Chapter 3

Shattered Goddess

Warning: rough draft ahead : there will be typos, spelling errors and oh so much more.

Chapter 3

Updated 3/3/2026

Chapter 3

I didn’t take any buckets up the hill to the old estate home. Just a bag of rags thrown over my shoulder to catch cobwebs and a couple of tools I thought might help me open the windows. Lady Bea had also given me a heavy ring of keys. Since she’d only lived in the house for a few years before closing it up, she didn’t know what opened what.

Everyone in the village said it was cursed, but there were many other practical reasons for closing it up; the main one was that it was too big to run without a staff of ten or more. Pinched tight from her face to her grasping hands, Lady Bea was not a woman who spent money freely. The Drench had made her even more careful. Our village did not have the trade of the bigger cities like Kalindara and the ports; we did not teem with people on pilgrimage to buy or use our most precious resources.

Lady Bea’s big house crouched among ancient willows and tall cedars, half-swallowed by the living shroud they cast. Everything dripped with the pervasive green mold caused by the Drench. Greedy vines claimed the walls, threading up the stone and wood with desperate blossoms that strained toward the sky. Without the faint traces of a road, I would have walked past it entirely, mistaking it for just another mound of dripping green.

How could anyone expect to stay here?

The once-whitewashed facade had shed almost all its paint; only leprous patches clung to the plaster. Sealed behind years of overgrowth, the ground-floor windows were shuttered tight. No hope for me of opening them without axes and machetes. Above, the second floor stared down with eight tall, glassed eyes. I’d have to focus my efforts there.

Birds screamed overhead as I drew closer, lamp swinging in one hand, sack over my shoulder. I watched every step for snakes or termite crossings. Each footfall tightened a sickening knot of dread in my empty stomach, a feeling between memory and premonition—repulsion and helpless pull.

My old home had been built in a similar style, alive with the breath of my family. This house felt nothing like that. It breathed, too—but the breath was colder, hungrier, and it knew my name like an old enemy. I shook the feeling off as best I could. It was just an moldering house. I’d seen many such structures. The Drench did this to everything.

It took me a moment to fit the right key into the lock, longer still to pull away the vines and open the wide front door. For all that I’d felt a strange pull to explore what was inside, the door did not open effortlessly for me. The damn house may feel familiar, but it wasn’t setting out a welcome rug for me. I had to set my lamp down and use my shoulder to shove it free, rusty iron hinges grumbling with every inch.

The scent that hit me when I opened it was not the brackish slime of the Drench’s most common green mold, but instead red-spice and aged tobacco, so close to a mix from my childhood that this alone made me want to run.

My grandfather, my father, and his two brothers had loved their tobacco, gathering in the library together until a blue cloud of it rose to the ceiling and saturated everything. My mother complained often how the smell would permeate the papers, the fine books, the silk fabric of the chairs she’d brought with her as part of her dowry. She was not a native of Deviraj—but had come from the lowlands, from a place that had never heard of tobacco.

The scent of men relaxing and talking after a long day, plus the russet-colored ground spice my aunt had used over and over in the kitchen and served in the long dining room. I hadn’t smelled the combination in years.

The loss hit me, pain welling up suddenly. Rooms gone silent, filled with the dead. Falling from my bed, thirsty, my water pitcher empty, calling for my parents.

I had to choke back the sobs. One would think I could get over that childhood loss, but it clung to me like the mist, relentlessly cold, squeezing my bones.

This was not the same house. I was an adult now. My dead were burned with all the rest. I wasn’t going to do this here or now. I wasn’t. Taking a moment to collect myself, I shook off the blanket of old grief. It was time to see what there was to see.

The main entrance opened into a foyer with a pleasant sitting room for guests, but there was another doorway behind it, flanked—I thought—by colored glass.

I took two steps forward, and it started to glow a soft, dim pink. Not glass. Shaved plates of crystal. Something so pretentious I could barely believe it. This house belonged to mine owners, I knew. Someone had found a giant deposit of crystal, large enough to have dinner-sized rounds from, had it fashioned into panels to flank the ornamental door.

How could they still be charged so that they would glow in welcome to me? How could the stone still live? There was no answer to that puzzle, but it was enough to distract me and make me wonder what I might see next.

I was glad Lady Bea had given me the entire set of keys. I had to try five from the set before I found the one that opened the second entrance. It had never occurred to me that the woman knew what she was about.

This opened to another sitting room on one side, with a hall and a staircase going up. Since I’d already given up hope for the bottom-floor windows, I might as well try the wide grand staircase. There were cobwebs everywhere, as if the tree spiders had given up on their natural habitat and moved here. I pulled one of the rags from my bag, using it as a weak shield between my hand on the banister and the nastiness.

My little walking lamp illuminated a circle of light that I could direct where I wanted, but it didn’t penetrate far enough for me to see where the stairs led. I moved carefully, even though every muscle in my body jumped with a desire to move through this task as fast as I could. Find the windows of each room, open the long curtains, open the windows just enough to let new air in. The Drench would wet everything, but the cleaning crew would be here in the morning to take care of it. Who knew, the rain might actually help with the clean-up.

