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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 contaminate the rest.

Today, though, the waiting carried an inescapable burden. Cormia had sinned, and she was awaiting her punishment with dread.

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 conferred 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 do no such thing. He is the son of the warrior the Bloodletter.”

Amalya jerked back. “What?”

“Did the Scribe Virgin not tell you?”

“Her Holiness said only that it was arranged with one of the Brotherhood, a warrior of worth.”

Cormia shook her head. “I was told earlier, when she first came unto me. I thought all knew.”

Amalya’s concern drew her brows together. Without a word, she sat on the cot and gathered Cormia to her.

“I do not want this,” Cormia whispered. “Forgive me, sister. But I do not.”

Amalya’s voice lacked conviction as she said, “All will be well…truly.”

“What goes on herein?” The sharp voice yanked them apart sure as a pair of hands.

The Directrix stood in the doorway, her stare suspicious. With a book of some sort in one hand and a strand of black worship pearls in the other, she was the perfect representation of the Chosen’s proper purpose and calling.

Amalya stood up quickly, but there was no denying the moment. As a Chosen, you were to rejoice in your station at all times; anything less was considered a specious deviation for which you had to render penitence. And they had been caught.

“I shall talk to the Chosen Cormia now,” the Directrix announced. “Alone.”

“Yes, of course.” Amalya went to the door with her head down. “If you will excuse me, sisters.”

“You shall progress to the Temple of Atonement, will you not.