Chapter 2
ELOWEN
I wish I’d never listened to Mirabella and the others. I wish I hadn’t let them bully me into coming along to the witch’s garden! If only I’d been stronger, I might have avoided the curse that compels me.
The tears I’ve been holding back for hours come pouring out and now what am I going to do? The huge, rough smith with the tarnished silver eyes and thick, curving horns is staring blankly at me, like he can’t believe what an idiot I am.
And I am an idiot! Because who else but an idiot would go along with such a stupid scheme as sneaking into an infamous witch’s garden at night to steal her priceless wish flowers?
My mind goes back to last night—was it really such a short time ago?—to the dorm room at the temple…
I am already in my nightgown and curled up in bed with a book—Gorsyth’s Book of Magic, to be exact. I don’t have much power yet, but I want to be prepared for when the Goddess of Nature grants me more.
But of course, she’ll only do that if I remain pure.
I know that well—it’s been hammered into all our skulls from the moment we were admitted to the temple to learn her ways.
The Goddess doesn’t permit carnal relations between a priestess and anyone but her Fated Mate.
And since the Severing—when most of the Old Gods were pushed away and separated from the people—it’s almost impossible to find one’s Fated Mate now.
So most priestesses of the Goddess simply remain celibate their whole lives.
I don’t mind celibacy—it’s hard to miss what you’ve never had.
And besides, I’ve grown up in the temple.
Someone left me as a babe in a basket with a note asking that the Priestess-Sisters take care of me.
So all I’ve known my whole life is piety and modesty.
My innocence has always been completely unsullied…
until Mirabella and her crew came along.
I didn’t have much contact with anyone my own age until I was old enough to be dedicated to the service of the Goddess and became an acolyte at the temple.
That was when I moved into the dorms—vast, echoing chambers that hold twenty to thirty cots, all filled with noisy young women, forever talking, fighting, and giggling.
Truly, the drama there is never ending.
Though my previous bed had been located in a room a little bigger than a closet, I still miss it fiercely. Mostly, I miss my privacy. You can’t get a moment’s peace in the dorms—especially if someone like Mirabella has it out for you.
I want to say now that it’s not my fault she doesn’t like me.
I’m known for being quiet and bookish—I shouldn’t even have drawn her notice.
She’s always so loud and funny—always making the other girls laugh and swinging her shiny, straight blonde hair.
She’s a true High Fae—unlike me—I’m just a half-breed.
I should have been the last thing on her mind.
Unfortunately, I know her secret.
Not long after I first moved into the dorms, I was out on the grounds of the temple, searching for a quiet place to read. There was no peace or solitude to be had inside the drafty, echoing chamber which was constantly filled with the hum of female voices. I just wanted to read in peace.
I found a quiet spot at the base of a huge, ancient oak tree—what we call “an Older Brother”—because it’s been growing for so long.
“Hello, Older Brother.” I bowed to the oak and stroked his rough bark. “I hope you don’t mind if I share your shade for a while.”
Through my fingertips, I felt a very faint vibration—almost a humming—coming from the oak. I knew from my training what that was—a welcome—an invitation to stay a while.
“Thank you,” I murmured, stroking the bark again.
There was a bank of sweet rushes planted around the tree’s roots.
Tall and pale purple, they would hide me from prying eyes who might wonder where I had gone.
It was technically chore time, but I had already done my chore of sweeping and mopping the kitchen.
Still, if one of the Sisters caught me, she would make me go back and help someone else finish their chores as well.
Normally I wouldn’t mind helping, but right that moment I just couldn’t bear to be around the crowd of girls that surrounded me all the live-long day and night. I was starving for solitude.
And that was why I hid in the sweet rushes and settled myself with my back against the Older Brother’s rough but comfortable trunk to read.
However, I had barely cracked open my book on magical theory when I heard hushed and laughing voices coming towards me.
“This way!” a familiar voice said in a whispered giggle. “Come on—no one will see us here.”
“Are you sure?” another, deeper voice replied. “I thought you lot weren’t supposed to fuck.”
“I do as I please.” These words were accompanied by a swirl of long, straight, blonde hair and I recognized Mirabella coming towards me.
