“I spent six years under Farren’s control, and I remember that time with immense clarity.

  He wanted me to give him children. I didn’t want to, and I also couldn’t. So.

  Almost every night, he raped me. Of course, then, it wasn’t called rape. I was his. Forcing one’s wife was only frowned-upon but not considered an infringement of the law. The proper name for the heinous act he committed against me only came into its due use with the surge of the Mantis.

  The first time it happened, on our wedding night, I didn’t even know what he was doing to me. Nobody had ever explained it. I thought he was just hurting me out of cruelty, for no reason. I later found that there were several reasons, and his being cruel was but one of them.

  Not only did he want children, he needed them. He was an outsider in a small, established community of generational farmers, and he had no family to show for himself. None of his neighbors and potential clients would welcome him into their homes and financial ledgers with that reputation.

  His long-time partner, Ulises, had a wife and daughter, and he fared much better in the new, undiscovered market. That’s where Farren got the idea, I’m sure. Ulises had quickly gained the faith of a vineyard family and started earning a commission for his counsel almost immediately upon settling in Renlym. But Farren was a disagreeable, ill-tempered fellow, and none wanted to be in business with the likes of him.

  That’s why he acquired me in the first place: to make a family he could display and use to clear his name among the clueless provincials he needed to leech off of.

  But I was a bad purchase. It took him years to accept that.

  At first, he seemed convinced that I was too young and that eventually my body would recognize its purpose and deliver what it promised. Then, we went through a period of time when he believed I was doing something to avoid conceiving him a child, taking some secret measure to induce miscarriage. He tried hurting that information out of me, but there was no confession to find. Even if I’d known how to avoid becoming pregnant, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it. Words were never enough to reach that man, though. He did his own research regardless of my insistence that I hadn’t done what he accused me of.

  When he was finally certain that our failure to produce offspring was only my fault in a way that could not be changed, his abuse toward me turned less purposeful and more punitive.

  Six years he had me. I kept his house in order and cooked his meals, and not much else. I did the tasks that were assigned to me like one would any other job, efficiently and emotionlessly. I suppose I wasn’t a very good wife to him. But I didn’t know how to be one, and I had no desire to learn. He was ugly and smelly. His stubble always grew thick and sharp, and it would rub painfully against my skin when he touched me. He disgusted me. I could never understand how other women in my situation stomached it—how they could ever learn to love the men they were given to.

  It was just a matter of luck for those of us who didn’t get to choose. That’s the explanation I lacked, then. You could get a good husband, or a bad one, and I’d only been unlucky in getting him for a spouse.

  It was all for the best, I think. Or, at least, so I can say now.

  I did fight him, when he forced me. I think I fought him every single time, for over two years, until I understood I was only making it worse for myself. I admit that that realization took long to come.

  I was so weak. I couldn’t have hurt him if I was armed. I was green and soft, entirely harmless, and yet I recall trying my absolute hardest to defend myself in whatever way occurred to me. I bit him, scratched him, kicked and slapped and pulled at hair and anything else I could get my hands on. I spat on him and soiled myself to repulse him away. I swear I tried it all.

  He liked it.

  Today, I know that. As the person I am now, I can see the stupidity in my actions. But my young mind back then was incapable of recognizing that level of perversity.

  He loved it. The more I fought him, the more he wanted me, because he liked to hurt and punish me, to overpower and dominate me. My resistance made it all the sweeter for him.

  I was inadvertently feeding his sick desires with my struggling.

  When I eventually came to the awful conclusion that allowing him to have me would lessen my suffering, I cried. I cried for days when I admitted it to myself. I couldn’t stop crying, for that was my surrender, and it felt like it.

  And so I gave myself up, physically and mentally abandoned myself there. The girl I once was, the innocent person I’d had a right to be who went by the name of Sitryn died with that yielding. Farren kept her to himself, and I let him, because I couldn’t be her anymore.”

  Mantis rode into that village at breakneck speed and headed straight for her target.

  She wasn’t herself. It didn’t matter. Nothing but he mattered.

  She hardly noticed where she was headed as she approached the tall, sturdy building of gray cobblestone where he was housed. It was the village council.

