Page 106

“They headed somewhere to the west,” Rhyder said. “If you send men they will be able to catch them soon. I also found my very naughty sister wandering about in the dark here. I’m afraid I’ll have to take her into my tent for further instruction.”

*

BACK AT OUR SETTLEMENT, Rhyder still made no obeisance. His face was set in a grim line, and he went to the edge of our borders every few days like clockwork to check the pine.

But there was never anything there.

I tried to go about my daily chores without noticing the angry scowls, distrustful looks I got.

Something had changed in Rhyder and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

He had gone to check the pine tree hollow again when Generosity came up to me as I hand-sewed a shirt for my brother on the porch. I had an electric sewing machine, but it wasn’t working very well.

Besides, I wanted the feeling of sewing his shirts by hand, ensuring for myself that they’d be soft and sweet against his skin.

“The Elders want to see you,” Generosity said, her lips twisted up into a malicious smile.

I looked at her, really looked at her.

Nothing good could come of a meeting with the Elders without Rhyder there.

“You think you’re safe, don’t you?” I bit out at her. “You’renot. You’re just useful to them. So save the fucking unnecessary cruelty. It just makes you look like a bitter bitch who isn’t over Rhyder.”

“How dare you!” she snapped, her eyes filled with fury. “I can’t wait until you’re punished like you should be, and I’m here to make sure it happens.”

She dug her hand in my arm, and I gripped my sewing needle tighter, driving it into her palm until she squealed like a pig with the pain.

I got up to run, but they were there. All the Elders, standing in a semicircle around the house.

“It’s you,” the Prophet said, his fingers biting into my skin like grasping claws. “You are the bad omen, you are the reason we lost.”

“I am not!” I said, panicked. “I did not do anything!”

“Let’s see what the Allfather has to say about that,” the Prophet said, dragging me down into the center of the settlement. “The righteous shall drink poison and handle snakes and it will not hurt them. So which one do you want, whore? The poison or the snakes?”

The Prophet gestured to Eli, and he placed two items on the table in front of me.

One was a thick mug full of a liquid, cranberry red and dense, something thick and oily floating on the surface.

I had no idea what it was, but I knew I did not want to drink it.

The other item was a cardboard box, and I could hear the ominous, angry rattle inside, vibrating the thin protection between the snake and me.

“Cascadian rattler,” Eli said. “Very poisonous. But if you aren’t sent from the devil to tempt Rhyder into sin, you won’t be harmed.”

How did I explain that I had been a part of Rhyder, and he a part of me, ever since we had been formed in the womb? That nothing could tear us apart from each other?

That I had never tried to tempt him, but he temptedmeevery day, the seduction of his lips and arms and cock, the way my skin and body was hyperaware of him.

“The snake,” I said, through lips that felt parched like death.

The Elders surrounded me in a ring, beginning to chant in low tones.

Poison cannot hurt the righteous

The righteous

The righteous