I shrank back against the Older Brother’s trunk, hoping the sweet rushes would hide me. I didn’t dare to say a thing—I’d seen what happened to girls who made an enemy of Mirabella. She could be cruel in a thousand different ways and make your life a living hell if she wanted to.
She was dragging one of the village lads by the hand—a young Minotaur with a longish brown forelock that flopped over his forehead and a shiny brass ring through his bull’s nose. He wasn’t much to look at, I didn’t think—not that I knew a lot about men or the male form.
I was shortly to get an education of a more real and graphic nature than I had ever imagined or desired. But I didn’t know that—I only knew I had to keep quiet and hope she didn’t see me watching.
“Come on—here. Lay down,” Mirabella instructed. She pushed the young Minotaur to the ground and began working on the ties to his trousers.
“Gods, you’re bossy, ain’t you?” he snorted, half-laughing.
“I told you, I do what I want and I get what I want,” she replied with a toss of her head that sent her long, shiny hair over one shoulder. “Besides, I want to see if the rumors are true.”
“What rumors are you talking about?” he demanded, but by then she’d gotten his trousers open, and I had to bite back a gasp at what I saw.
It looked rather like a thick brown snake—it even had a head with one eye that came out when Mirabella pulled at the loose skin surrounding it. As she touched it, it got bigger and longer, growing in her hand.
“Ah!” the Minotaur snorted as she stroked him. “Be careful, would you? That’s sensitive, that is!”
Mirabella paid him no heed.
“It’s true then—Minotaurs really are hung like bulls!” she exclaimed, still stroking. “Mmm, I can’t wait to get this big, thick thing inside me.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Even going near the stronger sex was frowned upon at the temple.
That was because males weren’t trustworthy.
I had been told as much when I learned the way in which a baby was made—very reluctantly—from Priestess-Sister Anyah on the day I started my womanly courses.
“Males have a snake between their legs,” she told me.
“And they’ll do anything they can to get it between your legs.
If it spits while it’s inside you, the color of your eyes will change from pure blue to poison green—then all the world will know you’re defiled and the Goddess will cast you out of the temple.
So mind you stay away from them, lest you want your eyes changed and a big belly into the bargain! ”
I had heeded her words and stayed well clear of any males I saw on my rare visits to the nearby village.
Be they human, Shifter, Minotaur, Orc, Satyr, or any other species, I wanted nothing to do with any of them.
I wanted to keep my eyes blue and my body pure for the service of the Goddess.
For if I was kicked out of the temple, where would I go?
I had never known another home in my life and since I didn’t know my parents, I would be lost and wandering in a cruel world.
I didn’t want that.
But apparently, Mirabella had no such fears of losing her virginity and being cast into a cruel and wicked world. For before I could blink, she’d cast off her robes and mounted the Minotaur, naked as the day she was born.
She was delicate and slender—as a High Fae maiden ought to be—and the Minotaur male she was mounting was much bigger than her. Certainly his equipment was too large for her to take I thought, eyeing the small pink slit between her legs.
But it seemed that Mirabella had done this kind of thing before.
“Now, you can’t come in me,” she lectured, as she gripped the huge snake and fed it between her legs. She rubbed the broad, flaring crown against her pussy, which turned a darker pink and began to get shiny and wet. “For you mustn’t change the color of my eyes.”
“Won’t they change anyway, if you get me in you?” the Minotaur asked, doubtfully. “You won’t be a virgin no more, my lady, if my cock pierces your pussy.”
“Nonsense—do you know nothing of the Fae?” Mirabella snapped imperiously. “Having your cock in my pussy won’t hurt me—even fucking you won’t change my eyes. It’s only if you spurt your seed inside me that we’ll have a problem. So don’t come,” she added, glaring down at him.
“I…I’ll try not to.”
His deep voice was squeezed tight—almost as tight as his shaft was being squeezed, I imagined. For as she’d been talking, Mirabella had fitted the flared crown of his cock to the mouth of her pussy and was presently in the act of taking him deep inside herself.
I bit my lip as I watched her flat belly bulge. He was so big, and she was so slender I could clearly see the outline of his huge shaft entering her.
I thought he had to be hurting her, but Mirabella moaned with pleasure as she took him in, settling down until his thick cock was seated all the way inside her.