Page 38 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: Oh, My God

“There is no transgression greater than betraying one’s own blood.” - a fragment of correspondence from the Temple Mother, preserved in the journal of Eroithiel von Dua

T he moment I entered the temple, a sense of familiar peace settled over me. The space was dark, cool, and calm. It gave the impression of existing on a different plane from what waited just outside. No sounds from the camp penetrated the stone door once it closed behind me.

The only sound inside the temple was the burble of a fountain in the center of the floor.

I drifted to its edge. A spiral of levitating stone steps circled the rim, the stones spaced precariously far apart.

Water dribbled down them from an unseen source above, trickling into the carved basin.

Seven golden swords protruded from a gauntlet at the bottom of the pool.

They pointed up at the ceiling, gleaming in the low light—a perilous trap for anyone who braved the steps.

Though why anyone would do that was beyond me. They didn’t seem to lead to anything.

An altar stood behind the fountain. Its subtle power called to me.

Nerves teased goosebumps onto my flesh. What exactly would my delayed visit mean?

The altar felt neutral as I moved to stand before it.

Brown smears of dried blood painted its porous gray surface.

A gilded straight pin on a velvet cushion lay in wait.

I hesitated. Even knowing there was no choice, and that I was late, and that I would inevitably lift the pin and do my duty—something gave me pause.

A feeling like I had pieces of a puzzle and hadn’t put them together yet and shouldn’t proceed until I did.

This spark of doubt was fully at odds with the way the silence teased the tension from my shoulders.

The way my tendrils felt normal for the first time in days.

They swirled around my middle, perfectly balanced.

And yet somehow, this lack of turmoil made me even more suspicious.

I sighed.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I lifted the pin, pricked my finger, and dragged the dot of blood across the altar.

A creak and grind sounded behind me. A slab of stone slid out of place in the wall, and a woman emerged. The Fated’s Temple Mother had wild, untamed locks of silver hair spilling down her crimson holy cloak. She put most of her weight on a gnarled wooden cane as she thumped forward.

“Eroithiel,” she said—a question, but not stated as such. More like a demand to confirm what she already knew.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you for having me.”

“There’s no pleasure in it,” she snapped.

The comfort I’d felt upon entering the temple melted. I’d met all manner of Temple Mothers over the years. Some warm, some motherly, some quite matter-of-fact and businesslike. But none had ever treated me with hostility.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said—nervous, even though I’d not exactly had a lot of control over my whereabouts these last few weeks.

“I’m sorry you came at all,” she retorted.

I blinked, thinking briefly that I’d misheard. But her lips pressed together in a tight line of barely repressed rage, and she slapped a cloth bundle onto the altar. She wasn’t just annoyed with me. She visibly shook with hatred.

I took a steadying breath. “If I’ve offended?—”

“Silence, child. Nothing of Haz’s creation could ever offend me,” she said, sounding more offended than ever. “Do you come for my counsel?”

I peered at her. I knew the steps. I should say yes and answer her questions and listen to her advice. But I had a strong suspicion I wouldn’t like what she was about to say.

She watched me. Her tight jaw, her blazing gray eyes, her white-knuckled grip on the cane. Somehow, the challenge emanating from her finally spurred my determination to life.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “I seek your counsel, Temple Mother.”

She nodded. “Where have your journeys taken you since your last visit?”

I recounted the names of the towns I’d visited, the taverns I’d played, and the places I’d lived.

I always kept careful track, knowing I would face this question.

Though this time, it felt like recalling a previous life rather than the last twelve-month.

Only when I reached the part where I entered the cavern with the Huntress party did my confidence falter.

“I wore a false tattoo,” I confessed. “The mark of the Huntress. I joined with a small party of her followers to seek the book my last Temple Mother spoke of. I’d heard the caverns had old libraries in their depths—picked over for magical books, of course, but the rumors said no one ever bothered to cart out the rest. I’d hoped… ”

“Hope is a fool’s crutch,” the Temple Mother groused. “Haz’s true devotees make their own fate.”

