Page 33 of Insolence (Eisha’s Hidden Codices #1)

Itissa

T hat night, my dreams are full of finches that shriek with human voices.

My door opens in the middle of the night. Part of me is aware of Sister Delia poking her head in for a lights-out check, but dream logic takes over, turning her into a specter hovering at the end of my bed. A feverish nightmare I can’t battle or bargain with.

C onsumed with my own thoughts, I sit with my friends in the middle of an eerily quiet breakfast. Cordelia and Sadrie chat about the ceremony and celebration. The fact that our schedules now feature acolyte classes.

I sit in stiff silence, sipping strong black tea and watching the betrothed girls with growing concern.

They eat in groups, heads uncovered. Where normally most are as animated as my friends, today the women now betrothed to Eisha’s service are almost catatonic.

I pay it no mind at first, too preoccupied with my own concerns.

But the morning meal isn’t half over before it’s clear they’re not merely being demure or practicing some new measure of decorum. No, it’s far more unnerving than that.

All of them stare vacantly ahead or at their plates. None of them speak and barely move beyond breathing, chewing, and taking slow bites.

The sisters are a stark contrast, perched in clusters of their own and gossiping away. As usual, Ailen and Viv seem embroiled in a competition to hold the others’ attention the longest.

Kerrigan munches her toast, chitchatting along with her cohorts like she didn’t probably murder a girl two mornings ago.

Shaking my head, I sigh and let my gaze drift to a strangely serene Rosalie yet again.

Her eyes are devoid of emotion as she raises a bite of porridge to pale lips that barely part to admit her spoon.

Her motions are unhurried yet stiff, her face pointed directly ahead—even when a bit of food dribbles onto her black dress.

She might as well be a puppet or a porcelain doll.

A tremor runs through me.

“They’re unusually quiet today, aren’t they?” murmurs Cordelia, following my sight line.

“What in the world is wrong with them?” I whisper.

Sadrie snorts into her tea. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“I think the sisters gave them something,” says Cordelia, leaning in close.

“What?” asks Sadrie.

“To sedate them,” I finish the thought, only now noticing that none of them have on silver collars anymore. Not even Rosalie.

“ Sedate them?” Sadrie glances around. “Do you think?”

Cordelia gestures as if to say, You have a better explanation? “The prioress has no compunction about electrocuting us via magic dome. Plying the betrothed with tranquilizers is mild in comparison.”

“Gods, that’s awful,” murmurs Sadrie. “I wonder why.”

“Still feel like you two belong here?” I ask, aware of the bitterness in my words. “That things will work out ?”

They glance at each other, falling quiet for the rest of the meal.

T he betrothed are equally sedate in Sanctuary Hall. After prayers, they drift like sleepwalkers across the courtyard.

Once inside our residence, my friends and I continue to the Learning Annex while they turn toward their own quarters, moving like automatons.

“There are so many more of them than us,” I say.

“Lady Maida told me that’s typical. During her tenure, she’s seen years with no acolytes. More often, the goddess chooses only one, perhaps two. Three is a bit unusual.”

“If that’s the case, why were we all required to attend orientation?” asks Sadrie. “What was the point?”

I look at her. Good question.

“Actually,” says Cordelia, “I asked her about that at the celebration last night. She told me it’s the Five who set the orientation curriculum.”

My head snaps back.

“So the Five want to make sure we all know how important they are,” says Sadrie. “Whether we’re drugged into submission or not.”

That sounds about right.

O nce in class, we’re told to take out our blue workbooks. My faulty one has been replaced since Morday, and a list of dates and holidays greets me.

“The days of festivity and their rites,” announces Maida. “As acolytes to the temple, you’ll be required to assist with their observance over the coming year.”

She hands the lecture over to Ghisele, who takes great delight in pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard while we work through the list, one holiday at a time.

The Feast of First Night is next, occurring on the first of Thawtide. Aodh will be feasted as we bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new one.

“Since the temple will still be closed to the public, acolytes will only assist with a small ritual—the lighting of candles in the refectory,” says Ghisele.

“Otherwise, it’ll be a night of leisure for everyone to eat, drink, and celebrate.

” Her face briefly lights up. “Oh, and we all get to wear fancy dresses and masks.”

Cordelia is grinning at her when I look.

“Dresses and masks,” whispers Sadrie. “Simple enough.”

Fire Festival takes place on the twentieth of Seedburst, the spring equinox, and is a different matter entirely.

The dome will go down that evening at sunset, and the temple will reopen to the public. Bhàtair will be feasted. An elaborate fire ritual will take place in Karsyn, to which people will flock from across the realm.

The following month, the Festival of Rìa takes place on the sixteenth of Tidecrest. We’ll assist the priestesses in making an offering to the Kinvarrea River for an ample harvest.

This is followed by Longest Day, the summer solstice on the twenty-first of Sunmote, and the coinciding Festival of Aetinne in Nehel.

It’s odd, but while the rest of the holidays have been at least vaguely familiar, nothing comes to mind about Longest Day or Aetinne’s festival. When I concentrate on it, the headache threatens to split my head apart.

My focus strays as the lesson goes on. The things Elodie said when she told me about my pheromones…

“Currently, I don’t know if I can restrain myself when you’re near.”

