To Harvest a Soul

“So help me, boy, if you even breath wrong, I’ll flay you alive and hang your balls from the rafters of the temple for everyone to see,” Veltis hissed irritably in Ryons’s ear as he shoved Ryons roughly in between two boys amongst the many that lined both sides of the simple well worn dirt path that led into the village below.

Used to such treatment, Ryons held his tongue as Veltis’s fingers dug painfully into half healed welts.

Temple followers were the gatekeepers to the gods and goddesses. They lived to accept the offerings of the people and allow them the opportunity to tryst with divinity. Followers were not meant to speak, not meant to have opinions of their own and were certainly not meant to disobey the dictates of their temple’s Priest. It didn’t matter that their bodies provided the doorway to divinity. As far as everyone was concerned, Veltis was the mouthpiece of the Goddess.

That, however, had never stopped Ryons, and he had the lines etched into his back to prove it. If he’d known this morning that Veltis had summoned him with the purpose of taking him to this charade of a ritual, he’d be in the stocks right now, blood pooling at his ankles. Temple whores had no business being at the Harvest.

Instead, he was standing between two village boys who very much looked as if they’d like to join Veltis in his threat with whips in hand. On the rise at the top of the hill, Ryons could see the flashes of armor and hear the impatient whinnies of horses as officials from Imperial City made their way slowly down from the mountains. Expensive litters followed the soldiers on horses, and lower officials darted back and forth between them and the lines of boys.

Boys, who usually wore nothing but simple homespun tunics and faded leathers, were instead clothed in elaborate costumes that ranged from the fantastical to the comical. Costly sashes were tied suggestively around scantily clad hips, exposed tanned skin was rubbed down in scented oils until it glowed, and their black hair was braided and artfully arranged. Metal chains and bands encircled wrists, biceps, and necks in attempt to decorate and adorn the best features a boy could display.

Ryons scowled, making sure to keep his head down. A festival of innocents, this wasn’t, even if that was what it claimed to be. But, far be it for him to inform the officials picking and choosing amongst them of that. If the Lords couldn’t be bothered to come and choose their consorts themselves, then they deserved whatever treasures they got.

And as for the boys, he suspected that those Chosen would soon learn the error to be had in attempting to whore one’s self out for power and wealth.

Every four years, the officials came from Imperial City through the Provinces, searching for consorts for those men who were second or third sons, those men who weren’t in line to inherit and needed companions that ensured that there would never be usurpers to the family holdings. Most of these boys, Ryons imagined, had hopes of changing their status. Going from the hard working sons and brothers of a simple village to living a life of leisure and power as important partners to those of influence in Imperial City.

Idiots, the whole lot of them. Ryons could have told them that they were pinning their hopes on a false star. He failed to see how a happy ending could be reached from a match of those embittered by their birth to those consumed with their greed for more than they could rightfully claim. Far be it for him to tell them how good they had it now or explain to them in explicit detail just how far they could fall.

Veltis had dressed him up this morning, and he could puzzle out the reason why. His waist length brown hair hung down his back with a few simple braids holding it off his face, no doubt in an effort to conceal the scars on his back. Two metal cuffs fit snug against his biceps, both boasting the emblems of the Goddess. His chest was bare, but Veltis had made certain that he’d been oiled down with something that darkened his skin a few more shades and smelled faintly of sage. One of the older women had lined his eyes with kohl, and Veltis had stood over him impatiently as he’d fastened the almost indecently short breechcloth around his waist. Veltis then had personally tied the gauzy deep blue sash around Ryons’s waist.

The point, Ryons was sure, was not to tempt the officials running frantically between boys and litters like monkeys, but to show those boys who would inevitably leave here unchosen where they could vent their frustrations. The temple would make a tidy profit in the next fortnight, accepting offerings from those wishing for a tryst with divinity instead as their hopes for consort to royalty had been dashed.

“Stop fidgeting!” Veltis hissed roughly in his ear, and Ryons sucked in a painful breath as fingers dug into raw flesh. “And keep your head bowed.” It was easy enough for someone who wasn’t walking the line between rage, despair and fear to say. He hadn’t asked to become a Follower; he hadn’t had a choice in becoming a Follower. The only thing worse than knowing that Veltis would use him until he could no longer hold his head up long enough to suck, was knowing that the boys surrounding him—those who wouldn’t end up Chosen, would be furious in their rejection. Ryons’s bones ached merely at the thought.

