2. 1
She traced her finger over my bare lower back as I covered my breasts with the bones of an unfastened corset.
I had never worn a corset before.
All of us in Ekris’ service only wore the traditional garments of Craetos, my country and the home of the Ten. The Ekrissians were known for low-backed peplos dresses, dyed bright red. The dress of the ancients; the dress of goddesses.
The simple act of holding a corset shouldn’t feel so godless, and yet I grieved all the same.
I shivered as her nail scratched the top of the mark, near the middle of my back.
“Do they all look like this?” she asked, her voice distracted by her intrigue.
I swallowed, suppressing the urge to cry. I wasn’t aggrieved by her touch, but the subject was raw, even if the wound of the mark was long healed. I was glad I could not see it from my position directly in front of the full-length mirror.
Yona’s blonde hair looked orange. Mine was made auburn from the same shaded amber-glassed candles, which also gave my skin the glow of a tan I hadn’t had since I was a child.
The thick curtains were drawn, even though it was the middle of the day.
It seemed they were always drawn here; it was better for the patrons if they had no concept of time whatsoever.
I shook my head, watching my own face idly. “Similar, but every one is unique.”
“Unique,” she echoed. “His fingerprint upon you.”
I stiffened. I hadn’t let anyone see the mark in the weeks I’d been gone from Ekris’ service. I was ashamed that I had left him, ashamed to let people see the evidence of my change of heart. “A blackened fingerprint.”
Yona tutted, which aged her beyond her forty years. “Even if the lines are black instead of gold—it is still beautiful, Annie.”
I dropped my head, not wanting to stare at the murky green eyes he had once called emeralds, or the muted brown hair he had once called luscious. Everything about me was marked by him, not just the swirling imprint at the base of my back. “A beautiful reminder of what a fool I was.”
She straightened and touched her hand to my shoulder. “What happened, Annie? Why did Ekris cast you out?”
I pulled my shirt over my head, and positioned the corset around my torso. “I asked him to.”
Yona paused as she took the strings from me. “Why would you do that?”
I found her blue eyes in the mirror. “I fell in love.”
“Ah.” She silently pulled the strings, tightening and threading expertly until I was clasped back in. “And now you’re here. So I take it that didn’t work out.”
I only stared at her until she sighed. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t want to even think about Robar right now. Every part of it hurt too much. I had been an utter fool.
Yona sighed. “If it helps, you aren’t special. Most of the girls are here because of some jilt or another. You’re young, you’ll be fine. So long as you learn your lesson the first time.”
It didn’t help at all. It only made me yet another similar tale. “What lesson?”
Yona grinned. “Never trust the promise of a man.”
I grimaced. “It wasn’t his fault.”
Yona only rolled her eyes as she moved over to the bed and started to straighten it from the night before, and tuck pieces away.
She might have heard the line before, but never in this context. I had done this entirely to myself. Ekris had only allowed me to lie in the bed I had begged him for. And it truly wasn’t Robar’s fault.
Yona turned back to me and appraised me again, casting her eyes from the top of my brown hair down past my plain chiton to my slippered feet.
It was the only dress Leader Talia had given me before she cast me out, and I had kept it as well as I could over the last tenday.
I longed for the red peplos gowns I had worn back in his service, but I knew there was no way back.
She levelled me with a stern look. “I can’t promise you the clientele of an Ekrissian. I can’t promise the same coin either. But I’ll keep a roof over your head, and you won’t want for food. You could get out of this life one day, if you work hard. Do you want to work?”
I nodded. “I need to work.”
“That wasn’t my question,” she snapped. “I’m not just another brothel in Dytho. This is The Curved Eclipse. Only private concubines and you Ekrissians are more prestigious. I don’t take beggars. I take women who want to do the work.”
What other work could I ever do? It was the Ekrissian way.
I had been devoted to the House of Love since I had first come to the Craeteran capitol, Dytho.
Then, in his service, proper, from my eighteenth year.
To give love, to take it, to talk, and to provide company.
I didn’t know any other life, and I had enjoyed it.
The life I had dreamed of for those couple of heady months was over. I couldn’t go back to Ekris, and I couldn’t go home. My only choice was to remain serving Love, even if I wasn’t his anymore.
