twenty-three #2
Ramaron sat in the other chair at his table after removing his travel coat. “Someone’s lonely in the Great Temple without one of us to keep him company at night.” He must have meant Joiya when he said “one of us.” “Why am I always your errand boy?”
Nerilis gave him the most deadpan response when he said, “Because I’m the High Priest, and you’re not.”
Joiya shoved her daughter forward. “Go on! Say hi! He’s your father! He won’t bite!”
She acted like Mira was five and had yet to meet her father.
It kinda felt like that at times. She was born before her father’s ascension, straight from priest to High Priest without a stop at Premier in between,
but the man had always been so busy with Temple administrative work that there were whole years during her childhood when Mira spent more time away from Garlahza, where her parents lived at the Great Temple, and instead stayed close to her mother’s skirt in Dunsman Estate.
And when her father ascended the highest station in the universe? Goodbye, normalcy. Mira was launched into the spotlight overnight. What might have been inevitable because of her mother’s beauty and charms, and her father’s beauty and… whatever charms he had…
Nerilis got up when it was clear that Mira wasn’t about to initiate anything. Still, the two of them stood a few feet apart, Mira grateful that she didn’t have to hurt her neck to look up toward her father’s face.
“I take it you’re well?” her father asked.
“Never better.”
Looking for romance novels?
Head to Lokepub for your next read.
“Your mother says that you’ve taken to Arrah quite well. Might be for the best, since you’re here for a while.”
Scoffing, Joiya shoved her husband toward their daughter. “Come on! Hug, already!”
Nerilis opened his arms to Mira, who went in with her cheek pressed against his chest. Their practiced hugs were always for Joiya’s enjoyment, but surely, she knew that these two would always be awkward with each other.
“Staying out of trouble?” Nerilis muttered through the veil of his daughter’s hair covering her ear.
She tightened her embrace around him so it would be easier to respond. “I’m the pinnacle of a good girl, Father.”
“Good.”
They broke apart, Nerilis having left a kiss on his daughter’s cheek. His smile was more for his wife, whom he turned to for a hug. Theirs were always more organic, and Mira wondered if it was her mother’s ephemeral cosmic pull casting a spell on the people around her.
Ramaron cleared his throat. “Very lovely family reunion. Now, who wants some wine?”
Mira shot her hand into the air. “Especially if you three are talking about research.”
Just for that, Ramaron poured her the biggest glass, much to Nerilis’s chagrin. Shut up, old man. The man—who didn’t look any older than his lovely daughter—stole her glass when she wasn’t looking and poured some of it into his own empty wineglass.
It was the only sign of life between them the rest of the night, despite Joiya insisting that she sit between them on the couch, as if she could force father and daughter to have a natural moment together.
Instead, they rigidly sat side-by-side, Nerilis only relaxing against the arm of the couch, and only when Ramaron came by to give him a snack or more drink.
Indeed, they didn’t even directly talk to one another.
Mira could crack a joke with Ramaron or tell her mother off about something, but with her father?
He might as well be from another parallel universe.
Even after all this time, even with her being of his loins…
Mira would never, ever truly be comfortable around Nerilis Dunsman, High Priest of the Void, no matter how much her mother wished it weren’t so.
Maybe I know something about his character that you don’t, Ma. Mira didn’t know what that could be. She supposed only a daughter could pierce her father’s guise so easily.
Nobody was supposed to know that her father had visited, since he technically wasn’t allowed to teleport away from the High Temple, let alone Garlahza, without at least one Premier knowing where he went.
But Nerilis was as naughty as any julah who desired privacy and a life of his own.
When Joiya had suggested they spend some time together on one of his precious nights off, Nerilis instead decided to erect a ward of indifference in his Temple apartment and head to some bucolic town on Arrah a few galaxies away.
I could not uphold a ward on one planet and fuck off to another. Mira, despite being her parents’ daughter, was nowhere near as powerful as they were. Even without the tattoo.
But not even Kanhith, the local priest, knew that Nerilis had been by the night before.
He had been in his own apartment while the gathering took place, and that either meant Ramaron had erected his own ward or that Kanhith was so used to Joiya and Ramaron being loud with their arguments and conversations that he already tuned it all out.
So, when Mira saw him the following afternoon, having spent the night sleeping on Ramaron’s couch while Nerilis and Joiya returned to the High Temple for what the hell ever her parents did alone, she kept her thoughts mum.
Besides, she was still wearing her clothes from the night before, and didn’t exactly feel up for conversation.
“Your mother has made this place so lively,” he said to Mira, who sat in the back row pew while contemplating the voya-yantrak on the altar.
“People come from all over the area, even from the capital city a thousand miles away, just to seek her presence. Honestly, even though I had met her a few times before, I had forgotten how magnetic she is.”
“My mother loves people,” Mira said while the young priest sat next to her.
In truth, they weren’t too far apart in age.
Harksplit was Kanhith’s first post as a priest after a few decades serving in the High Temple.
It was cushy because he was the third son of Master Narath, but it was also boring.
Kanhith had a human liaison to the community, but other than that, he had yet to take on any interns because there wasn’t much for them to do. Hence why he’s bothering me.