Why had Veltis chosen him for this? Surely there were others, boys far prettier than him, at the temple who would have been better suited to this. Dinas or Owain, for example, were a great deal more submissive than him, and far more likely to incite the desires of the boys standing around him. Then again, maybe that was why they hadn’t been chosen for this excursion. Couldn’t actually have the temple lose its followers to the Harvest.

As the procession drew closer, from under the hair falling in his eyes in spite of the braids, Ryons could see the dyed mosquito netting of the litters holding those few Lords who had deigned to come themselves or, more likely, lower Lords who were coming to Choose for the Lords they served. Greens and blues and the occasional pink. Officials walked by, their feet in sandals that cost more than Ryons made in offerings in a year. Farther up the road, one of them even had boots, elaborately done with beads and threaded with silver and gold. Someone Very Important was looking to Choose this Harvest. Ryons didn’t envy the boy who ended up with those boots.

Veltis’s fingers gouged viciously into the biggest of the half healed strips in Ryons back, and unable to stop himself, he stumbled forward slightly sucking in sharp breaths in an attempt to not howl his pain.

“You,” a finger jabbed his chest, and Ryons went to look up at the speaker only to have Veltis jab his side. “Your name,” the crisp voice barked. The ornate boots on his feet made him cringe inwardly.

“Ryons, your eminence.” Only years of training kept his voice even and sultry.

“Teeth,” clean hands tapped at his chin, and obediently, Ryons let his eyes slide shut as he tilted his head up and opened his mouth. Like a dumb, mindless cow, he let the official run fingers over his molars. He stood stock still as hands ran up his sides, and didn’t even flinch as they pulled up the front flap of his cloth to inspect his privates. This? This was nothing. This was tame compared to the temple. And unlike the boys cowering and trying hard not to cover themselves in embarrassment, Ryons stood unmoving.

Finally, after the hands had poked and prodded, the official stepped back, wiping his hands on a cloth around his belt as if to wipe off the filth he’d found on Ryons. “Who speaks for this boy?”

“I do, your lordship,” Veltis preened, moving to Ryons’s side and knuckling a welt in Ryons spine once more as Ryons thought to look up.

“This way.” Boots snapped together and if had been Ryons choice, he would have turned and walked in the opposite direction, but Veltis’s bruising grip on his arms left little room for choice. Ryons kept his eyes trained on the ground, but he could see that the booted official was leading them straight to the most adorned litter in the center of the procession. Purple tinted mosquito netting swept aside to reveal deep purple silks and satins with elaborately embroidered purple velvet pillows.

“Is this the boy I asked for, Veltis?” A soft sibilant voice asked.

“Yes, your eminence,” Veltis groveled. Sliding a glance to his right, he could practically see Veltis rubbing his fat oily palms together. Ryons felt a shiver work its way up his spine.

“He doesn’t look like much.” An arm thick with bracelets stretched out, and clean fingers gestured them forward. Veltis practically dragged him forward. “Hmm, let’s take a look at you, shall we?”

Ryons kept his gaze down, but took in the sight before him. The man was wearing a thin light robe that was held in place by an elaborate black sash. Purple cloth slid over powerful legs as they moved to step out of the litter.

“He’s the best I have, your eminence.” Veltris’s voice took on a mealy quality, and even if it weren’t such a blatant lie, Ryons would have cringed anyway. The last thing he wanted was to live up to some Lord’s impossible standards of the tricks he thought a temple whore could perform. Anything he actually did was bound to fall short of expectation, and his bones ached once more at the anticipation of what such disappointment could bring.

“Not much to look at though, is he?” The Lord circled to his left, trailing hands over Ryons’s torso, sliding over his shoulders. The fingers were cold to the touch and Ryons wanted to jerk away from them as they slid up to grasp his neck and pull him forward.

“There’s more that matters than mere beauty,” Veltis grumbled petulantly.

“He looks to be nothing more than an average, unimpressive Dramosian,” the Lord murmured softly, but the hard edge to the words was unmistakable. Ryons couldn’t stop the small tremor that went through his frame. This was why Veltis had chosen him for this instead of Dinas or Owain. His eyes gave him away. Betrayed the Belturan in his blood. “Let’s see your face, lad. You can’t keep looking at the ground if you want to become a Consort.”

