Once Bitten: A Dragon-Shifter Fantasy Romance Read online

  Once Bitten

  A dragon-shifter fantasy romance

  Viola Rivard

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Also by Viola Rivard

  Chapter One

  There was no light to mark the passage of time, so Eloisa used the air. The air was like a thin soup. Over the first few days, she had picked out the meaty bits and was now left to subsist only on broth. No matter how much she took in, she was never fully satisfied. If she alternated between deep, gasping breaths and quick shallow ones, she could sometimes trick her mind into believing that she wasn’t suffocating.

  It was called The Dark Room because the darkness was their punishment. Eloisa had been there many times and she found the lack of fresh air and food to be far more troublesome than the dark.

  She didn’t mind the darkness.

  She never told anyone that, not even Selia. If word got to the Sisters, they were liable to blind her, just to teach her a lesson.

  The first few days in The Dark Room, when the air was still substantive and the smell of her chamber pot had yet to become sickening, Eloisa would lay in the center of the room and experience something akin to freedom. With no light to show her the walls or the heavy padlocked door, she could imagine herself to be almost anywhere.

  Her imagination was a double-edged sword. As the days pressed on, she would start to hear voices. Sometimes, she would wake to the sounds of whispering. The whispers would start in the corners of the room, slowly closing in on her with each day that passed, until they were rasping in her ears.

  They’ve forgotten about you.

  You’re going to die in here.

  She was not the only Daughter to claim to have heard the voices. Selia believed they were the voices of the Daughters that had died in The Dark Room. Eloisa knew that they wouldn’t leave her to die in there, but the words still held weight because in a broader sense she had been forgotten and she could very well die without ever setting foot on land again.

  It was seven days before the door opened. Eloisa knew this by the burning in her lungs each time she inhaled the stale air. There was a heavy clanging sound, followed by the scrape of metal on stone as the door was forced open. The Dark Room was in the lowest level of the tower. The only light that touched the room would be from the Sister’s lantern.

  Eloisa wanted to cry as she took in her first breath of fresh air. She wanted to leap to her feet and run to the halls like a fish touched to the water, as she had the first time she’d been freed from The Dark Room. She had nearly gone blind that time, spending another week in near darkness as her eyes recovered.

  Today, she maintained her dignity. With her eyes closed, she pulled herself up into a sitting position and waited for Sister Verity to place the blindfold around her eyes. She knew it was Sister Verity by her scent. Most of the Daughters could not tell the Sisters apart by scent alone, as they all smelled of the same starched linens, cleaning powders, and ginsroot ink. But unlike them, Eloisa had no human blood dulling her senses.

  By scent alone, she knew more about Sister Verity than the Sister perhaps knew about herself. Her mother had been a lowborn human and her father had been a member of the Castor house—a house that prided itself in the purity of its bloodline. She would have come to The Tower of Light at the age of ten as they all did, both due to her aurasight and so that her father could avoid the shame of having an impure child.

  She also knew that unlike some of the other Sisters, Sister Verity was not a hypocrite. Eloisa would never smell the scents of sweet cakes, chocolates, or spirits on her breath. She did not sugar her tea, nor spice her porridge. She didn’t line her robes with flower petals, nor did she burn scented oils in her room. She lived by Truth, never painting, accepting only what was.

  Though she had no great fondness of her, Eloisa respected her.

  As soon as the blindfold was in place, Sister Verity patted Eloisa’s shoulder.

  “On your feet, Daughter.”

  Eloisa’s legs didn’t want to support her. She hadn’t been good about exercising them this time, and they’d begun to languish. Coupled with a week of food deprivation and she had to hold on to Sister Verity’s arm to keep from falling down.

  “I will take you to the stairs, but no further. You must make The Climb back to Her Light on your own.”

  Eloisa nodded, though she knew that she wouldn’t be left to die if she couldn’t climb. Sister Verity would not lift a hand to help her, but High Sister Ionia wouldn’t allow her to die.

  Something on her face must have given this away, because Sister Verity clicked her tongue.

  “You think you are above the rules. We are all equal under Her eyes.”

  Eloisa lacked the willpower for tact. “If we were all equal, no one would have the power to enslave me.”

  “Is that what you think you are? A slave?” Sister Verity let out a humorless laugh. “What do you know of slavery, Daughter? Have you ever even seen a slave?”

  Eloisa let go of her and hobbled forward. “There are a great many things I have never seen.”

  In all the times she’d been in The Dark Room, she never counted the steps of The Climb. Selia said that there were over two thousand. Eloisa just took them one at a time.

  Some Daughters claimed to have revelations upon reaching the top. Eloisa was of the mind that they were merely experiencing an incomparable sense of relief. Whenever she reached the top, she had only a vague sense of disorientation. Her legs kept wanting to lift up for the next step, only to fall flat on the ground.