I swallowed, chastened. I’d heard that refrain more than enough to have seen it coming. I could have pointed out that making my own fate was exactly what I’d been doing the day I’d donned the Huntress’s mark. But the Temple Mother was already on to the next question.

Her lips pinched together again, and her hawkish eyes narrowed on me. “How did our lord feel about your failure to tithe on your last birthday?”

“I—” I sputtered. “How would I know that?”

As a Temple Mother, she ought to have known that I wasn’t one of Haz’s chosen conduits. I wasn’t a temple darling, hearing his whispers and enjoying his guiding hand or his commentary. The entirety of our interactions had played out in temples like these, through Temple Mothers like her.

She chuffed softly, as if I were playing at ignorance on purpose. “He spoke to you that day, child. What did he say?”

Darkness obscured the edges of my vision. My head pounded. The voice. The unseen eyes I’d felt watching me the day I’d killed Wendlin. It clicked into place. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My cheeks heated. She was waiting for an answer.

What had he said?

He’d said that Brü and the others treated me like a child.

He’d insulted me for letting B?k control me.

So weak. Such a disappointment, Eroithiel.

He’d chided me for struggling against a mediocre alchemist—had told me to fight right before I’d killed Wendlin.

Only then had I felt his singular spark of pride.

And then he was gone, and he hadn’t come back since.

I don’t know why this realization made me panic.

Gods had always been intangible beings in my mind.

I knew logically that there were those to whom they spoke directly.

The Temple Mothers, yes—but also people like Aelith, whose magic was holy and came directly from the heavens.

But to me, the idea of Haz was just that.

An idea. A philosophy. An obligation. Not an irritated, judgmental, tangible observer.

And—holy shit. Had he heard all of those “Haz’s tits” comments?

How many times had I gleefully taken his name in vain?

Enough that a fresh sheen of cold sweat coated my forehead.

“He…” I met her furious gaze, groping for words. “He didn’t like me much, I don’t think. But I made him a little proud?”

She assessed me mercilessly. I was no stranger to disappointing mother figures—and yet, the sickening sensation of her gaze cutting through my exterior and plundering around inside me, seeing things I feared even I hadn’t fully examined, made me want to run.

“The temple advises thusly,” she said. “Recall, Eroithiel, that Haz is your only god and master. Haz is your source of life and your purpose. Serve Haz above false idols and—” she stared pointedly at my collar “—certainly above the fallen.”

I nodded silently. What else could I do?

Argue that I’d had no choice where the collar was concerned?

That my attempt to make my own fate had in fact landed me here?

I didn’t need scrying abilities to guess how she would react to that.

There was always a choice, she would say.

Death would have been a choice. Perhaps Haz would have preferred that.

“In the year to come, you will be tested—and you will fail,” the Temple Mother went on, each word a sliver of ice slicing into my heart. “You will let your friends down, and worse—you will betray your own blood.”

I stumbled back, gripping the altar for support. The pinprick on my fingertip smeared fresh blood.

How could I betray what I didn’t have?

“You will disappoint our lord with your weak heart.” Her lips curled. “You are as unworthy of Haz’s mark as you are of his gift. There is no transgression greater than betraying one’s own blood.”

“I wouldn’t,” I argued—unable to take those accusations without defending myself. “I don’t know my blood, but if I did?—”

“Silence!”

The cry echoed off the stone walls. My heart thundered in my chest.

In the quiet that followed, her labored breaths were the only sound. She glared at me—a silent dare to speak again. I did not.

The Temple Mother turned to her cloth bundle, unrolling it partway to reveal ink and needles. I desperately did not want this woman to touch me—much less to be the one to refresh my temple tattoo, but I splayed my arm across the altar anyway, terrified to do otherwise.

“Lord Austvix is good,” she said—but this time, I felt like an intruder on her thoughts.

She didn’t look at me, barely spoke loudly enough for me to hear, as she prepared her tools and jabbed the ink into the faded space on my skin where the tattoo belonged.

“Lord Austvix doesn’t deserve this burden.

Contessa—Contessa is the one who ought to have borne it. ”

I shook under her grip. Contessa was the Huntress. Contessa Urgway. I’d read the name, but had never heard it spoken aloud—not by tutors, not in the temple. The Huntress didn’t want it spoken, and so it wasn’t.

