Once Bitten: A Dragon-Shifter Fantasy Romance Page 5

  Before Eloisa could address any of what Milara said, Philomen took his turn in talking.

  “Milara will take you to change into some proper clothes. We’ve just gotten word that the sovereign will be here within the hour.”

  “Within the hour?” Eloisa repeated, looking around for Lidia. Her maid was nowhere to be seen.

  “Yes, but don’t worry. I’m certain I’ll have something that will fit you.” Milara touched Eloisa’s arm as she spoke, the gesture meant to be reassuring. To Eloisa, it felt like yet another invasion of her personal space.

  They exited the atrium, stepping under the archway that led into a well-lit and airy passage. Eloisa practically sighed her relief when Philomen’s arm came down from around her shoulder.

  “Well, dear sister, I have other matters I must attend to. I’m sorry we haven’t had more time to speak. Milara will take good care of you, and I shall see you back here within the hour.”

  Eloisa’s eyes widened. “But we must speak, Philomen. This thing you are doing, it’s—”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Philomen said, lifting a hand. “We must talk, and we will. After you are dressed. But right now, I really must be going.”

  Eloisa could discern no falsehood in his aura. It had returned to what she presumed to be its natural color, a wilting, flaxen yellow. To her shame, the sight of his aura gave her confidence, because it told her that he had a weak will and was easily influenced. If she could just get a few minutes alone with him, she would be able to make him see her perspective.

  Gods help her if she couldn’t.

  If Philomen wasn’t the muscle behind his crown, then it stood to reason that his wife Milara pulled his strings. However, from her first few minutes alone with the queen, Eloisa was not given that impression.

  Milara insisted on taking Eloisa by the arm as they walked down the palace corridors. Her eyes never quite matched her persistent smile, but she seemed more anxious than maliciously deceptive. Her aura, a mix of plum and charcoal, told Eloisa that she was a superficial woman who was not overly bright.

  “You must be so thrilled to be out of that awful place,” Milara said. “My dear husband has been trying to get you out for years, but that wicked woman refused to release you.”

  “High Maiden Ionia?”

  “That’s the one. Tell me, is the tower really nothing but women? There are no men? None at all?”

  Eloisa shook her head. Before she could utter a response, Milara let out an exaggerated moan.

  “How awful that must have been for you. You poor thing.”

  “It wasn’t awful,” Eloisa said, feeling the need to defend herself. “I was a Daughter of Phaeda. I lived a life of truth and tranquility.”

  She knew how she sounded, but more than ever she desperately needed to cling to the familiar.

  “I suppose that’s its own sort of satisfaction,” Milara said, grimacing as she spoke the words. “Ah, here we are.”

  As they stepped into Eloisa’s room, she felt her first pangs of grief for her father. He had told her that he would keep her room as it was, and had he still been alive, that promise might have held. Now, the room looked nearly unrecognizable. Her furnishings of woven cedar wood had been replaced with blocky white oak, and where the painting of herself, her mother, and Lusia had hung was a picture of an unfamiliar girl with a little dog in her lap. Even the windows were different. Once open to let the warm valley air circulate, they were now paned off with glass.

  “My daughter Ili wanted it,” Milara said, as if sensing Eloisa’s disappointment. “It was so convenient, being so close to my room.”

  “It’s no matter. It stopped being my room long ago.”

  Eloisa said this even as she realized that Milara now occupied her mother’s room. She walked over to the door that adjoined the two rooms and touched her hand to it.

  “When I was small, I would press my ear to this door at night. I’d listen for the sound of my mother’s humming, and when it was silent, I would go inside and slip into her bed. I think she was awake most of the time, but she’d pretend to be asleep so that she wouldn’t have to scold me.”

  Eloisa felt the second pang, this one for her mother. She wondered if it was a mercy that she could not remember her mother more clearly. As a child, she’d been unable to properly grieve her, as she’d been too young to fully grasp the concept of death. Her mother had simply been gone and Eloisa had waited for her to return. Waited and waited, until she forgot to keep waiting and was left to drift through what remained of her childhood with a vague sense that something was missing.

