Wife Number One (Saint View Slayers vs. Sinners #1)

1. Kara

1

KARA

I was never without my veil.

The heavy mesh scratched across my nose and cheeks, suffocating and hot in the crowded church. I’d worn it so long I could barely remember what it felt like not to squint through the material so I didn’t trip or stumble over the altar steps.

“May the Lord bless your womb. May he grant you good health to bring forth new life this month. May you carry his seed and nurture it into his disciple.”

I nodded at the woman kneeling at my feet, accepting her blessing.

She took the small head bob as her dismissal, and the next in line dropped into the position.

“May the Lord bless your womb. May he grant you good health to bring forth new life this month. May you carry his seed…”

I tuned out, nodding automatically as each new woman took her turn at my feet, before moving on to the next of Josiah’s wives and repeating the familiar words .

The other wives didn’t wear the same black veil I did.

Their faces were unmasked for all the congregation to see. They breathed freely, the air touching their summer-tanned skin.

They were the fertile.

The blessed.

The women chosen by Josiah, through the Lord’s word.

They had each provided the Lord and Josiah with an heir. Some more than one. Josiah’s second wife, Camilla, who sat to my left, had provided him four children within the past five years. Laurie, wife three, had delivered two healthy baby boys who were both toddlers now. And Scarlett, the newest and youngest of his wives, a baby daughter just last year.

I had provided none.

Despite being wife number one.

Shame washed over me, as it always did each weekend when this ritual was performed. I lowered my gaze to my lap and prayed silently, hoping that this month, the blessings would finally work. That this would be the month I didn’t bleed. That Josiah’s seed would take hold and bring forth new life.

That I would finally make him happy.

When that happened, I would be freed of the veil prison I’d lived in the past five years. I would sit like the other wives, honored by the community Josiah had built around his connection to the one true God.

Instead of hidden away behind layers of thick cloth, a disappointment and embarrassment to all.

I just had to pray harder. Be quieter. Sweeter. Love Josiah and the Lord we served harder .

Josiah’s other wives had proved over and over again that if you were the perfect wife, you would conceive an heir. It was my fault I had not been blessed. Every person here knew no baby grew in my womb because the Lord had deemed I wasn’t worthy.

As Josiah told me every night, I just wasn’t trying hard enough.

People filed in, wearing their best clothes, their faces scrubbed clean of dirt and grime that came with the hard work they did here throughout the week. When they had finished paying their respects at our feet, they took seats in the rows of hard, wooden pews, talking quietly amongst themselves while they waited for the sermon to begin.

The church had been extended last year to meet the needs of the growing community, and there were so many people here now I could barely keep track of all the new faces. What had been a small group just five years ago when I’d returned from the outside world, had more than tripled in size, people flocking to join when Josiah and his inner circle had begun actively recruiting new members with a podcast about the Lord and our community here at Ethereal Eden.

My interest snagged on my mother and younger sisters entering with my father, all of them joining the line quietly.

Alice, the eldest of my siblings in attendance and the closest to me in age, stood tall, her head high, and a smile offered up easily for me.

Until my mother poked her sharply in the back. Alice rolled her eyes for my benefit before lowering them obediently .

I didn’t bother stifling my smile of amusement, because nobody could see it through the veil anyway.

Samantha and Naomi kept their gazes on the floor, like the good women they were. I knew from every other time we’d done this, they would kneel and bless my womb without any sort of sisterly familiarity we might have once had.

Jacqueline, the last of my siblings, had grown into a young woman over the past few years. She’d become quite the beauty, a fact Josiah reminded me of more than once, while chills raced up and down my spine. The threat barely concealed in his expression.

Jacqueline might not have been a child in the eyes of our community, but she was only thirteen.

I hated the way men stared at her. It reminded me too much of the way a man on the outside had once looked at me. Like I was prey, just waiting to be eaten alive.

My breath caught on the memory, and bile rose in my throat.

But then the one good thing that had come from my time outside walked through the church doors and curiously peered up to where I sat.

