Chapter 14 Elowen
ELOWEN
Things feel strange in the days that follow. I hear whispers in the village that my fellow acolytes have their half-breed babies. None of them are prepared to be mothers, but they’re stuck. And as cruel as Mirabella and her friends were to me, I still feel bad for them.
But I have problems of my own–I have a sneaking suspicion that the curse the witch laid on me hasn’t been completely broken.
I’m having needs again–urges that I didn’t have before. My nipples ache. I feel swollen and needy between my legs and I’m always wet. But when I’m alone in my cot at night–since the rest of the dorm is mostly empty–and I try to touch myself, I can’t reach the peak.
It’s frustrating and worrying. I fear that my sexual need is starting to verge on desperation–like it did when I had to seek out Theron.
Speaking of Theron, I can’t stop thinking about him–even dreaming about him. In my dreams, he’s touching me again…sucking my nipples, stroking my pussy. I wake up panting and overheated, my clit throbbing with need, but I can’t do anything about it.
More and more I’m afraid that I didn’t actually beat the curse at all–I just deferred it.
I think about seeking the big Drake Shifter out again, but I don’t dare.
Sister Agatha is always watching me now.
I feel like I can barely breathe–I can feel her beady eyes on me from morning until night.
The only free time I get is when it’s time to tend the temple garden–she dislikes the heat, and it keeps her indoors most of the time.
So I spend more and more time out in the garden, just to get away from her. But I don’t dare to sneak away because she comes to check on me regularly, staring at me from the porch of the temple to be sure I’m actually working. There’s no time to go to town and come back again without being missed.
I feel trapped…and I’m becoming desperate. I have to do something before the curse overtakes me again and I have to go beg some random strange male to defile me.
The best thing to do, I decide, is to try to undo all the damage that was done last night. But the only way to do that would be to go back in time.
Sounds impossible, right? But actually, I was pretty sure I’d seen a spell that might do exactly that in the Forbidden Grimoire in the temple library. I had only caught a glimpse once when I was looking through it.
But it’s called “forbidden” for a reason–it contains some of the most powerful nature spells in the universe, so it’s usually guarded by an alarm spell.
The one time I looked at it, I was dusting, and the alarm spell had been lifted so that I and several other acolytes could do a thorough cleaning of the library.
Even a glimpse was enough to let me know it might be the answer to my problems. If I’d had time to read it through–just once–I would have remembered it. As I said before, I have an excellent memory for anything magical.
But I hadn’t gotten to read it through. I barely got to read the title of the spell before I heard one of the Sisters coming and I had to close the grimoire and pretend I was only dusting its thick leather cover.
I have an idea of how to get to it, though. Though I still have limited magic myself, I’ve learned a silence spell. It’s a bubble of pure quiet that extends several feet outwards from the one who casts it.
I decide I’ll wait until midnight when everyone else in the temple is asleep and sneak into the library.
I’ll cast my silence spell before opening the Forbidden Grimoire–that should muffle the sound of the alarm spell.
Then I’ll find the spell, commit it to memory, and cast it the next day when I’m in the garden.
As for what time I’ll go back to, I decide I’ll go back to the night of the raid on the witch’s house.
I was too weak, allowing Mirabella to bully me into going.
I’m going to stand my ground this time. I might even go tell Sister Agatha to stop the other girls from going too, if I can’t convince them to stay.
They’ll hate me even more, of course, but I’ll save all of them from a fate of shame and despair.
And I’ll keep myself from getting cursed.
It sounds like the perfect plan and so, that night, I sneak out of bed.
I wait until the dorm is quiet. Not just the kind of quiet that comes when girls are pretending to sleep and whispering under their blankets, but true quiet—the deep kind that settles in after midnight when the candles have all guttered low and even the crickets outside seem to grow tired of singing.
The air in the dorm is warm and still, thick with the faint smell of lavender sachets and old linen and the honey soap we all use in the baths.
Most nights, even with so many of the cots empty now, I find the room oppressive.
Tonight it’s even worse because I know I could get caught and how much trouble I’d get into.
I lie still for a long moment, listening–I don’t want to take any chances.