  “What a lovely memory that must be for you,” Milara said, in the way one spoke when they wanted to hurry someone along. “I have a bath drawn for you. We should wash you quickly, if you’re wanting to speak with the king.”

  They passed through her mother’s room to reach the bathing chamber. Eloisa kept her eyes on the space where her next step would fall, refusing to look around until she was certain they’d exited her mother’s room. With all of the emotions she had stirring within her, she could not afford to mourn a woman who was a century gone.

  Lidia was in the bathing chamber, along with two unfamiliar female attendants. Eloisa spared them a glance before her focus turned to the pool, the surface of which was covered in flower petals. Steam curled up from between the petals, perfuming the air with the scents of roses and lavender.

  She stared at the water for a long moment, until she realized that all of the occupants of the room were looking to her expectantly. Lidia was the first to speak.

  “Do you need help removing your gown, Ma’am?”

  Only then did she realize the obvious—they meant for her to bathe in the pool.

  She could not remember bathing in water, and wasn’t even sure if she could swim. In the tower, they’d had washed only on grace day, and had rubbed themselves down with cleansing powders, rather than water.

  There was nothing explicit in the scriptures that said they couldn’t bathe in water, though the elaborate bath before her would most definitely count as a luxury. Despite that, Eloisa reasoned that she would not enjoy the bath, and therefore partaking in it would not be quite so sinful.

  As she permitted Lidia to aid her in undressing, Eloisa’s mind wandered to a parable Sister Clarine had told them when they were Children. It was a story of two naughty acolytes who somehow acquired a box of chocolates. One took only a single chocolate, while the other ate all that remained of the box, and they were asked which girl deserved a harsher punishment.

  Eloisa, at that point still rather rebellious, had said that neither deserved to be punished, arguing that if the gods had not wanted them to eat chocolates, they would not have made them taste so good. Furthermore, why did the gods allow them to get chocolates in the first place? Why didn’t they grant the girls more willpower, so they could resist the temptation? The whole scenario reeked of entrapment.

  It had been Selia who had given the correct answer, once Eloisa had finished with her ranting. Both girls were to be punished equally, for the indulgence was the same, regardless of a single chocolate or a whole box of them. The lesson they were supposed to learn was that shouldn’t cut corners in their devotion, and that even seemingly small indulgences shouldn’t be taken lightly. Eloisa had muttered that the real lesson was that if they managed to get their hands on some chocolates, they might as well eat the whole box.

  She was almost smiling at the memory when she was jarred by a sudden, sharp scream from Milara. Eloisa whipped around, her hands going up to cover her bare breasts as she searched for the threat. Milara was staring at her, her eyes rounded and her hands covering her mouth.

  Her expression almost mirroring Milara’s, Lidia said, “Ma’am, your back.”

  Again, Eloisa turned to look behind her, but all she saw were the two bath attendants, staring at her in wide-eyed horror.

  “What happened to you?” Milara practically screamed the question.

  My back… />
  The tension eased from her as she finally understood, though she thought their reactions were rather overblown. She reached behind herself to run a hand along the uneven surface of her skin.

  “They’re scars from lashings.”

  Several questions flew at her at once and from each direction.

  “Why so many?”

  “What did you do?”

  “How did they make the marks stay?”

  Eloisa was thorough in her response. “I can’t say how I earned each. Most of them I received as a Child, and mostly for telling lies. I didn’t do anything exceptional to get them. All of us receive similar punishments, depending on the severity of a transgression or the number of times it’s repeated. After we’re lashed, the wounds are slathered with a paste of white pepper, cinnamon, and Fenerin acid to keep them from healing. It makes the lashings seem pleasant by comparison.”