He wanted to become nothing of the sort. There was no point in trading one hell for another. At least in the temple, if someone was a little rough in their worship, there would be a new face to replace them the next day. As a Consort, there would be no such escape. And with Belturan blood, he doubted that any Lord would welcome him as anything more than a convenient thing to punch.

Clean fingers touched his jaw, slowly pushing his head up. He tried to keep his gaze down, but the Lord ratcheted it higher until Ryons was forced to look him in the eye. The face was beautiful. As perfectly sculpted as if the gods themselves had come down and molded it. High cheekbones, perfectly manicured brows, a pleasing smile. A man of this caliber would never have to beg someone to his bed or pay for a divine tryst. But his eyes…

His eyes were a dull, emotionless black. Ryons forced himself not to take a step back at the lack of what he saw in them.

“Ah, Veltis, blue,” the Lord smiled, but there was no warmth in the action. Fingers moved from Ryons’s neck to cup his cheek. “Now these blue eyes will do quite nicely.”

---

“To Choose a Breed, what were they thinking?”

“…a temple follower, obviously would be good for…”

“Not that pretty, hope he beds better than he looks…”

Ryons let the chatter around him slide off his shoulders. Engaging these brats in a fight wouldn’t change the fact that he’d been Chosen, and it most certainly wouldn’t make his trip to the Imperial City any easier. Serwend Province was to the south, and their village was on the furthest edge of it, butted up against the kingdom of Beltur. It would take a good three more days of trekking up through mountain passes before they’d reach the plateau that Imperial City sat on.

He could ignore their sniping, and even the attempts to trip him or to throw him off the path and down the inclines, until they reached the city. The little hells that they could deliver to him were nothing to the bigger hells he’d already experienced.

Escape was still his best option. If he could manage to make his way back through Serwend and into Beltur, he could start a new life there. With the temple being the closest point to Beltur since the rapids of the Hilel River prevented a crossing from any other point, sneaking out of Dramos without notice would be difficult. As it was, he’d had two days trekking with procession, and he’d yet to have a good opportunity to take his leave.

His attempt the first night had garnered him the attentions of no few officials. They’d chained and staked him out with the horses, ensuring that any further attempts would be thwarted when his thrashing about disturbed already high strung animals. He doubted it mattered how far he fell behind. Someone would be waiting to make sure he didn’t lose his way and that he stayed exactly where he was put.

Had he been Chosen by someone else, someone less important, it wouldn’t have mattered. But the Lord in purple obviously had no intention of losing Ryons’s thrice cursed blue eyes. The memory of the cruel smile he’d given Ryons after the official who’d found him had hauled him up in front of the group was enough to give Ryons the shivers in spite of the fact that the weather was unseasonably warm and his skin hot and sticky with sweat.

“Ryons? Ryons, here.”

The sound of his name on someone else’s lips shocked him out of his thoughts. Glancing to his right, he looked down to see another boy, a good head shorter than him, holding out a water skin as if it were the most natural thing in the world to offer Ryons something to drink. He recognized the inquisitive, open face and frowned. “Breri?”

What in the seven hells was someone like Breri doing on the path of the Chosen? Had he not understood what all it entailed? Because Ryons could have explained, in explicit detail, what would happen once they became Consorts.

For someone who had brought offerings to the temple that had bought Ryons attentions for an entire week, Breri hadn’t once actually attempted to tryst with the Goddess through him. He’d wanted divine comfort and consoling, and in spite of the few hints that Ryons had attempted to drop, Breri hadn’t seemed to realize that the whole point of seeing a Follower was to bed them. Ryons doubted he’d ever trysted with anyone or would have the first clue what to do if he ever found himself in such a situation.

It was like throwing a lamb to the lions.

Inky blue-black hair that had most certainly been bound in some kind of intricate style had long since fallen from its pins and was dangling precariously in Breri’s face. His cheeks and arms were already smudged with dirt, and what had probably once been a pure white sash was now grimy with mud. Not to mention the fact that Breri was limping, although that probably explained why he was here beside Ryons instead of farther up with the rest of the boys and officials in the front of the procession.

“You’re thirsty, aren’t you? Here.” Breri gestured insistently, and slowly, Ryons took the skin from him.

