Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

"Thus ends your lesson," the Directrix said as she divested her neck of her graceful chain of keys and locked the doors. "In accordance with tradition you shall present yourself for the first of the cleansing rituals when we come for you. Until then you shall ponder the grace you have been given and the service you will provide for the benefit of us all."

The words were spoken in the same hard tone the Directrix had used to describe what the Primale would do to Cormia's body. Over and over again. Anytime he wished.

The Directrix's eyes held a calculating light as she put her necklace back on, a chiming sound rising up as the keys settled between her br**sts. "Fare thee well, sister."

As the Directrix walked down off the hill, her white robe was indistinguishable from both ground and buildings, another splash of white differentiated solely because it was in motion.

Cormia put her hands to her face. The Directrix had told her - no, vowed to her - that what would transpire beneath the Primale would be painful, and Cormia believed it. The graphic details had been shocking, and she feared there was no way she could get through the mating ceremony without breaking down - to the disgrace of the whole of the Chosen. As the representative of them all, Cormia had to perform as expected and with dignity, or she would tarnish the venerable tradition she was in service to, contaminating it in its entirety.

She glanced over her shoulder at the temple and put her hand on her lower belly. She was fertile, as all Chosen were at all times on this side. She could beget a young of the Primale from her very first time with him.

Dear Virgin in the Fade, why had she been chosen?

When she turned back around, the Directrix was down at the bottom of the hill, so small in comparison to the towering buildings, so tremendous in practicality. More than anyone or anything else, she defined the landscape: The Scribe Virgin was whom they all served, but it was the Directrix who ran their lives. At least until the Primale arrived.

The Directrix did not want that male in her world, Cormia thought.

And that was why Cormia had been the one nominated to the Scribe Virgin for choosing. Of all the females who might have been picked and would have been thrilled, she was the least welcoming, the least accommodating. A passive-aggressive declaration against the change in supremacy.

Cormia started down the knoll, the white grass texture without temperature under her bare feet. Nothing save food and drink possessed heat or coldness.

For a moment she thought of escaping. Better to be gone from all she knew than to endure the picture the Directrix had painted. Except she had no knowledge of how to get to the far side. She knew you had to pass through into the Scribe Virgin's private space, but what then? And what if she were caught by Her Holiness?

Unthinkable. More frightening than being with the Primale.

Deep in her private, sinful thoughts, Cormia ambled without purpose through the landscape she'd known all her life. It was so easy to be lost here in the compound, because everything looked the same and felt the same and smelled the same. With no contrast, reality's edges were too smooth to grab onto for purchase, either mentally or physically. You were never grounded. You were air.

As she passed by the Treasury, she stopped on its regal steps and thought of the gems inside, the only true color she'd ever seen. Beyond the locked doors there were whole baskets full of precious stones, and though she had seen them only once or twice, she remembered the colors so clearly. Her eyes had been shocked by the vivid blue of the sapphires and the dense green of the emeralds and the blood strength of the rubies' red. The aquamarines had been the color of the sky, so they had fascinated her less.

Her favorites had been the citrines, the lovely yellow citrines. She'd sneaked in a touch of those. It had been only a quick push of her hand into the basket when no one had been looking, but oh, how glorious to see the light flicker in their cheerful facets. The feel of them shifting against her palm had been a lively chatter to her hand's great content, a fanciful, tactile rush made all the more exciting by its illicit nature.

They had warmed her, though they were in fact no warmer than anything else.

And the gems weren't the only reason that entry to the Treasury was an extraordinary treat. There were objects from the other side kept there in glass cases, things that had been collected either because they played a pivotal role in the history of the race or because they had ended up in the keeping of the Chosen. Even if Cormia hadn't always known what she was looking at, it had been such a revelation. Colors. Textures. Foreign things from a foreign place.

Ironically, though, the thing she'd been most drawn to had been an ancient book. On the battered front, in faded embossed letters, it had read: DARIUS SON OF MARKLON.

Cormia frowned and realized she'd seen that name before... in the Black Dagger Brotherhood room in the library.

A diary of a Brother. So that was why it had been preserved.

As she stared at the locked doors, she wished she had been around in the olden days, when the building had been kept open and one could go inside as freely as one could enter the library. But that had been before the attack.

The attack had changed everything. It seemed inconceivable that rogue members of the race had come over from the far side bearing weapons and looking to loot. But they had entered through a portal that was now closed and had rushed the Treasury. The previous Primale had died protecting his females, besting the three civilians but dying thereafter.

She supposed he'd been her father, hadn't he.

After that horrible interlude, the Scribe Virgin had closed that portal of entry and routed through her private courtyard all who sought to come. And as a precaution, the Treasury had always been locked, except for when the jewels were needed for the Scribe Virgin's sequester or for certain ceremonies. The Directrix held the key.

She heard a shuffling and looked toward a colonnaded walkway. A fully draped figure limped along, one leg dragging behind a black robe, covered hands holding a stack of towelings.

Cormia looked away quickly and hurried along, wanting both distance from that particular female as well as the Primale's Temple. She ended up as far away from both as one could go, all the way at the reflection pool.

The water was clear and perfectly still, a mirror that showed the sky. She wanted to put her foot in, but that was not allowed -

Her ears picked up on something.

At first she wasn't sure what she heard, if anything at all. There was no one nearby that she could see, nothing but the Tomb of the Youngs and the white-treed woods that marked the edged of the sanctuary. She waited. When the sound did not come again, she dismissed it as her imagination and continued on.

Though she was afeared, she was drawn toward the tomb where infants who did not survive birth were enshrined.

Anxiety rode up her spine. This was the one place she never visited, and it was the same for rest of the Chosen. All avoided this solitary square building with its white fencing. Sorrow hung 'round therein, sure as the black satin ribbons that were tied upon the door's handles.

Dear Virgin in the Fade, she thought, her destiny would soon be entombed here, as even Chosen had a high rate of infant deaths. Verily, parts of her would rest here, little chips of her being deposited until there was nothing but a husk left. The fact that she could not choose the pregnancies, that no was not a word or even a thought she was permitted, that her offspring were trapped in the same role she was made her visualize herself inside this solitary tomb, locked among the littlest dead.

She pulled the lapels of her robe closer to her neck and shivered as she stared through the gates. Before now, she had found this place disconcerting, feeling as if the tender ones were lonely even though they were in the Fade and should have been happy and at peace.

Now the temple was a horror.

The sound she'd heard came again, and she jumped back, ready to run from the woeful spirits who dwelled herein.

Except, no, that wasn't the spectral young. It was a catching of breath. Not at all ghostly, but very real.

She went around the corner silently.

Layla was sitting on the grass with her knees to her chest and her arms around herself. Her head was tucked in, her shoulders shaking, her robe and hair wet.

"My sister?" Cormia whispered. "How fare thee?"

Layla's head shot upright, and she quickly scrubbed her cheeks until they were free of tears. "Leave. Please."

Cormia went over and knelt down. "Tell me. What has happened?"

"Nothing of which you need be - "