Chapter 10

Creed was true to his word. The rest of his friends watched avidly as his clever fingers took me from one peak to another. Finally, the sensations began to turn from amazing to uncomfortable, and then brushed against the edge of being painful, so I stopped him. I yawned noisily, exhaustion hitting me like a ton of bricks, but he wouldn't let me sleep, not until he was satisfied that he had looked after me appropriately.

After some sort of deep-voiced exchange, a waterskin was placed at my lips, the water fresh from the river. It was cold and delicious. I gulped a few mouthfuls down, but when I tried to hand it back, he prompted me to drink until the waterskin was finished. When he lifted me up again and set me on the bed, I had a strange sensation, like my stomach was sloshing around. At the same time, it seemed as though the effect of the roseblood had dissipated.

"Sleep now, lass," he said, drawing me down with him, and I went without complaint. I could no more imagine leaving the room than I could sprouting wings and flying away, so I snuggled down into his arms and let sleep take me.

"So, this is where you ended up."

The familiar, feminine voice pulled me partway from my dreams, and my brows creased for just a second, even though I wasn't ready to wake up. I burrowed my face into something big and warm, willing to drop back down into sleep, but she wouldn't allow that.

"Jessalyn…" she said, her voice as intrusive as a finger poking into my side, forcing my eyelids to flutter. "Jessalyn!"

I rolled over within the circle of Creed's arm, opening my eyes with a vexed huff. A slim figure was beside the bed, holding a lamp. The light in my eyes made me turn my head away for a moment, but even as I did, I was struck by a sinking feeling of recognition. When I reluctantly looked back, I saw that I was right. My mother stood there; her lips pursed in a way I knew well. It was the look she gave me when I managed to spill sauce on the skirts of a brand-new gown or forgot to put my gloves on.

Though the sins I'd accumulated since I'd last seen her were far worse than all of my past misdeeds combined.

I looked around me at the sleeping bodies of the men I'd… disported myself with for most of the night. I blinked and saw that it was nearly morning. The thin grey light of early dawn was already in the sky. Then my mother drew my attention back to her when she gestured for me to follow her.

"Come with me, now—" Her voice was the sharp tone she'd perfected over time, that told me I'd done something wrong without announcing it to everyone around us.

"No, Mother."

I tried to move, to find something on the bed to cover my nakedness, because even if I hadn't felt any shame last night, I did now. To no avail, Creed's arm tightened around me again like iron, keeping me pinned. I'd admired his muscular size before, but now it had become a liability. As I grunted and wrestled my way free, Mother looked about her, then twitched a man's shirt from the floor and handed it to me once my feet hit the floor. I tugged it on over my head before turning to her to lay out my case.

"I won't return to the castle," I said. "You know this marriage is a death sentence, and I, for one, refuse to die for a short-lived alliance."

"I do know it." I looked at her closely. Her flashing eyes and the way she held her head high told me that she was there not simply as my mother but as the woman who was queen. She was dressed in the kind of drab, everyday clothes a maid might wear, but even with none of her regalia, there was something majestic about her. Her voice was steady as she continued, "And I refuse to allow my daughter to die at that monster's hands. There are things you don't know, knowledge I must impart, but I cannot do it here."

"I won't go to the castle," I said, my jaw locking tight.

"Then come with me to the Temple of the Women."

There were few spaces dedicated entirely to women in Stormare. We were allowed the women's quarters, where no man was permitted to enter, but that was mostly to alleviate men's fears that we'd all turn into ravening slatterns the moment their backs were turned. But the Temple of the Women? Men muttered all the time about shutting it down due to the inappropriateness of such worship, citing the goddess cults of the kingdoms in the far south, but it never went anywhere.

I had entered it when I had my first moon time and then every month since, following my mother and grandmother through the rituals, but right now I couldn't see how marking the seasons of my body could possibly help me avoid the fate that awaited me in Khean. However, the temple was near the docks. If I went with Mother now, I could make my escape afterwards. That decided, I made my mother wait as I swapped the shirt for my underdress, shoved the bags of gold into my pocket, then tossed my hair over my shoulder as we went to the door.

I stepped through but hovered on the doorstep for just a moment, looking back at each man in turn. We'd had an unbelievable night. I felt the ache of muscles well-used, reminding me of exactly what we'd got up to, but I refused to feel bad. I would be walking in the world with my eyes open now, realising that every married man or woman experienced this kind of bliss every night. And I had joined their number. Arik, face down in his pillow, snorted as we went to close the door, his head popping up, but when we slipped out, he buried it back into the soft surface and started snoring anew.

"So, what do you have to tell me?" I asked as we walked up the steps to the temple. My grandmother stood at the top of them, staring down at us. "I already have a plan. I sold the pearls from my dress and my jewels. I'm going to buy passage on a riverboat and sail down the Tellene until I reach the women-ruled realms."

"Before or after you're raped repeatedly by the crew?" Mother stopped, then turned and frowned at me. "Because that's what men do to unaccompanied women they have no connection to. It's the perfect crime. You have no father, no brother, no uncle to protect you, so who is to stop them?"

"I'll have money," I said, but my retort came out thin and weak.