“You do realize that you’re not supposed to be talking to me,” he finally sighed, as a few of the boys ahead of them glanced back with poisonous glares. Breri, however was oblivious and his nose wrinkled in confusion. “Temple whores are not meant to be Chosen.” He decided to leave out the fact that Breeds were usually only worth the time it took to kill them in Imperial City. He’d be lucky if he saw the next moon rise and fall.

His breath hitched a little in his chest. He wasn’t ready to die, but escape was looking to be more and more of a dream with each step they took.

“Well, they haven’t unchosen you yet. Someone wants you. And until they decide not to Choose you, I don’t see the harm in talking to you or offering you my water,” Breri practically shouted for the benefit of the boys in front of them.

Cheeks burning, Ryons awkwardly uncorked the skin, took a swallow and then quickly shoved the skin back at Breri. How was he supposed to react to something like that? Did the boy have no concept of anything that went on around him? “Thank you,” he murmured quietly, feeling a little nonplussed when Breri beamed back.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I was so sure I’d be all alone, and I have to say, the idea of walking for five days by myself just seemed very long and very dull.” Breri’s dark brown eyes sparked with amusement.

“Look, you don’t have to,” Ryons started out only to be interrupted as Breri stumbled. Reaching out, he caught Breri’s arm, keeping him from sliding off the incline.

“Thanks. I tripped awhile back and wrenched my ankle.”

“Why didn’t you hail down an official and see if maybe you could ride with one of the soldiers or in the litter with your Lord?” he asked softly as Breri limped along. Although, given that Breri was the token orphan brat of their village, he doubted that Breri looked for or thought to expect those around him to help. However, given how much effort was being put into ensuring that he didn’t run, Ryons found it hard to fathom that someone would allow a Chosen to reach Imperial City practically crippled.

Unless, of course, that Chosen was meant to be as much a treasured Consort to their Lord as Ryons was obviously meant to be to his.

“My Lord sent an official and he looked busy. I didn’t want to be a burden. I want to make a good impression, and I don’t want him to think that I’m not a hard worker or that I wanted to be Chosen simply so that I could be lazy and greedy,” Breri rubbed his nose self consciously. “I want him to like me. Is that weird?”

Ryons wasn’t the was the best person to be asking that question of or to be answering. Frankly, he doubted the Lords thought of them as more than a warm body to fill their beds at night. If they even deigned to give them that. Which was fine with Ryons. If he was faceless to them, then they could be faceless to him. He’d long since given up on the dream of having someone actually like him. Now, he merely prayed that they’d finish fast and leave at an even greater speed.

Unable to say that, though, he shrugged instead. “You don’t have to be friendly to me.” The boys ahead of them were getting farther and farther away, so it was likely that Breri’s friendliness wasn’t entirely intentional. The limp was slowing him down, and it was only the fact that Ryons was consciously matching their paces that kept them together.

Breri stopped, and Ryons turned to look at him questioningly. “It doesn’t matter,” Breri’s face was flushed. “It doesn’t matter what we did or who we used to be. Being Chosen changes all that.” Was he trying to convince Ryons of this, or himself? “But if you don’t want to talk to me, then just say so. I realize that for someone who’s received the Blessings of the Goddess, a rough handed bastard child,” he spat, “is probably too dirty to touch the ground you walk on.” Breri scowled.

Absurd. The Goddess hadn’t gifted him with Blessings. She’d abandoned him to the hells and then laughed as he’d bled. And Breri should realize just looking at Ryons’s eyes that he couldn’t hate the boy for being a bastard child without first hating himself.

“Being Chosen merely means that I get to whore myself out to someone more Important.” Ryons frowned back. “It doesn’t change what I was or what I am and it most certainly isn’t going to change what I become.”

Breri’s scowl deepened. “Being Chosen is one of the highest honors that boys like us could ever hope to achieve. It is a position that comes with power and wealth, yeah, but it also comes with responsibility. Consorts have a duty to their Province and to their villages. It’s about more than the mere mechanics of bedding someone,” Breri informed him haughtily, despite the fact that his cheeks had taken on an almost unnatural shade of red.

“No one Chose me with the intention of allowing me to represent my village or my Province. Or, at least, not without ulterior motives.” The very idea was ridiculous. Breri had to know that.