  She may have been painting the truth a bit. While there was no such thing as a Daughter that didn’t have a lash or two, Eloisa knew that her back was exceptional, even among the unrulier acolytes. The transition from being a princess to a Child had not been easy for her, and it had taken several years for the Sisters to beat the entitlement from her.

  “This is…” Milara didn’t finish the thought, but instead let out another moan. She wagged her hands in Lidia’s direction. “Tend to her. I’ll return in short order.”

  Much to her dismay, the bath turned out to be quite comfortable. The water was not as hot as it seemed, though it stilled pinked her skin, and the pool was not so deep that her feet couldn’t touch its tiled bottom. She insisted on washing herself, trying to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible, but permitted Lidia to wash her hair.

  “I’ve seen human slaves with fewer scars,” Lidia quietly confided. “They did all that to you? Just for telling some lies?”

  “Among other things.”

  Eloisa didn’t want to go into details. She had a hunch that Lidia would not find her offenses quite so grave as the Sisters had.

  After the bath, Eloisa was toweled off and then led back through her mother’s room, and into the room that had once been hers. Lidia guided her towards a corner, and then went to collect something from the bed.

  When Eloisa looked up, she found herself staring into a mirror. She went completely still, not even blinking, as she considered what to do next. She thought again of the chocolates and discovered that her childish reasoning made a great deal of sense. Now that she’d seen her reflection, what did it matter if she looked away?

  One of her lashings, the only one she’d ever shared with Selia, had happened after they’d been caught drawing pictures of one another. There were no mirrors or reflective surfaces within the tower. Even staring too long into a cup of water was a punishable offense. Of all the sins one could commit, vanity was the second-highest. They were taught that beauty was subjective, and to pursue it was to become lost in the realm of delusion. As women, it was an exceptionally dangerous pitfall, just as the pursuit of power was the blight of men. Only light and truth were eternal, and therefore worthy of devotion.

  Eloisa came into motion slowly, lifting her hand to her chin. She turned her face from one side and to the other, taking in its contours. She knew that she was staring at herself, looking into her own azure eyes, but it felt like staring at a stranger.

  Though taught exhaustively to ignore physical appearances, she was not ignorant to beauty. Had anyone ever had the gall to ask her, and she’d been mad enough to answer, she could have pointed out which of the Sisters was fairest—Sister Clarine, and which was the most unfortunate in appearance—poor, snaggle-toothed Sister Edict. She could have done the same with the Daughters, and often judged the Children by appearance alone, though that was more for practical purposes than anything else. How else, except by sight and scent, was she supposed to remember each wave of newcomers?

  Eloisa possessed the same delicate bone structure as Philomen, and she thought that without his powders they might have looked quite similar. Her jawline had a narrower arch and her brows were not so finely plucked. She shared his long neck, and golden hair, but her skin was the color of aged vellum.

  “You’re going to look lovely in this,” Lidia said, approaching her with garment.

  Eloisa tore her gaze away from her reflection and took a step back as she saw what Lidia was holding. It appeared to be some sort of gown, comprised of feathers and a sheer material that Eloisa couldn’t name. The gown did not look as if it would be suited for bed, let alone for being viewed in.

  “Where is the rest of it?” Eloisa asked warily.

  Lidia’s aura when dark with her confusion. Before she could respond, the door to the room swung open, and Milara strode in, accompanied by Philomen.

  With a shriek of shock, Eloisa dashed behind the mirror to hide herself. She clutched at her bare chest, her face burning as she struggled to calm herself.

  “What is she doing now?” she heard Milara ask.

  “I’m not certain, milady.”

  Milara said, “Eloisa, come out here this instant. I must show Philomen your back.”

  Eloisa could scarcely hear past the blood pounding in her ears. “I can’t… I must not be looked upon by a man.”

  She heard someone snort.

  Milara said, “Surely you can make an exception for your brother.”

  “I cannot!”

  Milara’s next words were a loud whisper. “This is absurd. She’ll be in her husband’s bed by tomorrow night, and he’ll want a lot more than to look at her back.”

