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Chapter 46
Nariana
Their table was rectangular, but my siblings shuffled their chairs around to make room for me beside Kynsana. That let Talin take a spot at the end. Cesyr headed over for a bottle of wine and two extra glasses while I introduced everyone. Jeerad asked if we'd had lunch. In truth, it felt like a normal family gathering - from what little I knew of such things.
Then Jeerad asked the question I'd been dreading. "So, where have you been all these years, Nariana?"
"Nari," I told them. "It got shortened right after I was surrendered, and I've become used to it. But this whole time, I've been trying to convince myself you'd even want to talk to me. I kept saying I wasn't ready because I was terrified that you'd want nothing to do with a sister in Temptation."
"Not how it works," Xakiri said. "In our classes, we're taught that Temptation and Compassion are as close as Perception and Intuition. Temptation is just Compassion with a purpose."
"So what changed your mind?" Cesyr asked.
"Papa came to see me." I looked at each of their faces, waiting to be judged. "He told me a lot, and not all of it is easy to hear."
"Like that Mama had a few affairs?" Cesyr tugged at his hair. "That's the only way to explain this. I'm the one blonde in the family? Jeerad has emerald-green eyes, but neither of our parents do? Kynsana looks nothing like the rest of us, probably because she took after the man who sired her."
"Didn't really take much to figure that out," Kynsana told me. "People didn't believe we're related. They kept saying we looked nothing alike. Eventually, we listened to them."
"Mama wasn't having affairs, exactly," I told them. "She was selling herself so they could buy food. Our parents were so poor they had no other option. Mama hated it, so she started drinking, and she never stopped. Sounds like she died a few years back. Ichiago is married now, and working on his second child. He and Papa run the farm still." I licked my lips, but just kept going. "And I seem to be the only one of us that was surrendered who Papa sired. That's why I can see the gods."
"Papa sees the gods?" Xakiri asked.
From all the things I'd just dropped on them, that was what shocked him most? Any one of those things would've left me reeling, and yet my siblings just watched me and nodded, taking that in as if it merely confirmed their suspicions. There was no anger, no sorrow, and no judgment on their faces. Just acceptance.
"Yeah. He saw Zeal when I was surrendered. I didn't know it at the time, but the priest he was talking to was really a god. They look mostly normal, and they often wear the same things their priests do. They aren't taller than us, they don't glow, or any of the things I imagined. They just look like people, but most others have no idea they're walking through their temples, completely invisible."
Xakiri suddenly sat up. "Wait. So you're the priestess who could be the High Priest of All Gods?"
"I don't want that position," I assured him.
"But you could," he said. "We've been learning about the requirements, and my instructor pointed out that right now, there's an initiate in Temptation who could claim the title." He looked at the rest. "Our sister, guys. Nariana's the most highly marked priestess in generations, possibly in the history of the gods."
"I have all five Paths," I admitted. "It was actually an accident. I demanded consent for my future, so Zeal asked which Path I wanted, but I couldn't pick, so he gave them all to me. I call it the Path of Temptation. At the end of last year, he gave the same to my guardian, my partner, his guardian, and a close friend. There are five of us like this now."
My sister looked over at Talin. "So, you're not just a guardian, huh?"
He flashed her a smile. "Just? Nope. I am a guardian, though, and very proud of it. My duty is to protect a god's Chosen. There's nothing 'just' about that."
"It's also the least sexual duty in Temptation," Jeerad reminded her. "Stop flirting."
Kynsana huffed at him. "I was not flirting!"
"You were," Cesyr assured her. He looked at Talin and shrugged. "Little sisters, am I right?"
"Very," Talin agreed. "Mine's currently trying to avoid getting married. She's also doing an amazing job of it. I'm proud of her, and a little horrified at how devious she can be."
Kynsana just looked at me. "I wasn't flirting, Nari. We all know that guardians love their wards. That's why they'll die for them. It's a unique pairing that no other temple has, so we all learn about it. Mostly, how and why the gods would do something like that."
"And?" I asked her.
She scrunched up her face, then just answered. "Because they say the Path of the Body is hard. We're told that it's as much about abuse as lust, and that it's a buffer between strong emotions and the people unable to take them. I'm not sure how that works, though."
"We're trained to be hit," I explained. "We learn how to do a lot of sexual things safely. We learn how to shift people's desires in the heat of the moment, and how to use submissions and domination to control a situation. The goal, Kyns, is to let our patron burn out their rage, their lust, their pride, and all those base emotions on us, because our price for a moment of passion is less than most people's. That's a gift from Zeal. We heal faster, as an example. We have guardians to stop things when it gets out of hand. All of that."
"We just offer emotional support," Kynsana said. "Encouragement for hard things, a shoulder for sad things, and so on. We're often placed in prominent houses to ease tensions, or we do sessions helping people understand what they're feeling. We call it mental health, but it's really more emotional, in most cases."
"Then our Paths are more alike than I expected," I said.