  In spite of the blindfold, she didn’t need Sister Verity to guide her once they reached the top. She knew where they were going and she knew the way, just as she could have navigated to any corner of the tower with her eyes closed. Consummately curious, she’d explored almost every nook and cranny of the tower in her first decade. By her semi-centennial, she’d explored even the parts of the tower that were off-limits, and the parts that had been forgotten over the ages.

  The worship hall was teeming with whispers as she entered. In her mind’s eye, she could see two hundred daughters clustered in the center of the room, their gray veils pulled back as they spoke in hushed tones. They would be flanked by two dozen Sisters dressed in white and faces drawn with reproach.

  She almost stumbled on her way up to the dais. She caught herself, though the effort was wasted as she walked only a few steps more before she was made to kneel. Head pressed to the floor, she waited for her orders. A moment later, she heard the soft taps of High Maiden Ionia’s slippers.

  “Speak your apology, Daughter.”

  The words came easily to her, as she’d said them so many times in the past.

  “I disseminated blasphemy,” she said. “I defiled the house of The Mother and polluted the minds of Her Daughters. I plead Her forgiveness, and that She might cleanse me of my wickedness and permit me back into Her Light.”

  Predictably, the goddess was nowhere to be heard. In the ensuing silence, Eloisa wondered how many times one could be cleansed before the wickedness began to sink into their flesh. How many times would she be allowed back into The Light before they left her to die in darkness?

  A moment later, she heard High Maiden Ionia proclaim, “By Her Light, you are forgiven, Dau
ghter.”

  Eloisa dropped her books down onto the floor with enough force to make Selia jump.

  “I was behind before my penitence. How will I ever get caught up now?”

  Eloisa grasped her veil, and in her anger she forgot that it was still clasped to her head. When she tried jerking it off, she received several stabs of pain along her skull as her hair was nearly pulled from the roots. With a growl of frustration, she set to the task of undoing the clasps one at a time, ignoring Selia’s poorly concealed laughter.

  When she finally settled down, Selia asked, “I take it that none of the Sisters were willing to offer reprieve this time?”

  Selia was stretched out on her cot, wearing only her undergarments. Their room was the only place they were permitted to wear the beige, loose-fitting pants and tunic, though Selia often wore them beneath her Lightlace as the material was more comfortable. Eloisa never dared to risk penitence for such a minor comfort. Her luck was not half as good as Selia’s.

  “Only Sister Talin, and I suspect that’s because she doesn’t feel like reading another assessment on the intricacies of middle-era Asanai property laws.”

  “Oh,” Selia said, putting a hand to her head. “I swear, that was the most boring assessment I’ve written in two decades. Consider yourself fortunate.”

  “Hardly. I have two veracity assessments on Hici city-state decrees, and a counter-truth on some vague piece of Ude religious scripture. Somehow, I’m supposed to do all of that while keeping up on this week’s studies and…and I’m just so exhausted.”

  It had been on the tip of her tongue to mention the trauma of The Dark Room. Her mind was never quite right in the days after leaving it. The last time, it had taken her nearly a month to stop hearing voices and seeing distorted auras. Even now, she could see ribbons of no less than six different colors dancing around Selia’s head and shoulders, where usually there was only a pale green.

  “I can give you my notes,” Selia offered. “You can work on your assessments during grace day.”

  Her temper having already cooled, Eloisa folded her veil with care and placed it on the end of her cot. Only as she began removing her Lightlace was she able to force her next words out.

  “I have no grace days this month. Sister Verity has assigned me floor duties.”

  Eloisa had yet to recover from the indignity of her assignment. The Tower went by the Atolian calendar, which gave them ten days in each week and three weeks in each month. The tenth, twentieth, and thirtieth of each month was grace day, the one day each week when they didn’t have studies from dawn to darkness. The day was meant to be spent in quiet contemplation of Light, Truth, and the goddess Phaeda. Eloisa mostly spent them mentally recovering from the agony of nine days of nonstop studies.

  “Oh,” Selia said, bringing her hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. Well, at least you can’t get into trouble while you’re washing floors.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past myself,” Eloisa said.

  She folded her Lightlace and placed it beside her veil, before climbing into the cot. The salty ocean breeze flowed through the room and out into the hallway, but she kept herself uncovered, enjoying the feel of flowing air on her extremities.

  Their room, like nearly all bedchambers in The Tower of Light, had no door. A century ago, she had probably found this disconcerting, though she couldn’t much remember those days anymore. After fifty years as a Child, crammed in the lower dormitories with dozens of other girls, her little room with Selia felt like a slice of paradise. Now and again, a Sister, Daughter, or the odd Child tasked with dusting or floor duties would pass by, but Eloisa would hear them long before they overheard whatever blasphemy she and Selia were muttering. There wasn’t a woman in the tower, not even High Sister Ionia, who possessed Eloisa’s pedigree.

