Only then did I pause.
My heart still raced. My breath felt shallow and tight. I leaned a hand against the nearest wall and closed my eyes.
I should have expected it.
Even the stories whispered at the edge of temple life—half-myths spoken after curfew—had hinted at such things. This was Eletheria. The island of Bonding. Of devotion not through denial, but through surrender.
But expectation is not the same as knowing.
And seeing it, hearing it, and smelling it was something else entirely.
I shut my eyes tighter.
For a moment—only a moment—I let the image surface. The way the golden-haired youth arched against the stone. The sound of breath caught and held. The silk slipping down his leg.
And then I imagined myself there.
My back to the stone. My mouth silenced. My body not mine at all. Someone entering me with swiftness and dominance.
Every muscle in my body locked at once.
No.
I dragged in a breath, sharp and punishing.
Not now. Not yet.
I hadn’t been summoned.
I opened my eyes and walked quickly the rest ofthe way to my room. I didn’t stop until the door was shut and the evening light had gone pale and blue through the window.
Then I knelt. Not because anyone told me to. Not because it was expected.
I knelt at the foot of the bed and folded my hands tightly together. My knees pressed into the cool stone. My forehead dipped forward until it almost brushed the floor.
And in the quiet, I whispered the only prayer I could remember by heart.
“Elyon, god of beauty, light, and poetry.
Let me walk in shadow until I understand the light.
Let my heart remain clean.
Let my body belong only to itself.
Let me be worthy?—
Or let me be forgotten.”
I sat back slowly. The silence didn’t answer me.
But at least it held me, the way the temple hadn’t.
A knock stirred me from stillness.
I had stayed on the floor long after my prayer had ended, unmoving, eyes fixed on the shadows cast by the window frame. The knock came again, soft and rhythmically polite. I stood quickly and opened the door.
An attendant stood in the hall, arms full. He was older than me, but not by much, his features fine and his smile disarming.
