I staggered one step and caught myself with a breath.
I tried to wipe it with my hand, but the juice only slicked across my fingers, already sticky, already stained with the scent of summer.
I took another bite, slower. It was messy, impossible not to be. My lips dragged across the skin and I felt the juice welling again, sliding over my lower lip, then tracing a slow line between my collarbones, down the shallow channel of skin where breath rose and fell. I had never eaten like this, not in the temple, not at home.
There was something reckless about it. Indulgent.
I hated the way it made me feel.
The cloth of theseretclung where the juice had touched it. My fingers were tacky. My chest shone slightly in the sun.
I took the last bite of the fruit and tossed the pit into the underbrush.
The path narrowed now, growing darker as the trees thickened. The air turned cooler, the light filtered through a canopy of swaying green. Somewhere ahead, I heard the murmur of water.
I followed it.
A stream curved across the clearing, wide and slow here on the plateau. It must have come down from the mountains, though it moved with unhurried grace. The surface shimmered where the light touched it, dappled and silver.
I knelt at the edge and reached in.
The water was cool and clean, sliding over my skin like silk over marble. I scrubbed my hand with my thumb, trying to rid it of every trace of sweetness. It didn’t matter that no one was here. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t being watched.
I still felt exposed.
I leaned lower and splashed some water onto my chest, watching it bead and run in rivulets down my skin. The place where the peach juice had dried felt sticky still, no matter how many times I rinsed it.
I sat back on my heels, bare knees pressed to the earth, and looked out over the stream. The trees rustled gently above me. Sunlight moved in shifting patterns over the surface.
It was beautiful here.
Quiet.
And still, I couldn’t settle.
I told myself I had come for solitude. For silence. But what I found instead was the echo of laughter Icouldn’t forget, the taste of fruit I hadn’t earned, and the heat of imagined eyes following me.
I dipped my hand back into the stream and held it there until the cold reached the bone.
I rose from the bank and followed the stream a little farther, walking carefully along the mossy edge where stone met root. The forest here was denser, but the trees parted just enough ahead to let sunlight spill in.
A clearing opened before me.
The stream widened here into a natural basin, a shallow pool where the water slowed and stilled. Smooth stones lined the bed beneath the surface, catching light in their polished backs. The sun poured down from above, unfiltered and strong, turning the surface to shifting gold.
I stepped to the edge and stood there for a moment, theseretclinging to my legs, damp at the hem from where the water had splashed earlier. The warmth of the light touched my face, my throat, my chest. It radiated across my skin and made my hair glow at the edges.
Elyon, I thought.
God of light. God of beauty.
Wasn’t this his domain?
The pool felt like a shrine without walls.
I undid the pin at my hip and let theseretfall. It slid down my body and whispered into the grass at my feet.
Naked again.
