Page 93 of When Roses Burn

“And why not? Do you think your mother would never lie to you?”

I started to say, Of course she would, but not about this. “It’s what we’re all taught. The day casters masturbate and go to Luminaire afterward. The night casters give in to their darkest impulses and embrace them before returning to Nightshade.”

“Are you sure you’re all taught this?”

I closed my eyes as I shook my head. “I don’t know; no one else talked to me, but I was told it by the priests and priestesses too. They couldn’t have all lied to me.”

“Do you really believe that?”

For some reason, that possibility bothered me more than everything else done to me over the years.

“Why would she lie about it?” I asked. “Why would they all lie about it?”

“If they told you the day casters also gave in to their Needing, would you have chosen to walk out and go to Luminaire or Nightshade?”

“Neither.”

“But you would have believed that you weren’t welcome in Luminaire if you gave into your urges.”

I chewed my bottom lip as I pondered his words. I didn’t know why this revelation bothered me so much after everything my mother did to me over the years, but it did.

“She didn’t trust you not to go to the day caster side,” he continues. “Maybe they don’t trust anyone not to switch sides, so they tell everyone who enters the harem that lie. But I spent seven years in that hell, and believe me, the day casters don’t hold back once they get in there. They don’t come back after, like the night casters do, but they go just as crazy. You are the only one who resisted the Needing, Briar. Just you.”

I stared at the doors over his head as my head spun, and sorrow for him, me, and the life we’d lost built within me. “Everything’s a lie. Everything.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Knox

For the first time, I had no doubt Briar wasn’t lying to me. She couldn’t fake the devastation on her face. My heart ached for her, but I didn’t move to comfort her; it was too dangerous.

I’d kill her cunt of a mother one day. I truly would.

“When I was younger, I was told how we were divided into the two factions. One side wanted to worship the sun while the other preferred the moon. Before then, the casters were united, and one simply left the harem after their Needing and chose which god or goddess they would bind themselves to.”

“So, the harem has always existed,” I said.

“Yes, but at the start, they filled it with willing participants. After the split, day and night casters decided they needed a test to prove their loyalty to either the light or the dark by who raped those prisoners and who didn’t. They created the harem system where they put their prisoners… or at least that’s what they told me. But I guess that was all a lie too.”

My jaw clenched at the reminder of that system. I knew it far too well.

Sadness filled her eyes. “It’s an awful system.”

I wasn’t going to get into that atrocity with her. “How could they tell if anyone had sex during their Needing? Or, at least, what did they tell you about how they would know if the day casters resisted?”

“They cast a spell that would let them know if the caster who entered remained virginal or not. Although I don’t think many who enter the harem are virgins. I doubt I’m the only one who didn’t follow our ways; I just got caught.”

“And did they cast this spell over you?”

“No, I was already publicly ruined. For me, it was more about what side I emerged on.”

“I see,” I murmured.

“I was given the birth control potion before entering the harem, and that was it.”

“You have a fucked-up system.”

“I didn’t create it and don’t approve of it, but I can’t stop it.”