Page 96 of Lesson In Faith

“Christ.” He clasped her face in his hands. “You know that’s never gonna happen, right? He’ll never get his hands on you. Not him, not any of the others. Jasper is working damned hard to get the rest of the women away from that place, darlin’. What happened after you saw Frank and your father?”

Tamsyn leaned into his palms. “I had to keep going, pretend I didn’t suspect anything. I did my chores, I behaved as expected. An hour before the bathing chambers opened for the evening, I told my father I needed to stock up on supplies from the communal pantry for his breakfast the next morning, and that I’d go straight to the chambers from there.”

Jedidiah had sighed and rolled his eyes, she remembered, but given her his blessing.

“When new people join the community, they’re stripped of their belongings. Baggage, clothes, devices… anything that provides a link to the outside world. In accordance with community law, it’s supposed to be destroyed, but there is a trio of elders who miss certain comforts. They keep everything in a disused shed.” She closed her eyes. “I went there instead of the pantry and raided the clothes. Tried to fit as many layers on as I could. After that, I slipped around the back of the shed, down one of the paths my mother showed me when I was younger. She knew all the ins and outs of that place.”

“And you made your way down the mountain.”

“The boots were too big,” she said ruefully, “and even with all those layers, I was still so cold. I ran and ran until I lost the path. I knew if I stopped, they’d find me. If they found me, I would die. There wasn’t any other option.”

“No, there wasn’t.” Merrick stroked his thumb over her cheek until she opened her eyes again. “The cuts and bruises, your wrist…”

She offered him a tentative smile. “I can be clumsy. The fresh injuries were my own doing; I slipped and caught myself on a tree, then stepped on an icy root and… well, the world revolved a few hundred times before a tree broke my roll.”

Merrick grunted in exasperation. “Fuck’s sake, Tamsyn. The old ones, the scars?”

“Jedidiah, the other elders. Trades only have to be intact one way.”

He hesitated for a long minute before speaking, his eyes searching hers. “As long as you’re a virgin, nothing else matters.”

“It’s their holy grail.”

“They can’t police that, surely.”

“Elders are forbidden from touching females until the paperwork is signed—the penalty is death. Boys and girls are usually kept apart from a young age, although there are instances when kids will be kids.” She smiled again, sadly, as she recalled playing in the orchard with Elder Richard’s boys. How old had they been? Four, five? “Touching yourself is most definitely forbidden; the punishment for that is losing a hand.”

Scoffing in disgust, he shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. A hymen isn’t infallible, they know that, right?”

“It doesn’t matter. The only way you get traded is if you have one. If you don’t…” Tamsyn dropped her gaze. “The elders get their pound of flesh and the wildlife gets the rest.”

“I…” Merrick pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is so fucked up.”

She couldn’t disagree with him. Even though she’d been raised from a young age with all this as normal, her mother had made sure Tamsyn understood none of it was right, none of it was normal. Though her actions cost her the rest of her life, her mother had ultimately saved Tamsyn from a similar fate.

Without those early lessons, the walks through the compound and surrounding forest to the boundary lines, Tamsyn would’ve walked blindly into the trap, believing her father’s lies, falling victim to the elders’ pedophilic agenda.

“Wait a minute.” Lowering his hand, Merrick narrowed his eyes at her. “How do they make sure you’re still a virgin? Do they just take their chances on the night?”

Damn it, she should have known he’d sink his teeth into the part of the process she was deliberately withholding. The problem was, with those green eyes so serious and focused on her, she couldn’t even find the threads of a lie to pull together.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He weighed her up, then shook his head. “No, that’s not gonna fly today, darlin’. Not even a little bit. What did they do?”

Gnawing on her lower lip until he popped it free with his thumb, she debated telling him the truth. He’d already warned her he was going to take her back into that medical hellhole todesensitizeher; if he knew the truth of how deep her fear was buried, he wouldn’t stop digging until he unearthed it all.

“Tamsyn,” he murmured, lowering his voice to a croon. “You can tell me.”

Of course, she could. It wasMerrick—she trusted him with every part of herself. Her physical self was all his; some of the mental pieces, she didn’t trust in her own mind.

“If it hurts, it needs to come out. We can deal with it in the open, little owl.”

She shuffled uncomfortably on his lap, well aware the words were about to spew forth whether she wanted them to or not—that was his gift, damn him. The ability to pry open the subtlest cracks and squeeze out what he wanted to know.

“Once a month, we’re required to visit the community doctor, Elder Dinan. He’s the only one trusted by the hierarchy to touch untraded females. He’s been there forever, since before I can remember.” That was as far as her voice would allow.

“It’s okay, Tamsyn. I’m here, he’s not. Give me the rest.”

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