Half-Elf Harlot Ch. 04

By the time she headed to the dining hall for the evening meal, Zelia was beginning to wonder if Tess had gone somewhere without saying goodbye. She had just picked up a bowl to stand in line for soup (parsnip, again), when someone behind her tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the doorway.

There stood Tess, her face unreadable. She beckoned to Zelia, and Zelia went.

"What is it," Zelia asked, but Tess took her by the hand in silence and in silence led her to the great stair.

The highest Zelia had ever been invited in the temple was the second floor from the top. She had been shown there the first time she had set foot in the building, when she'd blown in, strutting in her crimson sorcerer's cape, and announced herself a cleric of the Raven Queen despite the temple never having seen nor heard of her before that day. She had answered questions to a stranger she now knew as Keeper Orun, and been gifted a single raven feather at the end of it; a sign.

In the month since she'd been living here, she'd climbed the last turn of the stairs trying to reach the highest floor, but found a locked door there that even she knew better than to try and circumvent.

To this door now they bent their steps.

Tess came to a stop and regarded Zelia with eyes that held a question in them.

"You showed me your secret knowledge when you read my cards the night you came here. Now, I will show you mine."

She placed a palm in the centre of the unmarked door.

"Are you ready?"

Zelia's heart raced.

"Whenever you are."

Tess spoke a word that shimmered with divinely gifted power, and the door before them faded into nothing.

A wall of humid plant breath enveloped them as they stepped inside the topmost chamber of the temple to the Raven Queen. From the outside, the building appeared to be a pyramid of solid stone construction, but in here, the walls seemed to be made of glass. Zelia could see the pyramid's apex above them, and the starlit sky beyond, a large-bellied moon presiding.

The chamber was filled to profusion with flowering trees of many kinds, moss-covered snaking vines, and dark green-fronded foliage. All living, growing things. Tess led them past a pond of water lilies, and Zelia saw fat golden fishes wink beneath its surface.

In the centre of the room, directly beneath the highest point, a blanket was spread over the tiled floor and a small supper set out beside it.

The whole thing was beautiful. It was everything the rest of the temple was not, and for the first time Zelia truly felt the Goddess in this place. Emotion welled in her throat as she smelled the soft green scents of the flowers and mosses, bark and leaves and cool waters.

"Normally," said Tess, "It's only once you've completed your full training and sworn your service to the temple that you get to see this place. But I succeeded in convincing Keeper Orun that, even though you're only part-way through your studies here, your service to the Goddess in the world at large has made you ready to see, and understand."

"I do," breathed Zelia, tears forming in the corners of her eyes as understanding filled her. "I do."

The dead grass outside the temple, the dead air within, the masks, the robes, everything: it spoke of death, yes, but only of the aspect of it that people focused on, and feared. It was the outward face of this place because that was what people were ready to see.

"Life is at the heart of death," said Tess, looking up at the moon and stars framed by the silhouettes of foliage. "There is no one without the other, and both are intertwined, always. This is the truth the cleric of the Raven Queen carries, at the heart of all she does."

She looked at Zelia, their faces striped by the soft shadows cast by leaves in moonlight.

"You have found it difficult to be here."

Zelia laughed, wiping her eyes.

"What, could you tell?"

The priestess clasped her lightly by the elbows, laying Zelia's forearms over her own.

"And, you have been holding guilt that isn't yours, for what happened to Ignatius. But Zelia, listen: listen to the life that thrives in this space. You have such an impulse for life, a well of joy within you. It is not wrong to follow that impulse."

Zelia closed her eyes and felt the pulse of growing things, resting now by starlight but waiting, ready, to unfurl new leaves toward the sun. Softly, she opened her eyes. She saw Tess there, and let herself be drawn towards her.

When they kissed, she felt that faint familiar pressure in the air, as if the beating of great wings enfolded her. Yes, to love was to risk loss, just as to live was to risk death. It was the way.

"Tess," she murmured. "...I want you."

"I know," said Tess, skimming her fingertips along the inside of Zelia's forearms, making her shudder. She clasped Zelia's hand and pulled it gently to her chest, holding it there, and combed her fingers through Zelia's thick waves of dark hair, tugging to tilt back her head, exposing the pale, smooth skin of her throat.

Each kiss Tess planted there sent sparks of pleasure through Zelia's soul, as if she kissed away all the doubt and waiting and stagnation she'd felt since she'd come here.

Even when she found the scar—a mere faint silver jagged line on one side of her neck, just visible by moonlight, passed over without notice by her other lovers—Tess did not pull away. There it was. The real reason, perhaps, that Zelia had been afraid to let Tess get this close to her. Dedicates of the Raven Queen feel keenly the deep wrongness that clings to all things touched by undeath, and she had been touched.

"Xavyril," said Zelia, when Tess's paused at the scar. Shame and dread and desire curdled in her belly.

"The vampire lord... He bit you?"

A tear began a lonely journey down her cheek as Zelia stood there, exposed, waiting.

"He did."

Long seconds passed in which Zelia was sure Tess could read the history of that moment plain upon her face. The fear; the fight. The secret that Zelia had told no one: that even sworn as she was an enemy to all undead, there had been a moment when the vampire bit her when, just for a moment, she had wanted it. Desired it. Wanted to see what happened next.

Slowly, Tess bent her head again and ran her tongue along the scar.

"This is part of you. And you are beautiful," she said, as a sob broke from Zelia's throat.

"You have me," was all that Zelia could say, now, and as Tess slid a hand down to the hem of Zelia's dress, hitching up the fabric, claiming the hot slickness of her throbbing cunt within, she replied,

"Yes, I do."

They stripped each other bare and laid upon the blanket, wearing only moonlight and desire. Tess was sure-handed and deliberate as a lover, tempering Zelia's eagerness after having denied herself so long. Tess travelled over her with hands, fingers, lips, and tongue, and Zelia let her tease out all her secrets.

"I've waited long enough for you," Tess said, her dark hair falling over Zelia's breasts as she leaned over her, straddling her, smoothing a thumb across Zelia's softly parted lips. "And I was happy to, don't worry... but now it's my turn."

Zelia raised herself up on her elbows and stretched toward Tess for a kiss, but Tess shook her head, swung her legs aside sat back, feet spread apart, knees wide.

Zelia's eyes shone as she let herself be guided between Tess's thighs, burying her face there gratefully. She inhaled the heady tang of Tess's scent, took the juices of her cunt on her tongue as a communion, nectar from the gates of life and death.

"Make me come," said Tess.

And when she did, as Tess threw back her head and cried out, thighs shuddering, fingers fisting into Zelia's hair, Zelia let herself be smothered there, and thanked the Goddess.