Pleasure's Apprentice - 1,001 Erotic Nights 5 by Lisa Cach

Author:Lisa Cach
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2015-10-18T23:00:00+00:00

For two days I pretended to be prostrate with grief, too stunned to do more than silently wander the college buildings and grounds, and to bravely hold back tears when Tanwen took me to the hillock from which she had supposedly cast my mother’s ashes to the wind.

Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Una stalking me, keeping to the shadows and slipping around a corner if I turned to look. A few times I gestured to her or spoke, inviting her closer, but that seemed to alarm her. I sensed that she wanted to observe me while remaining unobserved herself, and that in her own time she would speak to me.

My days of false mourning gave Maerlin and me time to become familiar sights to the women of the college—the “acolytes,” as they were called—our hope being that they’d eventually speak freely when we were near, rather than guarding their words. From them we might get a sense of what Akantha and Tanwen expected of us.

It quickly became clear that the Phanne mother and daughter were held in a holy awe, as if they were goddesses who had temporarily taken mortal form. There was a lot of worry about what would happen when Akantha died, leaving only Tanwen as their head priestess—one goddess plainly being not as good as two. And who would succeed her, when the time came?

Which, Maerlin pointed out, was one possibility for what they wanted. If I believed my mother to be dead, then I would stop trying to find her and be more likely to stay and help run their so-called college.

It seemed a thin reason for such a vicious lie.

“They care only for themselves,” Maerlin had said. “Don’t ever forget that, whatever truth they pretend to tell you.”

As they sought something from us, so we sought things from them. I put on my “still suffering but ready to move on” face and went looking for Tanwen. There was a small part of me that doubted my mother was alive, and that feared Tanwen and Akantha had told the truth; there was a larger part of me that knew they lied and was murderously angry at being manipulated in such a cruel manner for their own ends. It was as evil as their having told Una that Maerlin had raped his sister.

While I approached Tanwen, Maerlin was going to brave Akantha’s bedside. As she was sipping poppy juice throughout the day, we thought she’d be less on her guard, less careful in her answers, especially without Tanwen there to control her. She would also be less coherent, but one had to try. And perhaps reestablishing contact with her estranged son while on her deathbed would soften what Maerlin called her “cold black pebble of a heart” and loosen her lips.

An acolyte brought me to Tanwen in her chamber, a lushly decorated room much like Akantha’s, where the goblets were gold instead of the silver of the hall, the bedding was fresh, and half the room

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