Page 12 of Unlikely Omega

I’ve never reacted to women before. I have noticed them. Yet her scent has my gut clenching and my balls aching, and that can’t be fucking happening. I’ve taken my vows.

It’s done.

And then, as she shuffles backward, away from me, I realize exactly where we’re standing inside the circle. My senses spread to catalog any shifts of warmth, currents of air, sounds and the way my voice has echoed. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not.

“What have you done?” I whisper.

“What?” she grinds out. She sounds like she’s in pain and it’s a twist in my chest I don’t understand. She said she’s okay, so why am I still worried? “What do you mean?”

“Have you given yourself to the unnamed god?”

“I didn’t give myself to anyone!” she snarls and though it eases somewhat the tension, the crushing weight on my chest, it doesn’t go away because this makes no sense.

“You’re kneeling, bleeding, in front of his statue.” I point in the statue’s general direction. “Explain.”

“Nothing to explain,” she breathes, bare feet whispering on the floor as she moves further away.

“So he hasn’t spoken to you.” I lower my hand. Maybe this isn’t as disastrous as I thought. “He hasn’t told you anything.”

“Sidde,” she whispers, the sound mangled through her gritting teeth. “Sidde Drakai. That’s what he said.”

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“You know his name, too,” she says. She’s quick. “He has spoken to you, too.”

This is dangerous territory. I fled here to escape but curses follow you like hungry ghosts. So I lie by not replying.

“You sound insane,” I say as coolly as I possibly can under the circumstances. “Never kneel to the unnamed god again, do you hear me? Or I’ll give you back to Elegos.”

“Because you’re my savior? Is that what you think?” She spits out the words and I almost flinch. “Saving me from a couple of blows from the stick? Think I’ll eternally be grateful to you?”

“No, I don’t think that,” I grind out, wiping my hands on my black robes, then pulling my hood lower over my face. “I don’t expect anyone to be grateful to me.”

Or like being around me, for that matter, bitter, blind fool that I am, but I turn away before more words spill out of my traitorous mouth, before my traitorous body leaps into any more foolish actions, like try to touch her, hold her, check her over, press myself to her.

That would be even worse than hearing a lost god inside my head.

That would be giving up the last vestiges of control I possess over myself.

Cursing silently, I turn around and leave before I compound my regrets by destroying my chances in the last place on earth where I might survive.

“Priest Finnen!” someone calls out and still cursing inside my head, I slow down my steps and wait for whoever is seeking me out to reach me.

“Yes?”

An out-of-breath acolyte is running toward me. Reaching my side, she takes a few deep breaths and says, “You walk pretty damn fast.”

I blink at the uncouthness. “State your request, acolyte.”

“It’s not mine,” she says and grins, because I hear that grin in her voice. “I’m Ismere, by the way. Friend of Ariadne.”

Ariadne. Smooth skin and pain in her voice, scent of blood and sugar. “Not interested in who you’re friends with, acolyte.”

“But you’re interested in Ariadne.”

I clasp my hands behind my back to hide a small tremor. “The only interest I have in her is her assistance with my duties. As a doubly-claimed priest, I have the right to request an assistant.”

“And you chose her. A happy coincidence.” Her voice has gone a bit dry and I think she’s not grinning anymore. “I don’t buy it.”

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