"Money they'll have snatched from you the moment they get out of dock," she said, shaking her head sharply.

"So, you've come." My grandmother stood tall, her walking stick held nonchalantly in one hand. "And now you'll find out the truth."

"About men and women and what they do together?" I asked. "I worked that out for myself, thank you very much."

"Sex? Pfft…" My eyes went wide as my grandmother snorted rudely. "Though, it plays a role in what we have to tell you."

"What then?" I stopped where I was, waving away my mother's attempts to usher me into the temple. "That men are beautiful, and they can do wondrous things with their hands and tongues?"

"Found yourself some likely lads who put your pleasure first, did you?" My grandmother's smile was slow and sharp-toothed. "Well, good for you, girl. If you've developed a taste for sex, then all the better for this plan."

"What plan? What mysterious truths do you have to reveal?" I asked in exasperation. They were being just as opaque as they usually were, if not more so. I was a woman grown, and I deserved—

"Your father is not your father."

My grandmother said the words so simply, yet the air was driven from my lungs. No, I'd forgotten how to breathe. My chest burned, and it took a sharp thump of my fist to get it opening again.

"What? I'm… I'm… a bastard?" I squeaked out.

"You and most of the ‘noble born' children on the continent." Both Mother and Grandmother stared at me steadily, as if daring me to challenge them. "So, are you ready to listen to our story now?"

I didn't answer and they didn't wait for a response as they swept inside, leaving me to trail after them. Not…my father? Their words echoed around in my head until we reached the inner sanctum of the temple. The abbess came forward with a bag in her hands.

"The bag you asked for, Your Majesty."

My mother took it from her with a smile.

"Thank you, Sister Jane."

She bobbed a curtsey then turned and left, leaving us standing before the massive circular doorway that led into the chapel proper.

"So… who is my father?"

"Sir Harald or Sir Jerod," Mother said, as if discussing the weather. "Though there was that time with those two brothers."

"Sir Barrett and Sir Jarrett?" my grandmother prompted.

"Yes, them."

I watched Mother link her hands before her, keeping them neatly crossed against her stomach, as I tried to reconcile her words with what I'd known up until now. My father was… Sir Jerod? He was an older knight who had served my father for most of his life, but…

"Your grandfather wasn't your grandfather either," Grandmother said, "and if you could test the blood of the vast majority of the aristocracy, you'd find most of those children are no relatives of their alleged fathers." She peered down her nose at me. "It's a wise child that knows his own father."

"But… But…"

I wanted to say something about all of this, but not a single intelligent thought came to me. I just stood there and gaped. Everything I'd been taught… Everything I'd heard and seen at court… When Lady Kendall had been caught dallying with her dance master, she'd had her titles removed, her possessions burned, then she'd been thrown from her husband's estates, never to see her children again.

"We are treated as possessions, handed from one man to the next," my grandmother said, and as she stepped closer, her cane struck the ground hard. "They treat us like breeding stock, looking at our teeth, our hips, our breasts and making judgements about our marriageability without even a by-your-leave."

"In this, it's worse for women of the upper classes," Mother added. "Poorer women have the freedom to marry as they wish, or not marry at all, because they have so few possessions entailed to them. As long as we are worth something to a man, our choices are stripped from us."

"But not behind closed doors." Grandmother's smile was a familiar one. It was the one she used when she sailed through the drawing room, her prey in sight. "Away from the eagle eye of polite society, all manner of things can happen."

"So you…" My finger shook as I pointed at my grandmother. "And you…" My hand dropped suddenly. "All of them…?"

I saw all the faces of the women I had grown up with and their mothers and theirs before them. A sea of noble-born women who gave every appearance of being respectable, demure, and, most importantly, faithful wives.

"Every one," Mother said, with a dip of her head.

"But how is this kept hidden? Surely someone must tell."

Mother looked at Grandmother, both of them nodding before turning to me.

"Anyone who becomes a witness must be brought into the fold," she said, as if lecturing me on how to set a table correctly. "Make them complicit in the crimes they see committed. It's how I ended up having an affair with the twins."

"You have to wonder, why do men make such an effort to control us, hem us in, restrict where we go, what we do, and how we comport ourselves?" Grandmother said. "And I think it's because, deep down, they know. They can force us to make a show of complying, but…" Her teeth gleamed in the candlelight. "They can't make us into the exact thing they want. If they want loyalty, men turn to other men, but if they want love…"

I fought the urge to take a step backwards, fear suddenly pumping in my veins.

"Then they'd need to actually treat us like equals," she continued. "You'll need to go to Khean, Jessalyn."

"No," I said, holding up my hands to ward her off. "No."

"But only for one reason. The women of the continent tire of this despotic fool. Killing one or two daughters could be overlooked, but six?" She turned to Mother, who handed her the bag the abbess had given her. "There are poisons in this bag from the farthest reaches of the known world, hallucinogens as well. Everything an enterprising young woman would need to kill a king."

"Kill a king…" I gasped the words out but repeating them didn't help them make any more sense.

All of my major life events had been marked by gowns, but I'd never expected that beautiful white satin confection to be this: the gown of an assassin.