, its pulse.
The Lord of Night loomed over me, caressing my skin in small gusts of air, like the wind was being strategically funneled across my body. He felt my legs, little fine hairs rising in the wake of Him, my flesh prickling in protest. He felt my hands, my feet, my stomach, my arms all at once, as though submerging me in a bath of His concentrated presence. I sank deeper and my breath drew into Him, my veins and nerves all lighting up as they filled with something warmer than blood.
A pain shot through me then: a tightness in my gut as though I’d swallowed poison. My abdomen writhed, filled with worms, and all control of my body was taken as muscles seized and wretched. I tried to call to Florence, but nothing came out—I was drowning, my mouth pried apart by invisible tendrils until I thought my jaw might split.
“Keep your eyes closed,” Florence reminded me.
He was inside of me, like another person was trying to take over my body. Like my skeleton was being replaced with something amorphous, my organs rent until they fit His shape. I tried to scream, fighting against the force that held me down; my back arched, feet cramping below. Hours passed with no relief from the agony, no ability to express how I felt.
Florence’s thumb brushed over my hand. A thousand knives slashed away at the rest of me, my most intimate parts filled with needles and fire.
At last my voice returned, and the Lord of Night’s presence dissipated like smoke. My scream’s end filled the air, hoarse as if I had shrieked for all this time, and Florence held me down.
“Open your eyes, my lady.”
I whimpered, taking in the sight of the sorceress above me. I tried to speak and only spat all over myself, foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal.
“You’re okay,” Florence promised, cupping my cheek. “It’s done.”
My breath hitched, and then I sobbed, the tears streaming freely down my face. “I—I can’t—”
“Youdid, and you shall not need to do it again. Do you feel Him now, settled into you?”
All I felt was panic and the weariness that came from the assault of my spirit.
“The god’s within you now,” Florence said. “I know it hurt, and you must be terribly frightened. We are nearly done; then you may return to the castle and rest.”
I swallowed, the fear giving way to pure wrath. I sat up slowly, allowing Florence the time to back away.
“Percy,” I said, blaming him entirely for the suffering I’d endured.
Florence understood. She drew a circle on the stone around me, the white chalk hardly visible even in the light of the moon. Then, within that, a slew of astral symbols, twelve stars, and a moon in each cardinal direction.
“You need not tell me, my lady; tellHim.”
That shadowy presence returned, though I could not see it. He was in the circle with me, perhaps within my body itself, but the pain was swiftly becoming a memory.
I glared straight forward, as though a man sat in front of me.