I met her gaze. “I want it.”
“Good,” she said. “One more question, Annie.”
“Yes?”
“Did you fuck this man, the one you left Ekris for?” she asked.
I tensed.
Ekrissians gave pleasure in many ways, but we could not let any mortal man enter us.
We trained for months or years, depending on when we joined His service, to bestow the gift of our mouths or our touch.
But ‘fucking’, as Yona crudely named it, was forbidden.
When we died, Ekris would take our pure bodies up to the Garden of the Ten, where we would join the harem of the Gods themselves.
A flash of that night came back to me, the one that was supposed to be my first time experiencing that mortal joining. The night when Ekris changed everything.
I blinked away the memory. “No.”
Yona stared at me, undaunted. “So you’re still a virgin.”
“I’m still an Ekrissian,” I said, firmly.
“It wasn’t an insult, Annie,” she replied with an airy smile. “It’s a good thing. You will be a prize. We can sell your other services while we look for a buyer who will pay your virgin price.”
My virgin price. I had hoped to trade myself without giving that one piece of me only meant for the Gods. “I’m not sure—”
She held up her hand. “I won’t ever sell you to anyone you don’t want.
Ask the other girls, everyone gets a choice.
You’ve left Ekris now. That part of your life is gone.
” My heart sank as she pointed out the truth I had been trying to avoid.
“But you’re still a true Ekrissian virgin.
The money I can get for that single night will keep you in food and clothes for three months. ”
I paused, considering the offer. If I had any hope of winning Robar back, I had to stay here, and I had no other trade to ply.
I was willing to serve in the ways I was trained, but ‘fucking’, as she put it, was still wrapped up in too much meaning.
Would Robar still want me, if I gave up that part of myself?
“Can I think on it?”
“Of course,” she replied. Yona came around and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “You’ll start in a few days, and in the meantime, there’s a lot I have to teach you about The Eclipse.” Then she glanced down. “You can’t wear that, you know.”
“Hm?”
She pulled up my left hand. “Your ring. You can’t have a flashy ring on your wedding finger, or even on a necklace. Hide it, or sell it.”
I looked down at it. A silver band, engraved to give the effect of laurel leaves. Three smaller diamonds cut into pointed leaves embedded the band, and in the centre lay a large purple stone.
My stomach rolled, and I looked down at the faded rug on the floor. “I’ll get rid of it.”
Yona hummed in response, and turned to leave the room.
It was hard to believe we’d met ten years ago, when I’d first found my way to Dytho and had nowhere to go.
Yona was one of my first friends here. I was far too young to serve in The Curving Eclipse, then, but she’d fed me and put me in some hand-me-down clothing.
She even walked me to the House of Merriment, which exclusively accepts children before releasing them as adults, and demanded they take me in for teaching.
And now, I was back again. My eyes were still locked on the fabric of the well-trodden rug when she spoke to me from the open door.
“Annie?”
I looked up. “Yes. Sorry,” I said.
She frowned. “Is that man you mentioned going to come knocking on my door? Did you run from him?”
My heart clenched. “No. He doesn’t want me.”
Yona stared at me, unconvinced.
It wasn’t a lie, even if I was determined to change that.
I had stood outside his house in the city all day yesterday, hoping he would emerge so I could explain what happened. It wasn’t the first time the Gods had made a mortal forget someone. Ekris himself had the fable of Hephus and the sister.
If I could convince him of our history, maybe he would take me back. Or, at the least, I believed he would entertain my story and my company long enough to learn that I wasn’t crazy. He thought I was beautiful, he had told me countless times. He had to listen to me.
But if I couldn’t convince him somehow, he certainly wouldn’t be chasing me down here. He would be running the other way.
I mustered a smile. “Trust me. He won’t cause a problem.”
She kept her eyes on me, then she nodded and left, closing the door behind her. I looked back at myself in the mirror, hating that all I could see now was the ring on my left hand.
Another flash. Begging Ekris to let me leave the service of his House. For love, I had told him. Let me leave to be with my love. He agreed on one condition.
I would have to make him fall for me once more. If he truly loved you, he said, you’ll win his love again. I blinked, staring down at the ring in my palm. I had never known how I had won his love the first time. Winning it a second time felt almost impossible.