“You never know,” he insisted instead, stubbornly. “This could be your opportunity to represent people who’ve never had a voice. Don’t dismiss it out of hand.”

Ryons shook his head, chagrinned at the amount of idealism laid out before him. It was a pretty picture, but that was all it was. Fantasy he could very well dismiss out of hand. Reality, however, was a great deal less forgiving.

The path ahead of them separated out into long shelves of steps, and sighing, Ryons made his way up them. After the fifth step though, Breri had failed to chatter at him once more, and turning, he saw that Breri was still gingerly struggling to make his way past the second shelf. At this rate, the procession would lose them completely within hours and Ryons had no intention of being chained any tighter than he already was once they made camp.

Besides, an attempt to befriend a fellow Chosen might get them to lower their guard long enough for Ryons to make good his escape. He gathered his hair from his back and pulled it over his shoulder, waiting patiently for Breri to make it up the next two shelves.

“I have no problems with you. I just thought to warn you that our fellow Chosen will not appreciate or share your views on the matter. But for now, c’mere.” He gestured, and confused, Breri stepped forward. “Climb on my back. You’ll never make it to Imperial City limping like that.”

Breri looked at him uncertainly. “I couldn’t.”

Ryons shook his head, dismissing Breri’s concerns. “You can and you will. Hop up.”

Gingerly, Breri climbed on, and while he didn’t weigh much now, Ryons was sure he would by the end of the day.

---

“Is your back paining you?”

“No.” It was, but merely a twinge of what it had once been. Breri’s sash, while muddy on one side, had been clean on the other, and Breri had insisted on wrapping it around the oozing welts after he’d insisted on cleaning them. Ryons hadn’t had the heart to tell him that it was more painful to have the sash ripped away later than it was to simply let the wounds dry.

“You should have told me sooner, you know. I’m sure that we could have gotten something from the officials to treat it.”

“It’s fine.” The last thing he wanted was to get any closer to them. As it was, Breri had spent the last three days plastered to his side tighter than a tick. It was difficult to tell who was more frustrated by this, as the officials obviously did not want any of the Chosen around a known temple follower. Breri’s stubborn faith in the perfection of his unseen Lord made it equally impossible for Ryons to talk the boy into attempting escape with him. If anything, the suggestion had made Breri cling tighter and start encouraging Ryons to hope for the best.

“Am I too heavy? Do you want me to get down and try to walk for a little bit?” Breri’s arms were circled loosely around his neck, but looking down, Ryons could see that Breri’s ankle was still twice its normal size. Walking would only aggravate the injury. And while the once light Breri now seemed to weigh enough for three boys, Ryons’s back could take it. After all, it had taken much worse.

“It’s fine,” he repeated.

“Do you think they’ll take us straight to the Lords for the ceremony?”

Looking around, Ryons seriously doubted it. The boys who had all once been groomed immaculately now more closely resembled a ragtag gypsy band. Colorful sashes were muddied, torn or missing all together. What had once been elaborately coiffed hair now was nothing but snarled masses of half braided hair and slipping pins. Bracelets and wrist cuffs were bent, splattered with mud and covered in thick films of dirt.

“They’ll probably cleanse us first before taking us in to bond to our Lords.” And by bond, Ryons meant enslave. He failed to see how it could be any other way with young, insignificant boys binding themselves to much older men who had the power to kill with merely a gesture to the right person. Maybe if he were two or three years younger like Breri or maybe if he hadn’t been a temple follower, he’d be blissfully unaware. But he was almost eighteen winters old, he’d been a temple follower, and he had no illusions over his place or his power over anything. “They have to get us clean. No one would want to bond themselves to this scruffy herd.”

“Hmm, cleanse, you mean in a temple like that?” Breri pointed ahead of them to where officials were filing boys in through the decorative stone doors of a temple that put Veltis’s to shame. There had to be at least four stories to it, elaborate arches of marble had depictions of the gods and goddesses carved into them.

Ryons let Breri climb off his back, but offered an arm for Breri to hang on as they ascended the steps that led to an open courtyard just inside the temple. There was an entrance to the right that Ryons knew led to the Followers quarters, but they were ushered down the center pathway lined by columns until they reached the doors to the main hall. Once in there, Ryons could see that every boy that had been Chosen had been pushed into the cramped quarters.