My focus strays as the lesson goes on. The things Elodie said when she told me about my pheromones…

“…if I had my way, I’d pick you up right now, throw you on that desk, and get my hands and mouth all over you.”

They repeat and overlap, consuming my thoughts until my mind is raw with the litany.

“If I’m not very, very careful, I will lose control again.”

Heat blossoms between my thighs. If I let myself fall into the insistent, simmering arousal, I start feeling lightheaded.

Hoping it’s just the elevation, I make sure to drink water on our mid-morning break. It doesn’t help much.

The entire second half of our class is dedicated to Summer’s End and the Festival of Eisha.

The Examination of Prelation takes place on the twenty-second of Harvestmoon. It determines which acolytes will enter apprenticeship under the high priestesses. The test is not optional—not that I’m planning on passing it.

I’m not too proud to keep from sabotaging myself, serving my year as acolyte, and going home. Wherever the hell that is.

Summer’s End itself, the autumn equinox, occurs on the following day.

“The temple will officially close to the public at dawn. This is when the Binding Ceremony happens,” Ghisele solemnly informs us. “On this holiest of days, the betrothed will be spiritually joined to the goddess.”

Allegedly, this binding is significant enough that the Five will arrive the night beforehand, bear witness to the ceremony, and not leave until the evening of the twenty-fourth.

The apprentice goes on to describe how there’s a full week’s worth of revelry down in Karsyn. We’ll even get to attend ourselves the night before the Binding Ceremony.

My first full day as acolyte ends as it began—with dreams of shrieking birds that morph into delirious nightmares.

A week passes, then two. Emberglow rolls into Stormdrift. Although we don’t like it, my friends and I get used to the betrothed girls’ dazed state.

I don’t dare carry on with Sadrie anymore.

She asks about visiting me in my rooms before lights out and invites me to hers on separate occasions. But I can’t shake our close calls in the Archive and cloakroom.

With the sisters doing random room checks at night, and only three of us on the fourth floor—not counting the priestesses and wherever Ghisele sleeps—there’s too great a risk of getting caught in the act. Or losing track of time and drifting off naked with Sadrie in my arms.

Outside of class, I don’t interact with Elodie at all.

Once or twice I’ve seen her and Maida talking, their heads bowed together in deserted corners or at the end of a shadowy hallway. They startle when they see me coming. One day, Elodie’s expression gives me the distinct sense that I’m the topic of conversation.

Chores are the only time I see her beyond the annex walls, and then only as a blurry figure behind the flower greenhouse’s condensation-streaked glass. She isn’t in there every day, but her roses might as well be her children with how she dotes on them.

The days grow longer but seem colder and gloomier. Mist blankets the temple grounds in a dense layer that barely thins at the height of the day and leaves everything feeling constantly damp.

Something inside of me is changing.

Like my first days after the ritual, I’m plagued by vivid, nonsensical dreams. I come to confused and pacing in my bedroom, wringing my hands with tears streaming down my face.

I can’t even say what I was dreaming about.

All the while a quiet anxiety steeps and stews within me. And the unremitting hunger .

A voracious appetite I can’t articulate burns me from the inside out. It’s as though I’m scorching from sheer want that never stops and never improves, although I do learn to block it out.

An unsettling restlessness grips me. It comes in fits and bursts in a way that can only be described as episodes .

This is the other aspect of my reluctance to take Sadrie up on her very generous offers. It’s an aspect I don’t want to acknowledge.

My half-remembered nightmares become a nightly occurrence. Most mornings I wake up feverish and achy, but I’m put right by noon. Sometimes abrupt nausea overtakes me, and I hurry to the nearest washroom to dry heave. An hour later, I’m wolfing down my dinner like nothing happened.

Nighttime is the worst for it, though. I awaken from deep sleep, dizzy with ice-cold perspiration plastering my shift to my body. My sleeping mind shapes my nightmares into reality, and I rouse myself from clawing at phantoms.

During the first days of Stormdrift, the episodes intensify.

I drift off in my bed only to wake up hours later, crouched in the corner, half-delirious and drenched in sweat.

Feeling like ants made of molten lead are crawling all over me.

Fists clenched in my hair, loose strands stick to my arms and legs and lie scattered on the floor around me.

The root bulbs are still intact as if I’ve yanked them out, but I have no memory of it.

My nightly compulsions get more violent. Fire consumes me. My actions are somehow driven by a force greater than myself.

I wake up banging the heels of my palms against the rock-hard plaster wall or raking my fingernails over my arms and legs. My hands are bruised the next day. Raw red gashes are carved into my flesh.

I’m thankful that it’s winter and I can cover up my self-inflicted shame with long layers.

I wake up beating my fists so hard against the crown of my head that I’m tender for days afterward. I wake up smacking the back of my skull against the wall to the extent the plaster is cracked when I look.

Every night I pray that it won’t happen again. Every morning I examine a new injury and cry, hoping it’s the last. There's no explanation; I can’t seem to control or prevent it.

It feels like the monster lying in wait behind my rib cage is becoming manifest. As if poison is consuming me—a venom of my own making. I fear the beast is provoking me to destroy it, but I only ever injure myself in the process.