Page 1 of Godbound
If I had a coin for every time I stood up against the lashing of a cursed woman, I’d still have none. Because the Church says sinners deserve their penance. And my conscience? It screams I’m a coward.
The sun glares down as I rattle along in an open carriage, headed to yet another punishment. Another noble girl, dragged out for daring to shame herself with a man before marriage. Ten years of swallowed protests scrape like rust in my throat.
A trickle of sweat slips between my breasts, and I curse the chafing neckline of my modest dress. It presses so high it feels like it’s trying to choke me.
“You’ll tear your dress if you keep clawing at the neckline, Lady Raylane,” my duenna, Eleanor, says from across the carriage. She’s my assigned protector of virtue, which means talking back isn’t just useless, it’s punishable. Especially on a day like this.
So I drop my hands into my lap and fold them, demure as a sermon. Days ago, this dress didn’t bother me at all. But ever since Peonica hurled her angry words at me, nothing sits right. Least of all this dress, like it’s trying to choke me with the virtue I’m supposed to uphold. One I can’t seem to wear anymore.
“How many times can you cry over the same thing?”Peonica had asked exasperated, after catching the angry tear I thought I’d hidden when I was ordered to attend this lashing.“You cry, you look away, and then you cry again. At some point, you either admit you’re a coward like the rest of us or you stop crying and do something about it.”
Something brittle had snapped inside me at her words, and I haven’t been able to piece it back together since.
The carriage rattles over loose stones again, and my gaze snaps to the dried remains of some small animal by the roadside, wildflowers sprouting from its ribs. The world feeding on its own dead. Something about it feels like mockery which sends snarls of defiance twisting hot around my spine—a desperate refusal to stay complicit one second longer.
My voice cuts through the air before I even realize I’m going to speak.
“Stop.”
The young man driving us glances back, uncertain, as if he’s not sure if he misheard me.
My duenna jerks upright and snaps her fingers, signaling him to keep going. He obeys sheepishly, still, the reins slacken slightly in his hands.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Eleanor demands, as if she’d been waiting for my misstep from the moment we entered the carriage.
My palms sweat, and before I can stop myself, I blurt the words again, louder now. “I said stop!”
This time, the driver jerks the reins. The wheels lurch sideways on the loose stones.
I practically leap from the carriage, not waiting for the footman to open the door and assist me. My trembling hands gather the pure white strands of my hair, lifting them to let the cool breeze kiss the back of my neck as I walk back.
I hear the rustle of skirts and the shuffle of footsteps as Eleanor, I assume, climbs out of the carriage to follow me.
“Lady Raylane,” my duenna calls out gruffly behind me. “Are you unwell?”
I stop just a few feet from the dead creature—a poor mink, from the looks of it—and lift my face to the bright blue sky.
Beyond the dense wall of birch trees, the roar of the Bluerush River reaches me, loud even here, so far away.
I listen, envious of its freedom. Its rage has space to exist—to crash, to thrash, to be heard. Mine hasn’t reached anything, barely even my own conscious thoughts. It just coils tighter inside me, all noise with nowhere to go.
“No, Eleanor,” I say, my voice low and raw. “I’m not well. I haven’t been for a long time.” My hands fall, and my hair slips back into place, brushing low on my back. When I turn, she’s gesturing for others to stay back, as if shielding them from my defiance. “Areyouwell, knowing what we’re going to see?”
She exhales through her nose, fingers smoothing down her skirts with rehearsed restraint.
“Might I remind you, Lady Raylane, that the future queen’s place is at the king’s side, not staging a roadside spectacle.”
“The future queen,” I drawl through my teeth, “does not wish to sit and smile while Brienne is whipped like a dog in front of an audience of fools.”
Eleanor takes a deep, suffering breath that reminds me that she’s old enough to be my grandmother.
“What is this really about, my lady? Your defiance flies in the face of your good fortune.” She suddenly sounds tired, drained of the energy to argue.
My frequent antics, as she calls them, are too much for a woman of her age.
But then Eleanor reaches for the Borrowglass hanging around her neck, a silent reminder that she carries a glass vial filled with god-magic, entrusted to her by the Archpriest with full authority to unleash it if she decides my purity is in danger, even if it means using it against me.
My insides knot. She could call out the vines from the ground, bind me, and drag me back to the carriage before I take another breath.
