supposed that under this scenario, he was nothing
more than a sperm donor. He wasn't going to have to be a father to any of them, which was a
relief. He wouldn't be good at that shit.
Shoving the pendant into the back pocket of his leathers, he put his head in his hands. Visions of
growing up in the warrior camp came to him, the memories crystal-clear and sharp as glass. With
a nasty curse in the Old Language, he reached over to his jacket, took his phone out, and hit
speed dial. When Wrath's voice came on the line, there was a whirring noise in the background.
«You got a minute?» V said.
«Yeah, what's doing?» When V didn't hold forth, Wrath's voice got lower. «Vishous? You all
right?»
«No.»
There was a rustling then Wrath's voice came from a distance. «Fritz, can you come back and
vacuum a little later? Thanks, my man.» The whirring noise shut off and a door closed. «Talk to
me.»
«Do you… ah, do you remember the last time you got drunk? Like, really drunk?»
«Shit… ah…» In the pause, V pictured the king's black eyebrows sinking down behind his
wraparounds. «God, I think it was with you. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, wasn't it?
Seven bottles of whiskey between the two of us.»
«Actually, it was nine.»
Wrath laughed. «We started at four in the afternoon and it took us, what, fourteen hours? I was
faced for a whole day afterward. Hundred years later and I think I'm still hungover.»
V closed his eyes. «Remember just as dawn was coming, I, ah… told you I'd never known my
mother? Had no clue who she was or what happened to her?»
«Most of it's fog, but yeah, I recall that.»
God, they'd both been so polluted that night. Drunk off their asses. And that had been the only
reason V had yakked even a little about what rotted in his head twenty-four/seven.
«V? What's doing? This have something to do with your mahmen?»
V let himself fall back on the bed. As he landed, the pendant in his back pocket bit into his ass.
«Yeah… I just met her.»
Chapter Four
On the Other Side, in the sanctuary of the Chosen, Cormia sat on a cot in her white room with a
small white candle glowing beside her. She was dressed in the traditional white robe of the
Chosen, her feet bare on white marble, her hands folded in her lap.
Waiting.
She was used to waiting. It was the nature of your life as a Chosen. You waited for the calendar
of rituals to offer up activity. You waited for the Scribe Virgin to make an appearance. You
waited for the Directrix to give you duties to perform. And you waited with grace and patience
and understanding, or you disgraced the entirety of the tradition you serviced. Herein no one
sister was more important than another. As a Chosen, you were part of a whole, a single
molecule among many that formed a functioning spiritual corpus… both critical and utterly
unimportant.
So woe be the female who failed in her duties lest she contaminated the rest.
But today the waiting carried an inescapable burden. Cormia had sinned, and she was awaiting
her punishment.
For a long time she had wanted for her transition to be given upon her, had been secretly
impatient for it, although not for the benefit of the Chosen. She'd wanted to be fully realized as
herself. She'd wanted to feel a significance in her breath and her heartbeat that pertained to her
being an individual in the universe, not a spoke in a wheel. Her change had struck her as the key
to that private freedom.
Her change had been given unto her just recently, when she'd been invited to drink of the cup in
the temple. At first she'd been elated, assuming that her clandestine desire had gone undetected
and yet was fulfilled. But then her punishment had arrived.
Glancing down at her body, she blamed her breasts and her hips for what was about to happen to
her. Blamed herself for wanting to be someone specific. She should have stayed as she had
been-
The thin silk curtain over the doorway swept aside, and the Chosen Amalya, one of the Scribe
Virgin's personal attendhentes, walked in.
«And so it is done,» Cormia said, tightening her fingers until her knuckles stung.
Amalya smiled beneficently. «It is.»
«How long?»
«He comes at the conclusion of Her Highness's sequester.»
Desperation made Cormia ask the unthinkable. «Cannot it be another of us who is called forth?
There are others who want this.»
«You have been chosen.» As tears were born unto Cormia's eyes, Amalya came forward, her bare
feet making no sound. «He will be gentle with thine body. He will-«
«He will
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