  There were no adornments in their room. Not a rug on the stone floor, or a painting on the stone wall, and certainly no mirrors. There were only the two cots with their hemp blankets and the nightstand between them, a single lamp resting on it for reading light. Below the nightstand were pens, ink, paper, matches, the bottle with their weekly oil ration, and two of their most frequently referenced scripture books. Aside from their clothes, the books were the closest things they had to belongings, but even they could be confiscated at any time and returned to the library from which they’d been on extended loan.

  Selia reached over to snuff out the lamplight. A beam of moonlight came in through the window, passing just above Eloisa’s cot. She lifted her hands to make a shadow puppet of a dragon lowering itself onto Selia’s cot. She’d gotten quite good at it over the years, and sometimes cast them into the hall to frighten passing Children. Coupled with her less-practiced sound effects, she could almost always get a laugh out of Selia, but tonight her friend offered only a sad smile.

  Sighing, Eloisa put her hands down at her sides and stared up at the ceiling. She knew what Selia was thinking. Each time Eloisa returned from her penitence, Selia would ask her the same questions.

  ‘Why did you do it again?’

  ‘Why can’t you just stop?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  Eloisa had never had a good answer for any of those questions, and if the heavy silence was any indication, Selia had finally tired of asking them.

  “I took my blindfold off an hour after The Climb,” Eloisa said, her eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

  “I know, I was there. You could have gone blind.”

  “I wanted to go blind. I hoped for it. It feels like that’s the only way I could keep from doing it again.”

  It was Selia’s turn to sigh. “Eloisa, stop it.”

  “I’m not sensationalizing.”

  “Maybe not, but you’ve painted the truth so much that you can’t see it clearly.”

  Eloisa turned to her, at once angry and desperate. “Then what is the truth?”

  Selia returned her stare. “The truth is that you’re maladapted. Instead of learning to manage your urges, as the rest of us did, you indulged them and now they’ve spiraled beyond what you think you can control. You need to stop. At first, it’s going to seem hard, but it does get easier. If you stop feeding the fire, it will die.”

  Eloisa rolled onto her back so that her glare would once again be directed at the ceiling. “If I’m maladapted, then so are you. I’ve seen the pictures you draw during Sister Clarine’s lectures.”

  She heard Selia huff. “Doodles of ball gowns can hardly compare to depictions of naked men. One gets you cleaning duties, the other gets you six days in The Dark Room, or I guess in your case, both.”

  Eloisa could have sworn she was sinking into the bed. The comparison had been a stretch, but it still felt unfair.

  Selia lowered her voice as she went on. “Just…keep it in your head. We all have those sorts of thoughts; we just don’t commit them to paper where they can be used against us.”

  “If everyone has those thoughts, isn’t that a sign that what we’re feeling is natural?”

  “Of course, it’s natural. But so is greed, gluttony, sickness, and killing. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s right. And I’m not saying that…that is on par with those other things. I just want you to remember that we’re above all of that.”

  Selia was not usually so dogmatic, and Eloisa suspected that it had something to do with their approaching centennial. In three weeks, they would be concluding their time as Daughters and taking their places as Sisters. Of course, before that, they would have to speak their Truths. If their Truths were deemed insufficient, they’d spend another fifty years waiting for the next ceremony. All of the Daughters were on edge at the prospect, which was probably why Fara had been so quick to report Eloisa’s latest indiscretion.

  When they’d been Children in their fortieth year, Fara had written a story in the margins of her prayer book called A Prince in the Tower. By the time Sister Verity had confiscated the book, nearly every Child in their dormitory had read the salacious stor
y, and they’d gotten several lashes for their indiscretions. Fara had gotten six days in The Dark Room, but someone must have miscalculated the dates because no one had come for her until the morning of the eighth day. No one could say for certain what had happened to Fara, but the muscles on one side of her face had gone lax and never recovered. Fara had also never reoffended, though Eloisa wouldn’t have pegged her for a snitch, given her own terrible experience.

  “Have you given much thought to your Truth?” Eloisa asked.

  Selia allowed the subject change. “Only every other second of every day. I still haven’t the faintest idea what I’m going to say to Phaeda, if she’s even there.” Wryly, she asked, “How about you? Were you able to find enlightenment in the darkness?”

  Eloisa snorted. “If only. I’m hoping Sister Clarine was right. That when I go before Phaeda, my Truth will suddenly become clear to me.”

  “If that were the case, no one would have to repeat their time as a Daughter.”

  Eloisa knew she should be more concerned about the ceremony. While the other Daughters were excited about becoming Sisters, Eloisa had never bought into the fantasy of climbing the ranks within the tower. Each rung, from Child, to Daughter, to Sister, to Maiden, and even High Maiden was its own sort of servitude. The only difference was that she would have more people to lord over. All she cared about was staying with Selia, regardless of whether they spoke their Truths and became Sisters or failed and remained as Daughters.

  They stayed up a little while longer, talking about the things Eloisa had missed out on during her days away. Selia never asked about The Dark Room. Eloisa couldn’t tell if this was because Selia was afraid it would distress her, or if she thought that Eloisa wasn’t affected by it anymore.