At the top, the hallway stretched in both directions. I picked one, planning to walk to the end, enter the rooms, and do my task. The house held its silence like a storyteller with sealed lips.

I found the first bedroom, entered, pulled open the curtains, and moved back as dust and other things fell from their folds. Outside, the pink of dawn had changed the color of the dark, lighting it, threatening absurd things like hope. I knew better than to fall for that promise.

I had to use my tools to pry the window loose, but got it open as best I could. One done, who knew how many to go? This was a side room; outside a huge tree blocked the view.

I went into other rooms, one that faced the front and one toward the back, confidence increasing with every window I opened. I repeated the exercise at each window, then in a forth, larger room near the right of the stairs. Inside, on opposite sides of the giant bed, I noticed doors extra doors, as if it connected to the place I’d just been. Unless they were closets? A big estate house would have a master bedroom that might connect to smaller rooms for privacy and space.

I took a step, and felt something hard and warm under my foot. I looked down. What? The lost crystal? A twin?

I reached for it, even though a practical voice in my head warned me how unnatural this moment was. How was it here? Why was it here? It must be param, a high-grade and Goddess-touched. I closed my hand around the warmth.

“What are you doing here? Are you the thing haunting Lady Bea’s house? If you are from the Goddess, you might as well give up now. I don’t want anything to do with a celestial being that allows me to be punished for surviving. Do you know that? I’ll just find a way to sell you, trade you,” I said to it as if it could answer, testing the textures in my hand. It was the same one from before. I was sure of it.

It glowed pink, like a charged thing. They all did that. Pink was the color of virgin conduits suitable for charging crystals. Any living stone glowed pink for a virgin before warming to its natural color. I watched in awe as this one turned bright blue, then red, then gold, then green.

What? That wasn’t possible.

It pulsed through a series of colors before going white like a jyoti. I’d never seen a crystal do this. Not ever. What was happening? The thick shard sat in my hand, warm and alive. Impossible.

I shoved it in my rag sack, swallowing back that niggling guilty feeling that maybe I was stealing, embracing a tingle of spark of excitement instead. It must be very valuable. Maybe I could sell it to someone in the visiting priest’s household? Maybe I could sell it to one of the many hangers-on who followed such people wherever they went, hoping for a blessing?

New clothes, new shoes, money to spare. Escape. It all flashed in my head as pretty as temptation.

I took out a fresh rag, then shook my sack. The weight of the rock dropped to the bottom. Double-checking for holes, I found it nestled safely in a corner. It wouldn’t do to lose the darn thing twice in a row. Nothing was that magical anymore.

Shaking my braid over my shoulder, I brushed the hair from my face before deciding what to do next. This floor was only half finished. The side door had a key still in the lock, but the knob turned easily, so the panel pulled toward me without a sound, revealing an adjoining room. Larger than the last, there were three windows instead of two, the center one opened to a balcony.

Curtains already drawn. Cool damp air, fragrant with the forest, won the race—streaming in with a giant figure standing in front of the open window.

Strange place for a statue. Was this room an indoor temple?

All shadows and angles, all I could really see was the pool of robes. Until it moved.

I screamed—threw the dust rag in my hand at it in useless defense—stumbled back against the doorway I’d just come through. What was that? It was tall. Bulky. Not a carving of the Goddess but man-shaped.

Pillar-shaped, it wasn’t a cavern spinner. Ghost? Ghoul? A thief? Something worse?

Holding my lamp high, I tried to see what I was dealing with.

“That is enough of that, thank you,” a deep male voice said with a note of firm reprimand.

“Who is there? What are you doing here?” I asked stupidly. Why was I trying to talk to a ghost?

My lamp couldn’t move the shadows that clung to the shape. It must be something evil to hold the dark so close, something seductively dangerous with a warm spiced honey voice. The tone sank into my middle with liquid promise. In spite of the reprimand, I wanted to relax in the masculine resonance in a mindless, open state. Instantly at ease, all my feminine senses had come to life.

“What are you?” I breathed my question again.

A demon. Or a dak. Though in my father’s bed time stories, those where usually more imp like. This was not an imp.

Something with unnatural magic. Something that could awaken my soma the way it never had before, melting me into a puddle of curious want with just the sound of its voice. No normal man sounded like that, especially not a man in Lady Bea’s creaky old house.

I needed to get out of here. Inching farther backward, I reached behind me, looking for my escape.

I felt the figure watching me, prickling the hair on the back of my neck.

“I’ll ask you a third time, demon, and you must answer. Who are you, what are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Demon am I? Do you think you can ask questions of me, nichi?”

What an ass. Naming me a creature no better than a dog. Definitely a demon. Maybe I looked like nothing, but at the very least, I was human. I knew my worth. How dare he call me that? How dare he sound like that while he did it, all arrogant and rude, while the caress of his voice curled around my insides, melting things that I didn’t know could be melted.

“I’ll say what I want to a person I cannot see.” I snapped back recklessly, resisting the feeling.

