For some crazy reason that eased him, even though he'd fought the intrusions of other people's fates since they started appearing to him centuries ago.

Then something dawned on him. "You don't know what's going to happen to me, do you. You don't know what I'm going to do."

"I would have your word that you shall fulfill your duties on the other side. That you shall take care of what must be done there. And I would have it now."

"Say it. Say you don't know what you see. If you want my vow, you give me this."

"Why for?"

"I want to know you're powerless about something," he bit out. "So you know how I feel."

The heat of her rose until the penthouse was like a sauna. But then she said, "Your destiny is mine. I know not your path."

V crossed his arms over his chest, feeling like a noose was around his neck and he was standing on rickety chair. Fuck. Him. "You have my bonded word."

"Take this and accept your nomination as Primale." She held out a heavy gold pendant on a black silk cord. When he took the thing, she nodded once, a sealing of their pact. "I shall go forth and inform the Chosen. My sequester ends several days hence. You will come to me then and be installed as the Primale."

Her black hood lifted without hands. Just before it lowered over her glowing face she said, "Until we meet hence. Be well."

She disappeared without sound or movement, a light extinguished.

V went over to the bed before his knees let go. As his ass hit the mattress, he stared at the long, thin pendant. The gold was ancient and marked with characters in the Old Language.

He didn't want young. Never had. Although he supposed that under this scenario, he was nothing more than a sperm donor. He wasn't going to have to be a father to any of them, which was a relief. He wouldn't be good at that shit.

Shoving the pendant into the back pocket of his leathers, he put his head in his hands. Visions of growing up in the warrior camp came to him, the memories crystal-clear and sharp as glass. With a nasty curse in the Old Language, he reached over to his jacket, took his phone out, and hit speed dial. When Wrath's voice came on the line, there was a whirring noise in the background.

"You got a minute?" V said.

"Yeah, what's doing?" When V didn't hold forth, Wrath's voice got lower. "Vishous? You all right?"

"No."

There was a rustling then Wrath's voice came from a distance. "Fritz, can you come back and vacuum a little later? Thanks, my man." The whirring noise shut off and a door closed. "Talk to me."

"Do you… ah, do you remember the last time you got drunk? Like, really drunk?"

"Shit… ah…" In the pause, V pictured the king's black eyebrows sinking down behind his wraparounds. "God, I think it was with you. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, wasn't it? Seven bottles of whiskey between the two of us."

"Actually, it was nine."

Wrath laughed. "We started at four in the afternoon and it took us, what, fourteen hours? I was faced for a whole day afterward. Hundred years later and I think I'm still hungover."

V closed his eyes. "Remember just as dawn was coming, I, ah… told you I'd never known my mother? Had no clue who she was or what happened to her?"

"Most of it's fog, but yeah, I recall that."

God, they'd both been so polluted that night. Drunk off their asses. And that had been the only reason V had yakked even a little about what rotted in his head twenty-four/seven.

"V? What's doing? This have something to do with your mahmen?"

V let himself fall back on the bed. As he landed, the pendant in his back pocket bit into his ass. "Yeah… I just met her."

On the Other Side, in the sanctuary of the Chosen, Cormia sat on a cot in her white room with a small white candle glowing beside her. She was dressed in the traditional white robe of the Chosen, her feet bare on white marble, her hands folded in her lap.

Waiting.

She was used to waiting. It was the nature of your life as a Chosen. You waited for the calendar of rituals to offer up activity. You waited for the Scribe Virgin to make an appearance. You waited for the Directrix to give you duties to perform. And you waited with grace and patience and understanding, or you disgraced the entirety of the tradition you serviced. Herein no one sister was more important than another. As a Chosen, you were part of a whole, a single molecule among many that formed a functioning spiritual corpus… both critical and utterly unimportant.

So woe be the female who failed in her duties lest she contaminated the rest.

But today the waiting carried an inescapable burden. Cormia had sinned, and she was awaiting her punishment.

For a long time she had wanted for her transition to be given upon her, had been secretly impatient for it, although not for the benefit of the Chosen. She'd wanted to be fully realized as herself. She'd wanted to feel a significance in her breath and her heartbeat that pertained to her being an individual in the universe, not a spoke in a wheel. Her change had struck her as the key to that private freedom.

Her change had been given unto her just recently, when she'd been invited to drink of the cup in the temple. At first she'd been elated, assuming that her clandestine desire had gone undetected and yet was fulfilled. But then her punishment had arrived.

Glancing down at her body, she blamed her breasts and her hips for what was about to happen to her. Blamed herself for wanting to be someone specific. She should have stayed as she had been-

The thin silk curtain over the doorway swept aside, and the Chosen Amalya, one of the Scribe Virgin's personal attendhentes, walked in.

"And so it is done," Cormia said, tightening her fingers until her knuckles stung.

Amalya smiled beneficently. "It is."

"How long?"

"He comes at the conclusion of Her Highness's sequester."

Desperation made Cormia ask the unthinkable. "Cannot it be another of us who is called forth? There are others who want this."

"You have been chosen." As tears were born unto Cormia's eyes, Amalya came forward, her bare feet making no sound. "He will be gentle with thine body. He will-"

"He will do no such thing. He is the son of the warrior the Bloodletter."

Amalya jerked back. "What?"

"Did the Scribe Virgin not tell you?"

"Her Holiness said only that it was arranged with one of the Brotherhood, a warrior of worth."

Cormia shook her head. "I was told earlier, when she first came unto me. I thought all knew."

Amalya's concern drew her brows together. Without a word, she sat on the cot and gathered Cormia to her.

"I do not want this," Cormia whispered. "Forgive me, sister. But I do not."

Amalya's voice lacked conviction as she said, "All will be well… truly."

"What goes on herein?" The sharp voice yanked them apart sure as a pair of hands.

The Directrix stood in the doorway, her stare suspicious. With a book of some sort in one hand and a strand of black worship pearls in the other, she was the perfect representation of the Chosen's proper purpose and calling.

Amalya stood up quickly, but there was no denying the moment. As a Chosen, you were to rejoice in your station at all times; anything less was considered a specius deviation for which you had to render penitence. And they had been caught.

"I shall talk to the Chosen Cormia now," the Directrix announced. "Alone."

"Yes, of course." Amalya went to the door with her head down. "If you will excuse me, sisters."

"You shall progress to the Temple of Atonement, will you not."

"Yes, Directrix."

"Stay there for the rest of the cycle. If I see you on the grounds, I will be most displeased."