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We were only 16, and our Congregation had captured some men in battle.

They stood in the center of camp, tied up with rough ropes, their faces scratched and bloody.

And all over some shitty patch of land that would barely grow a potato.

But that was how Congregations knew who was favored by the Allfather.

And our Prophet had only to flick his fingers toward the prisoners.

“Rhyder,” he said. “Kill them.”

They began to beg for mercy then, but my brother at 16 was already twice as big as a grown man, and I remembered the slow crawl of horror I felt watching him draw the two knives that were already customary to him, then slit the men’s throats.

My stomach wrenched and I wanted to turn around and vomit on the floor, fall to the ground with the knowledge that my brother was such a true believer he wouldn’t even hesitate, wouldn’t question if what he was doing was right or wrong.

The secret, wrong doubts my mother had planted in my head frightened me.

Surely it was a sin to doubt

Look what had happened to her.

“The Allfather has given us his lands,” my brother said confidently, his big hands both resting, uncomfortably warm, on my hips.

Heat and cum pooled between my thighs, Rhyder’s release sticky on my legs, soakinghisthighs.

“We have seen them on our excursions,” he continued. “Green hills, streams filled with fish and crab. Dense forests filled with game. Ready for those who can take them.”

A Helpmeet made her rounds to refill his beer, and the Congregants seemed to freeze as my brother tapped my shoulder and casually handed me his mug of beer.

“Drink this.”

My cheeks flamed as I felt the eyes of the Elders turn to me.

Whores were not supposed to share the same food and drink

Whores were supposed to be treated as the dirt under your feet

You were supposed to use them as you pleased, then leave them. Alive or dead, what mattered was your power as a Congregant.

The problem was that my obsessive brother didn’t see me as his whore. He saw me as ordained by the Allfather to be his wife.

I felt frozen, pinned under the weight of their angry, disapproving stares.

Did they daresayanything to Rhyder?

He tapped on my shoulder again, holding the mug out to me.

The other men said nothing, probably testing, waiting, unsure and afraid of how my brother would react, looking at me with stony cold eyes.

I took and drank, my throat dry as bone, and the drink went down untasted like bitter gall.

Rhyder’s big thigh was hard and he began, almost absently, to rock me back and forth on it. My sleeve fell down my arm as my brother’s fingers caressed my bare shoulder.

I wanted to scream at him to stop, to tell him I didn’t want this, that I had never wanted this, but I said nothing. Whores were not permitted to talk unless spoken to.

With his other hand he ground my hips down, back and forth.

“it is time,” Osric said, “for the Seeking.”