Chapter Eight Kian
The next morning wakes with me with a slap, harsh and unyielding. I squint against the brilliant sunlight streaming in through the small window of a small, unfamiliar room and try to orient myself.
Right.
I am in the valley. Today is the matching. Yesterday was the most brilliant sex of my life, and my body wants more. But of course, that’s impossible. Not that I wouldn’t eagerly sink into Adela’s warmth again—my cock twitches at the thought—but I have revenge to enact.
Even though pursuing her once again would be much more fun.
I roll over, groaning at the way the sheets stick to my destroyed back.
Between the trip through the forest, the dancing, and the vigorous exertion with Adela after, some of the wounds that had started to scab over have reopened.
I eye the bottle of whiskey I had snatched from the pantry, but as much as dulling the sharp stabs of pain would be welcome, it’s a bit early, even for me.
A knock sounds on my door, and I sit up with a wince. I make sure my blankets are covering the important bits and grunt, “Come.”
I don’t know who I was expecting, but nothing could surprise me more than Ulric.
“I wanted to check on you,” he says simply, and I stare at him, blinking for too long. He sounds more hesitant when he adds, “Your back. Can I come in?”
I nod and he does, closing the door softly behind him. My heart pangs a bit at his beauty. A deep piece of me misses him, and these gentle kindnesses that were part of us. But there is no room in my schemes for any kind of real relationship, and Ulric requires no less than full realness.
He sits on the only chair in the small room, perching on its edge.
“How are you?” he asks softly.
I blink at him.
“You and Thad… It seemed like you might have had some hopes there.”
Ah. He’s checking on my heart, not my back. Or not just my back. “No hopes.” Besides wanting to use him for his skull. “His death was upsetting, but I think that had more to do with watching him be eaten.”
If he judges me for the callousness of my words, he doesn’t indicate it in any way. He simply touches my shoulder. “Turn so I can see.”
I twist around. He gasps, jumping up from the bed and going to the pitcher, pouring water into the basin.
“Looks as bad as it feels, eh?”
“Let me clean it.”
I pause. The gentleness he’ll approach me with. The kindness. Can I handle this intimacy?
I nod.
He arranges the small table, pitcher, basin, and all the towels that are in the room and sits beside me on the bed.
Carefully, so very carefully, he begins to clean my back.
He dips a corner of a towel in, pats it on my skin, then dips again.
I watch the water turn pink as he continues, over and over.
The silence morphs from comfortable to heavy. I recognize it. He has a question he wants to ask but doesn’t know how.
“Do you have a question for me?” I say softly.
He pauses his ministrations, and I think for a while that he won’t respond. Then he dips a new towel and says, “What happened to you on the dance floor? Before you left with the matcher?”
Thad. The matcher. I hear the faint edge of hurt in his voice, but I focus on the question he asked and not the implied one that I suspect he doesn’t really want the answer to.
“I…” What did happen? I pick the words carefully. “I saw something in my head. I was soaring over a lush valley, teeming with wild creatures. I was responsible for it. For its growth and prosperity.” A shiver runs through me, remembering how heavy it felt.
He grows absolutely still. His voice is small and purposefully light when he says, “Visions happen before big matches. Was it the dragon?”
It didn’t feel like a dragon. It felt both smaller and somehow more powerful.
But how the hell would I actually know what it feels like to see through the eyes of a dragon?
Or any of the creatures. I shrug as if I couldn’t care less who I match with—as if a lifetime of plans wasn’t tied up in me matching with the right skull.
He rubs the cloth across a wound, and I inhale sharply at the pain.
“Would you want that?” His voice is full of a sort of wistfulness that makes me know he would.
I’d guess a gryphon was a better match. After all, he’s tending to me now before he has any magical gifts to help with. But I know the Huntress is important to him, and she values strength.
Matching with the newly dead dragon would be Sarai’s wet dream. It’d mean instant access to the order’s inner circle. Power and prestige. And since dragon fire is the only way to destroy the skulls, I have to want that.
And yet, I find myself thinking, No. Please, Goddess, no.
“Of course,” I reply. “Which of the Huntress’s faithful wouldn’t?”
The sun is high in the sky when we gather together with the keepers in the meadow and start the long walk to the matching hut.