Every bad memory disintegrated.

When I looked at her, I was reminded that the best thing in my life had come from the worst.

Hayley Jade.

My heart flickered, squeezing with love for the little girl with her dark hair and big eyes. Day by day, I’d watched from afar as she grew taller, stronger, smarter. But somewhere in her five-year-old face, I still saw the tiny baby who had been placed into my arms, and tears pricked the backs of my eyes .

A woman behind her prodded Hayley Jade forward, urging her along the blessing line.

My fingers curled around the armrest of my chair, fingernails digging into the hard, ornately carved wood. I wanted to stand and shout at the woman for laying a finger on my daughter, even though the touch had barely moved Hayley Jade’s small frame.

But that was not my right.

I was no longer her mother.

That privilege had been removed six months after I’d married Josiah when I’d failed to provide him with a child of his own.

The Lord had told him my attention was too focused on the child I had. The one born outside of our community, who brought dishonor to my new husband.

And so she’d been given to another woman to raise. A widow who had no children of her own.

“Kneel down, Jade,” the woman urged in a sharp whisper.

I hated that she’d shortened her name.

“But, Mama, it hurts my knees!”

My heart clenched at hearing my daughter call another woman Mama.

“Forgive me,” the woman said quietly, taking the girl’s hand and pulling her down to the altar steps, forcing her onto her knees. “She’s headstrong and still learning her place.”

Hayley Jade pouted up at me, a scowl twisting her pink lips and screwing up her button nose adorably.

Everything inside me ached to reach out and touch her. “She doesn’t need to kneel before me.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “She’s perfect, just the way she is.”

Hayley Jade’s expression morphed into a triumphant smile of pleasure.

I wanted to photograph it. So I would remember the way she’d looked at me forever. But technology had been forbidden at the farm for a long time now. I still mourned the loss of all the baby photos that had been on the phone I’d kept when I’d first come home.

Once Josiah had found it, I’d never seen it again.

“Kara,” Josiah snapped from behind me, using the voice he reserved for when I had disappointed him. Which was almost all of the time.

I hadn’t even realized he was there, listening, I’d been so caught up in getting this one, tiny exchange with the little girl I’d birthed so many years before.

“Shari is right.” Josiah studied the pair with hard eyes, making sure they knew that they did indeed need to kneel before the feet of him and his family. “The girl needs to learn her place.”

“She’s disobedient, but I’m working on it,” Shari assured him. “She will become a good woman in time.” She side-eyed me. “When her soul has been properly cleansed of the sins she was exposed to as a baby.”

There was nothing I could say about that. My sins were known to all in the community. How I’d left. Gotten pregnant and come back home a year later with a newborn baby in my arms and my tail tucked between my legs.

How my parents had begged Josiah for forgiveness on my behalf.

How they had agreed I would marry him and bring him the heir he so desperately craved. After all, I had a proven track record of being able to carry a child to term, and at the time, I had been one of the few women in the group of marrying age.

But I had failed at all of it.

“Indeed,” Josiah agreed, his gaze sweeping over Hayley Jade. “Her manners need work, but she is growing up into a beauty. How old is she now?”

Anger and disgust bubbled through me. Hayley Jade wasn’t disobedient. And she didn’t need to learn her place. Or kneel at my feet like she was some sort of servant. She was beautiful and kind and sweet. All qualities I’d admired in her as I watched her from the window of my bedroom in Josiah’s home.

The man sharpened his gaze, studying my daughter.

Her good qualities suddenly seemed dangerous.

They drew the attention of men, the same way her aunt Jacqueline did.

My daughter had been removed from my care as a punishment, but when Josiah took too much interest in her, as he was now, I was grateful she was being raised outside his home.

“Thank you for your blessings,” I said quickly to Shari. “May the Lord bestow abundance upon your home this week.” I ended the conversation so she would be forced to move on down the line, taking Hayley Jade away from Josiah’s watchful eyes.

But also away from me.