“But I am not one to question my god. Haz’s plans are divine.”

I could have pointed out that it sounded like she was questioning her god pretty pointedly—but it didn’t seem the time. Her needle jabbed into my skin over and over.

“Our choices are our own. Our fates are what we make them,” the Temple Mother muttered.

I gritted my teeth. That sure seemed to suggest that I would have a pretty hefty say in whether I betrayed my blood—assuming I ever found them. But once again, I kept my thoughts to myself.

I closed my eyes and bid my tendrils to heal the skin as the Temple Mother worked.

She muttered more, but the words were no longer audible.

When she finally finished, I looked down, finding two perfect tattoos on my inner forearm.

Haz’s gauntlet, just marginally darker and more vibrant, sat nearest my wrist. Above it, the Fated eye with seven tiny stars in its pupil stared sightlessly up at me—already having lost its new-ink luster.

The Temple Mother returned to her cloth roll, fastened her ink and needles back into their places, and then unrolled the thing the rest of the way. She lifted a piece of pale polished wood with jagged edges that looked like part of a broken staff.

My tendrils reached for it without my permission, and a chill gripped me when they closed around it. It flew into my hands. The Temple Mother made no remark—only watched with those intense eyes.

I examined the object. It was warm and serene under my fingers, like it’d recently been in a hot bath. A thousand tiny runes swirled around the edge in a mesmerizing pattern. Although distant echoes of its power sparked, the object itself seemed inert. Dead. Broken.

What was it? And what was I meant to do with it?

I looked up—already dreading having to ask the Temple Mother a question, considering how she’d behaved toward me so far.

But she wasn’t there. A movement in my periphery made me jump.

She was above me, standing at the top of the spiral steps.

Her cane lay forgotten. I held my breath.

One slip, and those swords in the water would?—

Only she didn’t slip.

“To Haz, I commit my eternal soul,” she said gravely. “I have served, and I will be served.”

Then she put out her arms and pitched forward into the air.

The seven swords sliced through her body. She was dead before she hit the water. Her final breath blew out in a garbled gasp. The fountain water ran red.

My cry echoed through the chamber. I lurched forward, one hand raised—but what the fuck was I supposed to do? I couldn’t heal that. There was nothing to heal.

I gasped for breath, clutching my newest mystery against my chest in a death grip. Its runes tickled the tips of my fingers.

The grinding creak of the stone door sounded again. I looked up, fearing that I would have to explain—that I would have to defend my indefensible position, standing over the temple’s dead mother.

A young man peered at me. He wore a student’s white robes. I thought he might cry out—to call for help, or at least to call a guard to arrest me. But he didn’t look at me at all. His eyes fell first on the fountain and then danced to the altar.

He lunged for the Temple Mother’s cloth roll and fished out a small chalice.

“Holy Mother, newest saint, bless me in your death,” he said hurriedly.

He ran to the edge of the fountain, dipped the chalice into the bloody water, and drank. The excess ran from the corners of his mouth, splattering his white robes with red.

I stumbled backward, one step and then two more. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.

Something skittered nearby—a sound like a rat or some other small creature.

I didn’t even look to see what. Before my eyes, the boy transformed.

His bones cracked, his face turned soft and doughy, and hisses of pain filled the air.

The red droplets on his white robes spread until the expanse of the fabric took on a solid crimson hue.

When he stood again, there was no he —only a young Temple Mother.

Her eyes were large and brown, her lips soft and pursed, her form deeply feminine.

She looked at me, tilting her head. “Don’t you have things to do, Eroithiel?”

I opened my mouth and found it dry. Unlike the dead woman, this Temple Mother’s tone was kind. Curious, as if she’d found me in bed late with chores undone—but didn’t mind too much.

“I—”

She smiled softly. But in that smile I saw hints of shadow. Her eyes flashed green and then blue and then back to brown. Her lips changed shape faster than I could register. And then it was just her again.

“Go, child,” she said. “I will see you next year.”

I didn’t need to be told a third time.

I ran.