One of the acolytes who was moved in from another chamber snores softly behind me.
Another sighs in her sleep and turns over, rustling her blankets.
Beyond the narrow windows, moonlight spills in silver bars across the stone floor and catches on the edges of the cots, painting everything in pale blue and ghostly white.
This scene ought to feel peaceful, but it doesn’t. Maybe because my nerves are so on edge.
My body is too tense to relax. My nipples ache under the thin linen of my sleeping shift.
There is a restless pulse between my thighs–a constant, swollen throb that no amount of squeezing my legs together will banish.
The curse is there—I can feel it, low and sly and patient, like a coal buried under ash just waiting for the right breath of air to blaze up again.
And when I close my eyes, I still see Theron.
His broad shoulders…his tarnished silver eyes…the way his big hands looked against my skin—so rough and dark and yet so careful in spite of their size.
The memory makes heat roll through me all over again and I press my lips together hard, angry with myself.
No, I can’t think like that–that way lies ruin. But I can’t get him out of my head–which is why I have to do this, no matter how dangerous it is.
Moving carefully, I slip out from under my blanket and set my bare feet on the cool stone floor.
It sends a shiver through me at once and I pause, wincing as the chill runs up my legs.
The temple floors always hold the night’s coolness, even in summer.
I gather my plain white robe around me hastily and begin to make my way between the cots.
I know every creak in this room–every place where the wind catches the shutters and makes them knock. Still, my heart pounds as though I’m doing something ten times worse than sneaking to the library in the middle of the night.
Though I suppose, in the eyes of the Sisterhood, perhaps I am.
I pass the line of empty cots where Mirabella and the others used to sleep and feel my heart twist in my chest. Even now, I can still picture them all so clearly—Mirabella tossing her long hair over one shoulder and laughing too loudly…Hortence rolling her eyes…Terylin whispering after dark.
I hear whispers in town that they’ve all had their babies—half-breed babies.
Temple girls carrying Satyr or Orc or Minotaur children on their hips before they’ve even learned what to do with themselves.
Their lives are ruined now–the Fae don’t accept half-breeds.
Which is no doubt why I was surrendered to the temple when I was just a baby myself.
The thought makes my stomach clench.
I know I should hate Mirabella after all she did to me and honestly, some part of me does.
But another part can’t help imagining her–frightened and sore and exhausted– trying to hush a crying infant in some shabby room in the next town over, while the life she thought she’d have slips farther and farther away.
I don’t want that to be me–ever.
I pass Sister Agatha’s door on silent feet and stop for a moment, holding my breath.
Her room sits just off the main hall, closer to the front of the temple than the dorms, so she can keep an ear out for any nonsense from the younger acolytes.
Normally the soft glow of candlelight comes from under the door—she’s forever reading or muttering over temple accounts like a dried-up crow counting seeds.
But tonight I’m in luck–there is nothing. No line of gold beneath the threshold…no scrape of chair legs…no cough.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Good. If she’s sleeping she won’t be coming to the dorm to check and be sure everyone is in their beds.
I feel a little less tense as I move on, quickening my pace now that I’m past the greatest danger. The hallway opens before me, long and cool and pale in the moonlight that pours through the high arched windows.
The temple always feels different at night. By day, it is full of voices and drifting incense and the sound of chanted prayers and sandals on stone. By night, it feels ancient—older than any of us.
The polished white marble walls glow softly, as though the moon has seeped into them over the years. Vines trail from carved wall niches, their leaves silvered in the dark. Pale blossoms nod from hanging baskets and spill over balustrades, scenting the air with jasmine and moonflower.
The Temple of the Nature Goddess is built to seem open to the sky, though much of it is enclosed. Trees grow in great circular wells cut into the floors, their trunks rising through two and sometimes three levels of the structure before branching beneath the open domes above.
One of them grows in the central hall just beyond the staircase—a slender white-barked birch whose leaves whisper softly whenever the wind finds its way down from the open roof.
Moss creeps between some of the stones in the corners and flowering vines wind along the railings.
Even here, even indoors, the temple is brimming with life.