AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Oh, as an afterthought," I teased.
"No!" she insisted. "I just assumed that if you wanted to go then Talin would - " She stopped with a groan. "Lina's husband and kids are here, so she can't go. Abril is being reclusive. I think she's pregnant, but not ready to tell us yet. Either way, she won't go. Reylie is doting on Abril, and Mama is with them. If sheispregnant, that means fussing about it is all anyone's going to do today. Maela's annoyed with her husband, and I've been trapped here for over a week. I want to go out, and I hoped that you both would feel the same."
"We'll go," Talin promised as he threw off the blanket, revealing that he'd pulled his pants on underneath. "I'm willing to bet that Nari's never been skating before, right?"
"Never," I agreed.
He nodded. "Yamina, have Branstan find skates for all of us. The Priestess will wear a medium. You ladies will all need pants under your dresses, because you will fall at some point and I do not want half the town talking about seeing your thighs. When you're ready, I'll have a cart waiting for us at the front." Then he looked at me. "No dresses today, beautiful. Wear the red shirt, the black wool trousers, and a layer under that if you can. Youaregoing to fall at least once."
"Well, that's comforting," I teased.
He grinned at me as he headed for the closet. "Only because I know that you won't be happy to hold my hand until you gain your balance. I mean, unless you'd prefer to be calm and careful?"
"I'll dress to fall," I assured him.
With a squeal of delight, Yamina hugged me, but then she turned for her brother. Talin was far enough into his closet to reveal the lace on his back, if it could even be called that. The young girl sucked in a breath.
"Did it hurt?" she asked.
"Huh?" He glanced back to see her eyes on his shoulders. "The god-marks? No. I submerged myself in a pool of my god's tears and came out with the lines. It wasn't even cold, Yamina."
"But I've never seen a priest with shapes like that before," she admitted.
"It's because Zeal let his brother help," I told her. "Bode made the design, but Zeal colored it black to mark his claim."
"And the two swirly pieces?" she asked.
Talin chuckled. "Um, those are Nari's. That's how we know who we're paired with. They're identical to the swirls that go across her hips."
To prove the point, I traced the path of those lines from the point of my pelvis on each side, around in a curved arc to where they stopped just before reaching the dimples on my lower back. "That's why they match nothing else on him, not even the marks on his arms." Which were also made of strong geometry instead of the fanciful spirals usually seen on Zeal's priests. "Show her the mark," I told him.
Talin turned to expose the inside of his right bicep. There, a pair of triangles, one laid over the other, were covered with the silhouette of the five-headed snake. It was anexactcopy of the mark on my chest, which I parted the robe to show her. Yamina's eyes jumped from one to the other.
"Why's that different?" she asked.
"Because," I explained, "it's Zeal's claim. My partner and his guardian also have the same mark, but you will never see Eladehl's." To make it clear why, I tapped the point where my belly ended, low enough to be considered crass. "Wraythe's - the other guardian - has one like Talin's, but on the other arm."
"And Anver has one at the base of his spine," Talin told me. "Far enough down you can't see it when he's wearing pants."
"Do I want to know?" I asked.
Talin chuckled. "He showed me when we were studying the other day. And yes, Zeal kissed him to make it appear. Makes me think the fifth head isn't our god."
I groaned. "Of course not. Because he's a point on the lower triangle. The bottom angle is for Zeal. So we're the five heads?"
"Seems that way," Talin agreed.
Yamina just lifted her hand as if she was in class. "I'm confused now. How do you get kissed by a god?"
"Because he's real," I assured her. "And while he hasn't been seen in a while, he's decided it's time to return. As priests, we've had the good fortune to bump into him."
"And she's his Chosen," Talin added. "Nari's descended from the first priestess of the gods. That makes her special, and on the day she was surrendered, they all fought for her, but Zeal won. Now, he's training her to be something more than any priest we've seen before. He's just not quite ready to tell us what."
"No," I corrected, "he promised that I could decide what I wanted to be. He made a Path just for me, created from bits of them all, and he's letting me lay it out however I want to."
"So..." Yamina said, "you're kinda special?"
"Depends on who you ask," I said.