  Mantis dismounted Otto and approached the heavy wooden door of the main entrance. It was latched. She knocked loudly with a fist. A few breaths that felt like days passed before an old man’s face appeared through the small hatch that opened at eye level on the door. He seemed annoyed at first, and when he recognized who was staring back at him, his eyes widened with alarm. “What—what do you want?”

  “In.” Mantis sought for a word that would agree to come out. Her control over her own body and mind was teetering on a fine line.

  He deliberated for too long. Mantis shot a link through the door’s aperture and wrapped it around his neck securely. She could feel his blood pulsing in his veins and the fear sweat that broke on his loose, wrinkled skin. With a minute flick of her wrist, he could be dead in a blink.

  “Don’t, no! Please. I-I will open the door. I will let you in. Don’t kill me! Please. Don’t kill me.” As he begged, he moved to undo the latch. Mantis retreated and waited, trembling slightly from head to toe.

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  As soon as the path to her target was cleared, she moved, hardly noticing her surroundings as she traversed the hallways of the sober administrative building. The soul she yearned for was beaming vividly for her in a chamber behind closed doors in the back.

  Mantis barged in to meet him. He was alone with another man in an archival space filled with cabinets and scrolls, sitting at a worn chestnut desk and poring over a document.

  “What do you think you’re doing? This is a private—”

  “Ah. There’s the whore’s spawn, at last.” Her prey interrupted the other man, who’d turned to her with surprise and outrage. He put on a brave face of acid amusement and accepted his fate. “I wondered if you’d come for me someday. Took you long enough!” He forced out a bitter laugh.

  Then he uttered his last sound when a choked gasp escaped from his throat. Mantis’s link absorbed the vitality of his spirit straight out of his still-pumping heart with a movement of her slack hand hanging at her side. She felt him come up her limb and enter her own heart like a dense muck traveling through her body and merging with the marrow of her being. A shiver ran down her lower back all the way through her legs with the gut-wrenching disgust the sensation stirred in her. Finish it.

  With a few steps into the room, Mantis reached the soulless corpse. She was only peripherally aware that the other man had exited in terror as she hastened to complete her task. Her prey had caved in on the chair where he’d been sitting with his head hanging loose on his shoulders and his torso bending in on itself. Mantis used a single stiffened finger to push against his sweat-sticky forehead and raised his head up to bare his face for her mouth.

  In that instant of deep hatred and hunger, it was all she wanted in the world to consume his essence. She longed to defile him even in death, to deny him the benefit of a clean and respectful end. She’d already stolen his life’s spark, and now she’d also take what had made him a person. His every thought and inkling of individuality would be hers, irrevocably made into fuel and used to perpetuate the continued hunt for his kind. It was a most dishonorable end for a man fully deserving of one.

  But, beyond all else, Mantis needed to see for herself what he’d done. She dreaded the harrowing experience of living his past through his eyes, but she knew that only the blissful pain of his memories could ever truly satiate her, for it would give her torturous existence a most needed validation and rekindled passion to keep going.

  She lowered her lips to one of his eyes and released her thicker mouth link into his skull. The sharp tip of her protrusion punctured the hard barrier of his cornea and passed easily through his gelatinous eyeball to dig deeper. When her questing appendage reached the soft tissue of the brain, Mantis sucked in and felt the familiar sensation of his knowledge-laden flesh being absorbed into her body. With it came an immediate understanding of his motives and reasoning, his preferences and beliefs. All the man had ever been and known liquefied into a revolting delicacy for Ombira and slogged down Mantis’s throat to make its way into her belly, where it would be converted into pure and delicious human energy.

  The process always took longer than Mantis wished it would, but that could not be helped. When the scum-pile of a man was finally gone from the world and existed only within the confines of her own body, Mantis separated her face from his empty shell and turned to leave. His people could deal with what remained of him. She was in too much distress to care about that.

  In normal circumstances, Mantis would judge how to dispose of a body more accordingly. If family was involved, she usually strove to make a target’s corpse disappear instead of burdening innocents with the revelation of their loved one’s wickedness. At times, she was able to lure a man away inconspicuously and make his death look like an unfortunate occurrence rather than a repayment for a foul crime. She’d bury, burn, or hide a corpse when she could. Otherwise, Mantis left them out for their people to do with as they pleased.