  At that, Eloisa descended into a full panic. She seemed to go somewhere else in her mind, while her lungs struggled for air and her heart beat so fast that it would certainly burst.

  Someone came to her side and crouched down, taking her hands and squeezing them.

  “To keep from drowning, she became the water.”

  Eloisa blinked and looked up at Lidia, her aura dancing indigo with concern.

  Lidia said, “That’s a scripture quote I read once. Tell me, what does it mean?”

  The question centered her, and although she was far from calm, Eloisa found herself able to form a coherent answer.

  “It means that instead of fighting against circumstance, we must adapt.”

  Lidia smiled. “So, you see? Even your teachings tell you that you should adapt to these changes, rather than railing against them.”

  She looked so earnest. Eloisa didn’t have the heart to tell her that the quote was part of a larger body of work, wherein the moral was not to conform to circumstance. If you became the water, you were still at the mercy of the tides and the blowing winds. No matter how many times you adapted to circumstance, you would always have a master. While change was a universal truth, they were taught to stand outside of it as best they could, observing it, but not allowing themselves to be swept up in its currents.

  Despite knowing this, Lidia’s efforts warmed Eloisa, and she allowed the maid to help her to stand.

  Lidia said, “How about I get you into this dress, and then we can pull the back down just a bit for the king to view your injuries?”

  Eloisa didn’t agree, but she also didn’t protest as Lidia helped her into the dress. The feathered portions of the dress were designed to cover her breasts and pelvis, but little else. The rest of the material clung to her skin like cobwebs.

  Philomen and Milara were wearing their hollow smiles as Eloisa emerged from behind the mirror. Milara came to her at once, taking her by the shoulder and turning her, so that Philomen could see her back. She heard him make a strangled sound.

  “I told you,” Milara said. “Did you know they do this to the women? What are we supposed to do with her?”

  “This is awful, just awful,” Philomen said. “How utterly grotesque.”

  Eloisa had felt self-conscious about many things over the years, but she had never been made to feel ashamed of her appearance, and she found it to be a most unbearable burden. It was not the
same as being shamed for her handwriting, or for a poorly-written assessment. Those things, she could change and improve upon. She could not make her back any less scarred.

  “Milady, if I may?” Lidia said, holding up Eloisa’s veil. “Perhaps we could use this. It will hide her back.”

  “And her dress,” Milara pointed out.

  “We can fix it so that it only covers her back.”

  “But it doesn’t match.”

  “Politely, I’m not very much sure the sovereign will be concerned with how her outfit matches.”

  Philomen was rocking on the balls of his feet. “This will end badly for us. If we display her back for him, he’ll never take her. But if we conceal it and he finds out before they’re wed, he will feel that I’ve deceived him.”

  He came around to stand in front of Eloisa, his eyes glassy and his aura flaring with panic.

  “You must tell him I didn’t know. Tell him that you concealed it from me.”

  “I—I…”

  For an instant, he looked as he had when he was a boy, and she recalled a time when he was only just learning to phase, and had gotten himself stuck in the chandelier. He had looked at Eloisa with those same pleading eyes, begging her to help him down before father found him.

  “Perhaps he won’t care either way,” Milara said hopefully. “She is quite pretty. And a virgin, too—so far as we know. I’m sure she’ll be a rarity amongst their kind.”

  Lidia said, “Actually, Milady, I think he will mind very much. It is a point of pride among their men, that their women be unblemished.”

  There was a pause, and it finally gave Eloisa an opening to speak.

  “Philomen, you must see that this will not work. I think it is past time we reevaluate the situation. If you’ll let me have a look at—”

  “There is no time,” Philomen snapped. The force of his sudden shout was enough to make Eloisa recoil. “Don’t you think I have considered everything? That my council has considered every alternative to allying with this heathen savage? It is either this, or we go and find the highest tower to throw ourselves from.”