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And then he grinned.
“Oh Elara,” he said, shaking his head and growling low in his throat. He stood, straightening his black velvet jacket. He offered a hand to me. “Come, let me show you something.”
I hesitated for a moment before I took his hand, but I smiled and took it.Keep playing the game. Just keep playing the game.His hand was cold, despite the warm evening, but I forced myself not to recoil.
He led me down the passageway, through an open door that led outside into a courtyard with torches lighting the path. The guards watched us pass, their gazes lingering on me longer than should have been decent, and the tight dress had suddenly made me desperately self-conscious.
We rounded a corner, and there stood a brightly lit temple, gold and blue spires glowing in the fading light of the summer sky.
“Are you of the Faith?” Theron asked me, his grip on my hand remaining tight.
“I am, Sire.”
“I always admired it.” He swung my hand back and forth as though we were merely lovers out for a stroll. “My mother, well, the woman I was told was my mother, she insisted on it, she was incredibly devout, had us praying to Mokosh every night, asking for blessings.”
“Your mother was not your mother?”
Theron ignored me and went on. “She was a strange woman in that way I suppose, so insistent on faith and praying to the Mother Goddess, while being a terrible mother herself. To me at least.”
We walked up the three sandstone steps into the chapel, which smelled heavily of incense. The wooden altar at the end of the chamber was lit with dripping white candles and draped with blue silk.
Out of habit I dipped to my knees, mumbling the blessing that I had spoken since I was a child. “Great Mother and Father, you bless us with your love.”
Theron keeping a hold of my hand. He laughed softly. “Such piety, madam.” I looked up at him and he grinned. “Though seeing you down there on your knees does give me a certain thrill.”
I quickly rose back to my feet, the prickling, creeping anxiety snaking further up my back. What had I been thinking? Well, I knew exactly what I’d been thinking. Get into his bed, get him into a vulnerable position, and kill him. I was such an idiot.
Theron pulled me further into the temple, to the golden steps below Mokosh’s altar. “To answer your question, no, my mother was not my mother.” He looked up at the ceiling, adorned with a majestic mosaic of gold and blue. “But she raised me, and it is in her memory that I keep this temple lit up, decorated.”
“Who was your mother?”
Theron looked down at the steps we stood on, and pointed with the hand that wasn’t holding mine. “There.”
I looked at the spot by my feet with a frown, shaking my head. “I beg your pardon?”
Theron chuckled, releasing my hand to walk around the temple, gazing again at the ceiling. “I was taken from the arms of my own mother, when I was mere minutes old.” He sighed. “My father, the old philanderer, had fucked every chambermaid in the palace, and well, one of them inevitably fell pregnant with his bastard. Now, he couldn’t possibly leave a son of his in the care of a mere maid, so he had me taken from her, and placed into the arms of his beloved, Queen Eloise.”
“You were born a bastard?”
Theron nodded as his gaze moved to the murals on the walls, depicting Mokosh and Perun, the mother and father god, creating the earth through their lovemaking. He ran a finger along the base of one of the murals, and chuckled.
“Ironic, isn’t it? A place of worship and it has these sorts of pictures on the walls.” He looked back at me. “Are you still pure, Elara?”
Pure? I frowned. The Seraph were obsessed with the idea of “purity”. I was so intensely uncomfortable with his question I remained silent, avoiding his eyes. But Theron was not going to let the topic go.
“Of course you are, the way you tried to seduce me up there, tells me you’re extremely pure, dear one.” His brow furrowed for a moment. “Although, you did have your mate in your arms when we found you. So, perhaps I am wrong? Or did his Fae cock not satisfy you, which is why you sought out mine?”
I didn’t want him to know that panic had turned my stomach into a pit of ice. “I merely thought - I thought you liked me.”
“I dolikeyou, Elara.” He narrowed his eyes. “Now, if you would be so kind as to answer the question.”
“Which question?”
“About your purity.” He pointed to the altar. “And remember, the Mother Goddess is listening. She’ll hear it if you lie.”
My eyes darted for a moment to the picture of Mokosh and Perun, their faces frozen in the throes of ecstasy, and swallowed hard. “I am.”
“You’re what?”
