Page 5 of Joy Guardian

Even with my support, her knees buckled. She was too weak to stand on her own. Leaning against me, she almost slid down my body to the floor, leaving me no choice but to lift her in my arms.

“I’ve got you,” I said softly. “Sorry, but I have to touch you for this.”

She snapped her gaze to mine. Then, a corner of her mouth lifted in a grin with a spark of humor in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“It’d be hard to hold me without touching, I imagine. Fine, I forgive you this time,” she quipped.

She threw an arm around my neck, then thought better of it and placed both her hands in her lap instead.

I headed to the door, unsure what to do with her or even where to take her, but her body fit in my arms perfectly. She seemed to relax against my chest a little, making me wish she stayed exactly where she was, just like that. But Sefri appeared in my path.

“I’ll take the Joy Vessel back to thesarai, Joy Guardian. You’re needed here.” She reached for the woman in my arms, and I reluctantly relinquished her.

My unwillingness to part from her shocked me. The moment she’d left my arms, I missed the warm weight of her body pressed to my chest, and I couldn’t figure out why letting her go caused such displeasure.

I tried to remember the last time I was this close to anyone. Probably when I gave a goodbye hug to my mother, not knowing that I would never see her again… I winced, not wishing to remember that. Everything that happened to me before the Master Guardian accepted me as a donation to the temple was just a patchwork of distant feelings and shreds of memories that never aligned into a clear picture, probably because I never made an effort to sort through them all. But the feelings were dark, and the memories seemed gloomy, and I just didn’t care to remember.

“When can I walk on my own?” the Joy Vessel asked, looking more tense than ever in Sefri’s arms.

“In a few hours, Sweet One,” Sefri cooed. “Let’s get you to thesaraiwhere you can rest and have a long, relaxing bath while you share your pleasure with us. You did so well during the fitting. Now that you have your harness, I’m sure you’ll become the jewel of the queen’ssarai.”

When they left, another woman was brought in for the next fitting. We had twenty-four harnesses to fit tonight. It’d be a long, exhausting night, but the Royal Council wished to have all Joy Vessels ready for joy harvesting as soon as possible.

Master Arter leaned to my ear while passing me by on his way to the other side of the altar. “Come with me after the midnight break, Kurai. We have an opportunity to end it all. And you have a chance to become a true hero in the name of the Joy.”

Two

CIANA

“Inoticed you haven’t had your dinner yet.” Sefri, a Joy Vessel Keeper, materialized in front of me with a plate of food in her hands.

Her sudden appearance snapped me out of my heavy thoughts.

Yes, I could think again. The paralyzing fear and the resulting numbness that had been shrouding my mind, my heart, and my very soul had finally faded away, and I could just sit by the fountain here in the inner garden of thesarai, listen to the soothing trickling of the water, and think about all the things I had been afraid to think about before.

I realized that I no longer had to be afraid. I didn’t need to listen forhissteps or jump at the sound of the home office door opening. I didn’t have to make sure to always have my phone on me in case he called when he was away, because he’d get mad if I didn’t answer on the first ring.

I didn’t need to pray for a kind note in his increasingly displeased voice or to desperately wish for a single warm spark in his chilling glare.

I didn’t have to keep giving up pieces of me, desperately trying and inevitably failing to please him.

My husband wasn’t here. He could never find me now.

For once, I was truly safe from him.

“Yes. Thank you. I’m afraid I forgot to eat dinner this morning.” I smiled, taking the plate from Sefri while making sure that our hands didn’t touch.

My ability to think had returned, but I still struggled to believe that not all people were going to hurt me and that not every touch had to be painful.

The shadow fae who abducted me from the human world were nocturnal creatures. They fed us breakfast late in the evening and dinner early in the morning. The humans in this place that they calledsaraialso slept during the day and stayed up through the night.

Sefri lingered, watching me take the first bite. Like everyone else in the queen’s palace, she was topless, dressed only in a long beige skirt and a pair of beaded leather sandals. Instead of the elaborate, bejeweled bib necklaces that the fae of the royal court wore, Sefri had a mesh of wooden rings and leather cords that covered her chest and almost fully concealed her small, perky breasts.

Like all Joy Vessel Keepers, Sefri had her tendrils extended, but their black, long lengths were circled with metal clips at their bases on her arms and back. Apparently, the clips disabled the tendrils, making it impossible for the Keepers to connect to us or to taste our emotions. After all, human pleasure was an exquisite delicacy available only to the nobles of the royal court.

“How do you like the food?” she asked, inclining her head, which made the thin silver chains in her long, pointy ears sway.

“It’s good,” I replied mechanically, forcing my attention to what I was eating. “Nice stir-fry.”

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