It’s a whole thing, the procession. There’s a torchbearer despite the bright day, and Adela and her assistant lead the way, followed by Sarai and Sister Roberta.
Behind us novitiates, the keepers follow, chanting.
They call for the Spinner’s guidance, the Pupil’s wisdom, the Huntress’s mercy.
My back aches with every step, but I am electric.
And not just because I get to watch Adela’s supple hips sway beneath her matcher’s robes as she takes long strides across the still-brown grasses. My hands clench, remembering the soft fullness of her thighs in my grip.
When we get to the matching hut, the keepers stop in a semicircle behind us.
There are more of them here, in the bright sun of the afternoon, than there were last night at the meeting ceremony.
But they look wary, glancing over their shoulders at the forest, flinching when a cloud moves over the sun and causes a shadow.
We stand in our own line between them, facing Adela, who looks like a goddess in her flowing, deep-purple robes, gold-encrusted bone jewelry, and simple golden mask.
On either side of her are her assistants—the young torchbearer, who holds a stack of simple aspen-carved masks for us novitiates to wear as we first enter the matching hut, and her assistant, the young woman who rode the pegasus.
It is strange to see Sarai beside us in line, her head half-bowed in supplication. But today the matcher reigns supreme.
Adela speaks, her voice deep and confident. Somehow, the sound of her taking charge is even sexier than the thighs hidden beneath her voluminous robes.
“Today we join together to represent the triune goddess—keepers, creatures, and order.
“Keepers, have you done your duty for these creatures? Ushering them through life and into the glory of death, preparing them with care and keeping until they meet their natural ends and begin their journey of service to the goddess?”
“We have,” the community of keepers behind me replies.
“Novitiates, have you done your duty to prepare for these creatures? Have you studied the ways of your goddess, served her with your mind and your hands, done her good work on this earth in order to prepare your soul for the pairing that is holy and eternal?”
“We have,” we reply.
She turns her back to us and faces the matching hut.
She raises her arms, and I swear I can feel the excitement of the waiting skulls, even though that’s impossible.
Order members only ever feel the emotions and wants of their paired skull, and even that sort of bond is rare.
As I understand it, the flow is simply single skull to priest.
“Creatures, we have fulfilled our duties in preparation for your blessings. We beseech you now to meet us in our mundane humanity, see the imperfection of our souls, and aid us in our potential for good.”
The next few hours start slow, but gain a fervency I suspect no one is prepared for.
Rare match after rare match occurs. Two-thirds of a gytrash triad pair with Ylysia and Molvi, who happen to be two-thirds of a romantic triad.
Linden, their third, stands at the end of our row, beaming at his partners in their dog-like skulls and practically bouncing on his toes with anticipation of his own match. Gytrash always match in threes.
Personally, I wouldn’t be as pleased by the match.
Those paired with gytrash are responsible for the death rites of the orders, cleaning and preparing bodies for burial or burning.
It’s valuable work—the order charges citizens significant sums for a gytrash-assisted death ceremony—but, Goddess, how depressing.
The blur of muffled, chanting voices of the keepers behind me seems to grow faster, louder, more dynamic as Ulric steps forward and prepares to face the skulls.
My heartbeat syncs with their rhythm, speeding up as he enters with the matcher.
I’d hoped to go before him, to let that new dragon skull meet me first, but assure myself it’ll be fine.
Like calls to like, and Ulric is too gentle for a dragon. Too kind.
In mere moments, he emerges, his smile wide, the dragon on his face.
Fuck.
Sarai practically dances, unable to keep her feigned humility in place.
I panic. Not Ulric. Anyone else except Ulric. I cannot use him without destroying him. But I’ll have no other option.
Adela steps close to me and I nearly step forward, the desire to touch her overwhelming. But she’s not coming for me. “Are you ready to meet your soul’s fate, Svena?”
Svena sways beside me, exhausted from her injuries. She had a long night, according to the keeper healer who had protested her joining us at all. But High Priestess Sarai won out in the end, and so here she stands—barely.
I hear Svena murmur but don’t catch her words.
Adela replies, “That depends on what your past contains. Before this week I was a matcher’s assistant for seven years, and a light bearer for ten before that. I’ve known only two who went unmatched. One from the Order of the Spinner, one from the Pupil.”