In answer, the specter waved his hand, and blue-tinged light illuminated him, revealing a man. Not demon then.

His hood covered his face, param—crystals of power—hanging from his waist. Muddied white dhoti wrap peeking through the folds of a black travel robe.

A priest. The priest. White was the color of the Shaikti Pujar.

“Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be arriving in a couple of days?” I demanded, offended that the man had come early and scared me to death.

“Again, who are you to ask me anything?”

“I’m the person with the keys. So—you don’t have any, and you’re not supposed to be here—for a week.”

He sighed as if greatly put upon, as if I was Chu’chu, yapping at him, scratching at the door. “I am here.”

He said it as if that were explanation enough.

“I can see that.”

“Someone needs to teach you manners, nichi.”

“Not a someone like you.” I spat out my answer. He was a priest. One of the great-big-deal three. A man who had probably had sex with hundreds of women to create conduits and then transfer the generated powerful energy. He knew his way around a woman’s body like no other, used the infamous, holy, twelve paths of wonder. With a voice that melted my insides and an undaunted holier-than-me view of himself that pissed me off.

His kind had failed to protect Deviraj from the Virulence that had killed my family. My mother had served the Queen; she would have known this man, but he hadn’t lifted a finger to come and help us. The white robes hadn’t even left the safety of their temple.

I’d felt indifference when Mrs. Bea told me he was coming here. I didn’t think I’d see him, but now anger replaced all the other mismatched emotions I’d had since waking up that morning.

“You are a demon, then, aren’t you? A liar. A coward. You have nothing to teach me.” My accusations were whispered, but I said them, glaring up at a face I couldn’t see. Why was it covered?

“I think yes, I do. Do you know who I am?” He shed the black of his travel robe and revealed all of the white of his priestly clothing. Bare muscular arms complemented a wide chest covered in the perfect folds of one of the most detailed embroidered waistcoats I’d ever seen. His long dhoti was muddied at the hem as if he’d tromped heedlessly through the night without fear, braving the deepest, sucking sludge without care.

Three steps—his legs were so damn long—and he was right in front of me. There were colored crystals of power tied in carriers at his waist, and they all went pink this close to me, then pulsed into an alarming gold color filled with firefly sparkles.

That had never happened before. What kinds of param were those? What did that mean?

He paused at the color, looking down as if surprised. But only for a moment. Cursing at what he saw, he reached for something else at his waist, a long bone rod. I knew it was used for fighting and, I knew also, for correction.

Did he think he would use it on me?

“I have nothing to do with you. You have no right to touch me.” I laced my words with venom.

“No right?” He sounded incredulous that I would dare.

“I’m here to open the house. You’re not supposed to be here.” My back hit the wall as I tried to escape.

“Woman,” he growled the word.

“That’s nichi to you, Priest.”

He raised his free hand and I flinched, ready for the blow.

Instead, the crystals at his waist glowed bright, star-shine blue in a blinding flash of light. I closed my eyes in reaction, but when I opened them, my face turned to the side, that light was channeled to his open palm and pouring over me. Warm as fresh milk from a cow, impossibly sweet and building as it flowed over my body.

I gasped. Not pain. He didn’t strike with pain. A sex priest.

Pleasure.

That light sank beneath my skin, unwelcomed and unwanted, and went right to every nerve ending I had in a cruelly powerful blast of sensation that stole my breath, freezing a gasp at the edge of my opened, shocked mouth. I fell to my knees, my heart stopped as the cascade of light touched me everywhere at once, pulled every nerve ending tight, and held me there.

“Woman. Nichi. Plague slut. It is all the same to me, isn’t it?” he asked in that splendid voice of his. The low timbre met the light generated by his param and vibrated through my body. My gasp melted to a low, desperate moan.

I’d never felt this. Desire. Interest. Moist curiosity. I was not a child anymore, not a low bit of nothing, but a human woman and I’d felt all those normal needs. Sometimes Dossa would take a customer of the inn outside, at the back of the house, bent over a chair while he lifted her sari and took her from behind. Her appreciative moans and the male encouragement were heard by everyone. I was not unaffected. It made me ache between my legs and in my breast with a desire to be taken by a man of my own.

But I’d never felt it, and I doubted it felt anything like this.

The priest closed his hand, the light went dark, and I fell to the floor at his feet as if he’d cut the threads holding me up, the air of the house washing over me like an icy, angry rain.

“Kata, kata, kata,” I swore as the intense feeling disappeared and left me empty with nothing, just space for the cold to settle on my bones until I hurt with everything I did not have and would likely never get.

“I am Riven, first of the last, Shaikti Pujar. Do not forget it or I will be happy to remind you, nichi.” He stood there, his robes swirling around his bare legs, a king looking at a supplicant.

My head still swimming, I couldn’t answer, couldn’t think of what to say. I was afraid if I tried I could only manage a humiliating croak.

He didn’t wait. Instead, I heard him retrieve his cloak and leave the room, footsteps steady, returning to wherever he’d come from.