Gingerly, he picked his way towards the wall, finding a small corner that was unoccupied beside one of the numerous altars. He helped Breri lower himself to the floor, and then stood with his arms crossed protectively over his chest, waiting to see how they would be treated.

“Ryons, sit down.” Breri tugged on his arm, after an hour of temple followers trickling in one at a time to escort random Chosen back into the bowels of the temple. Stiffly, Ryons lowered himself onto the marble floor.

The hours dragged by and he watched as every other boy was taken and led away until only they were sitting solitary on the floor, Breri asleep on his shoulder and twilight having long since fallen. Three or four candles on the altar in front lit long spiked shadows against the walls that did nothing for Ryons’s peace of mind.

“Come,” an official finally barked irritably at them as he grabbed Breri’s arm and hauled him roughly up before grabbing Ryons and dragging them both through back rooms and to a cleansing hot spring that was obviously doubling as a bath.

Calmly, Ryons allowed them to abruptly strip him, shove him into the water, and soap him up roughly before pulling the last vestiges of braids out of his hair and cleaning him as thoroughly as they could. He winced as fingers poked less than gently at his back, but ignored the irritated glares and sighs of dismay at the sight he knew it made.

“He’ll have to have his hair kept down. Hells take it, Lord Lucan will not like that. He has no patience for frippery,” one attendant grumbled, pulling hard enough on a snarl to snap Ryons’s head back for a moment. His eyes stung. For once, just once, he wanted what he liked to matter. But, of course, why wish for fish in the desert? Likely, Lord Lucan would take one look at his back, add to it, and then have Ryons’s hair chopped off to display the damage.

Breri, on the other hand, for his one visit to the temple, was not braving the public exposure as well, and Ryons briefly wondered how on earth he’d survived the inspection back in the streets of their village as three officials had to hold him down to keep him from covering himself up as they cleaned.

Allowing himself to be bullied out of the spring, Ryons allowed them to dry him off and apply scented oils before painting intricate patterns on his chest in black and red ink. It wasn’t worth the effort to protest. Their hurried movements and frustrated brusqueness indicated that the Harvest had fallen a bit behind schedule. Most likely, by the time that they were finally bonded, their respective nobles would be cranky and short tempered from the heat and the insufferably long wait.

Lovely.

Although, Ryons supposed it could be much worse as Breri was pushed up beside him. The poor kid’s cheeks were bright red with embarrassment and the designs on his chest were wobbly in places from where he’d obviously tried to avoid the tickling of the brushes and the groping hands. The look on his face was one of misery and given how he kept all his weight on one foot, Ryons knew it was paining him. “You’ll be fine,” he whispered reassuringly as he rested a hand lightly on an unpainted portion of Breri’s shoulder for a second.

Hells knew why he’d said it. Breri wasn’t going to be fine, and for that matter, neither was he. He had no business uttering assurances he knew would end up false. Still, the words seemed to relax Breri as Followers came up to them with clothing.

Their chests were left bare but for the designs. Two lengths of red cloth that went from their waists to the floor were threaded onto a chain and then buckled on either side of their hips. Smaller chains clipped the front cloth to the back cloth in hand length intervals over their hips to about the middle of their thighs, allowing them a certain amount of modesty as they walked. Gold cuffs were shoved roughly up their arms onto their biceps, and bracelets were fastened to each ankle.

A Follower clipped a heavy gold choker onto Ryons’s neck, and he resisted the urge to reach up and try to tug it off. When they did not put a similar one on Breri, his nervousness grew.

A rather sour faced official came forward, inspected the job that had been done on their bodies. He tsked slightly at the wobbles in Breri’s paint, but passed it by with a mere shake of the head. When he took a closer look at Ryons, or more appropriately, Ryons’s eyes, his face turned from the overly annoyed scowl to fury.

“This!” The official grabbed a handful of Ryons’s hair that had been brushed out straight and now hung down around his shoulders. “This is the mongrel they chose for Lord Lucan?” He yanked hard, sending Ryons stumbling as his head smarted from the grip.

“Blindfold them,” the official snapped angrily to the Followers. “It’s too late to change things now. Lord Lucan will not know of the deception until after the ceremony is over.” The words were hissed quietly, but it felt to Ryons as if they had been screamed.

