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Semen spurted on the back of her tongue. Hot, bitter. Again.

Mather rode roughshod through his orgasm, face a grimace while his base nature coated Buckeye’s throat. She looked up at him, tears streaking from the corners of her eyes, lips stretched in perverse worship.

“Accept this blessing,” he said as he let her up.

The strokes at her pussy slowed. Buckeye raised her head and Mather’s glossy cock slipped out of her mouth. Her lips were swollen, parted when she met his eyes again. She caught just enough breath to speak.

“Thank you, Father.”

He pushed a thumb into her open mouth. Drew it out and up. Painted two lines of seed and saliva on her brow. They intersected in the form of a cross.

Days bled into weeks.

There was time in the cells, and there was time in service. In between, there were cold showers. The Vicers numbed to their routines. One woman’s cell was now conspicuously, permanently empty.

Buckeye’s world alternated between sleep and black cassocks. Dreamless stupor and time on her knees, her back. Spreading, presenting, receiving. A single partner or complex groups. Writhing collections of limbs, of hot, damp places connecting, working.

Her compliance had earned her a blanket. A mattress.

Mather never involved himself again. At least not in body.

His voice was there. Fading in and out from the edges, along with the white of his robes, encouraging service. Obedience. Thanks. Her eyes and ears would follow whenever he appeared, some sick remaining fragment of her soul hoping he would break again. He would touch her. Force her. Anything,

When the door of her cell swung inward one night—day? Who knew?—Buckeye’s limbs began to gather by rote. To lift her to stand, to follow the guards.

It was not a guard who stepped into the tiny space. And it was not a priest.

She could barely make her throat work.

“August?”

“Goddamn, Bucks.” He shut the door behind him, eyeing her nudity.

She reached back to yank the blanket over her front. A world of Covvie priests and guards accustomed to her nudity was a world apart: August was from the VT. August was real.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She hadn’t forgotten how to cuss.

Movement from the corner of her eye. She ticked her head to the side to see a familiar form entering another cell, four doors down. Wayland. More of the Vicers woke and stared.

“Came to see you, sweet thang.” He hooked thumbs into his belt, and she wanted to slap the drawl right out of his mouth.

Fucking traitor.

Buckeye smeared her gaze down to his boots and back up to his lying face agai

n. Just that smirk amid blond stubble made weeks of passivity flee like vermin before a light. He’d sold her. Sold all of them into this.

“Fuck you,” she said. “How’d you even get in here?”

His smile only grew. “Now that ain’t no way to treat someone comin’ to offer you a favor.” August glanced at Wayland, who was saying something inaudible to a kneeling VT woman. “ ‘Sides. Vices always sell. You know how it is. Ain’t hardly ever met a guard couldn’t be bribed.”

Buckeye scowled and backed onto the thin mattress until her shoulder blades came against the wall. “So you came all the way to Virtue just to do me a favor.” She squinted at him, cynic blades for eyes.

“Not just,” he said, tugging something out of a back pocket. “You think eleven rentbodies is enough for all the hypocrites in the Church? Preacher Man wants another batch. I’m here for instructions.”

Ideas about Elijah Mather clashed in her head. Rage and climaxes. War and surrender, forever. She wanted it to end. She had just made peace, and now here this asshole was, stirring things up.

“What do you want, August?”