  This particular rapist had had a family, and she would have ordinarily attempted to dispose of him in a way that wouldn't inform them of what he’d been. But many had seen her, and she was in an unspeakable amount of discomfort to deliver him to her awaiting Goddess, so they’d just have to learn of his true nature. It had to be.

  They wouldn’t know the full story of his infringement against another, however. They’d have to continue to live with that uncertainty, unlike Mantis, who knew very well what this man had done years before, on a cold winter’s night. He’d spent the last of his coin on drink and later forgotten about it. When he’d gone to visit a prostitute and found himself unable to pay in advance as was customary, humiliated and inebriated, he’d decided to enjoy her services regardless of her refusal to have him. The next day, he’d returned to the brothel and paid for what he’d stolen, and been too easily forgiven by the madam of the house with a stern warning to her frequent customer to not break her rules again. But some misdeeds could not be absolved with simple repayment.

  He’d yet had to pay his debt to the Mantis.

  When she was finished draining the man of all his value, including the decent coin pouch he’d been carrying and a small gold earring in his earlobe, Mantis made haste to exit the building. Otto was waiting patiently outside the council with his head lowered to the ground, looking for grass to graze on. He’d be able to rest soon, Mantis promised herself with a sharp stab of shame. She walked over to him and rummaged in her smallest saddlebag for a strip of dried fruit among her depleted stash. She found a bite-sized piece and quickly brought it to her mouth. When its sweet, if slightly stale, flavor spread through her tongue, Mantis released a sigh of relief and swallowed.

  Several men watched her mount her horse and leave. They were furious but wise enough to keep quiet. At their feet, and scattered on the ground beyond, someone had dropped petals of a red flower, and Mantis almost gave a humorless snort of laughter at the symbolism of it. The now trampled petals tried to glow red with their natural beauty, but the filth and mud of the busy street coated them and threatened to bury them entirely under the angry mob’s boots.

  On her way out of the village, Mantis encountered her forgotten charges wearily arriving at the settlement. They did not look good. Mantis felt another sudden jab of guilt.

  Teela was muddied and bedraggled. Her long black hair was tied up into a sort of knot at the nape of her neck with a veritable cloud of strays flying over and around her head. She had dark circles under her youthful eyes and her complexion had grown pale and Sun-tanned at the same time. Her brother holding the reins in front of her looked no better. Leroh’s curly brown hair was drenched in sweat and a light coating of sparse whiskers had grown on his neck and jaw. His face was grim.

  Mantis could smell them both from where she sat astride her horse. She herself didn’t smell that much better.

  “There is an inn on the right-hand side of that house there.” She said as a way of greeting and pointed to a nearby one-story building. She dug in her pocket for a couple of loose silver coins and tossed them to the boy. “Take your sister there. Ask for bathwater for the both of you. And food. I’ll join you shortly.”

  The children looked astounded, either by her communicating with them or her offer of money. They stared at her, wide-eyed, for a long moment. Then, of course, Teela asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To meet with my God.”

  “You killed a man for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to come,” the girl declared.

  “Oh, son of a rabid dog. Teela, no! Why would you want to do that?” Her brother turned to glare at her over his shoulder.

  “I want to see.”

  “What is wrong with you, girl?” Mantis shook her head with disapproving astonishment.

  “What is wrong with you? I need to know,” Teela answered earnestly, her brow deeply furrowed. “Perhaps your Goddess has an answer.”

  “This is a private affair. You are not welcome to follow me.”

  “I will, anyway.”

  “No.” Leroh chimed in. “I will take you to that inn now. We will bathe and eat and then go home. Don’t you want food, Teela? Don’t you want to rest and clean yourself? Why would you want to continue meddling in the Gods’ business!”

  “I must go with Mantis. And if you try riding away, I will jump off the horse.” She threatened him and then turned to meet Mantis’s eyes, angry and determined. “I am coming to see your Goddess. I want to speak to her.”

  “No,” Mantis said.

  But she had to recognize that her resolve was fraying. She understood Teela’s stubbornness all too well, and Ombira was calling to her like a starving newborn demanding to be fed. It was a grating, constant rattling against her senses. She could not ignore it much longer. “Oh, for the Moon’s shimmering tits. Fine, then. Hurry.”

  Before she’d even finished speaking, Mantis pushed Otto to a trot and then a light gallop. She headed for the nearest copse of trees outside the small community.