Breri stood still and simply allowed one of the Followers to slip a red sash over his eyes and clip it into the maze of braids they’d made of his hair. Two such similar Followers came towards him, sash in hand, and Ryons felt the blood pounding in his ears.

His first Worshipper, long before he’d understood what that meant or what Followers were for, had had him blindfolded.

The Follower with the sash smiled sympathetically as he brought it up. Ryons felt sweat pop out on his forehead and he ducked as the man attempted to secure it. “Young sir, hold still,” the Follower told him, irritation seeping into his voice. They were leading Breri out of the room, but the Follower’s second attempt to get the blindfold on distracted him from paying attention to what they did once they had a Chosen blindfolded.

“Why is he not ready yet?” The sour faced official snapped as he ducked back into the room, scowling at Ryons.

“I’m trying my best, but he’s resisting,” the Follower explained softly.

“You and you, help him,” the official gestured two burly guards over, “do what you have to do.”

Ryons took one look at them and scrambled frantically for the door. They could find someone else. He wasn’t going to be Chosen. He wasn’t going to play whore to some Lord with no land and too much time on his hands. And he sure as hells wasn’t going to let them come anywhere near him with that thing.

The guards, however, anticipated his moves, and meaty hands grabbed his shoulders as a burly arm wrapped around his middle and hauled him off the ground. Ryons went wild, wriggling and kicking and biting any piece of flesh within reach. Taken aback, the guard holding him dropped him, and the other loosened his grip long enough for Ryons to make another scramble for the door. It was short lived though as arms pulled him back, clocking him roughly upside the head and stunning him long enough for the Follower to get the sash fastened and pulled down over his eyes.

First instinct was to reach up and pull it right back off, but the guards were onto him by now, and he could feel burly hands pulling his wrists back behind him and snapping something cold and metal on them, holding them in place. He tried to jerk his hands up only to get his ears boxed for his efforts.

“The chains,” the Follower fretted softly, and Ryons instantly stilled at the words.

“They look like bracelets, no one will notice until long after the ceremony has been completed,” one of the guards grumbled, yanking Ryons arm practically out of its socket as he pulled him forward, making Ryons heart leap into his throat. They were going to keep him chained. And he couldn’t see.

His skin went from sweaty hot to snow cold to prickling hot all over again. He opened his mouth to protest, but his tongue felt two sizes too big, and too dry to utter anything but a strangled yelp.

Another set of hands grabbed his other arm, pulling, and Ryons had to move his feet forward or find his arms pulled out of his sockets. He could hear the roar of voices around him, but it dimmed to the sound of his own ragged breathing. The guards abruptly let go of his arms, and he barely kept himself from falling flat on his face. Once he was alone, the dull roar of voices stopped abruptly.

His shoulders shook.

Someone started talking, and he could recognize the string of words as the start of the ceremony. Only priests managed that combination of pomposity and monotony. A hand touched his elbow, and Ryons jerked, the small chains at his hips rattling as much as his breath.

“Take a deep breath,” the owner of the hand whispered, the words barely audible. Tremors shaking his body, Ryons figured it couldn’t hurt. He took a deep breath, followed by six or seven more, the only thing of which it seemed to accomplish was making him light headed. “Slower,” the voice chuckled.

Eventually, the shaking died down to the occasional tremble, and his breathing evened out as nothing happened. He couldn’t keep the tension out of his shoulders, though, or keep his thoughts from racing in a thousand different directions. Would his Lord simply take him here in front of all these people? Would he draw it out, make a game of the blindfold? Would it be over quick, or would it amuse him to calm Ryons down only to incite him to panic later?

Smooth fingers touched his temples, and Ryons jerked his head back with a startled grunt. “You’re all right,” the amused voice from before told him lightly, fingers curling over the edges of the sash. The priest had stopped talking, but that barely registered.

The blindfold came off.

Instead of the balding, fat old man he’d expected to see, the Lord in front of him was his age. Maybe a year or two older. He was better dressed, and his hair was cropped close to his scalp. There was amusement in his light gold eyes that quickly faded into something else all together as they met Ryons’s.

“Belturan,” he hissed, fingers digging into Ryons’s forearm.

“I-I changed my mind. I don’t want to be Chosen,” Breri’s shrill voice echoed over the crowded room, drawing the attention away from Ryons and his Lord as the man’s face darkened in fury.