Seven Wishes
The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part ONE
Serena Akeroyd
Copyright © 2019 by Serena Akeroyd
All rights reserved.
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Contents
Dedication
Prologue
1. Eve
2. Eve
3. Eve
4. Frazer
5. Eren
6. Eve
7. Eve
8. Eren
9. Eren
10. Stefan
11. Eve
12. Eve
13. Dre
14. Eve
Afterword
Also by Serena Akeroyd
Dedication
To dad.
For the brainstorming. For the hugs. And for the advice. Oh, and for knowing what Phirat is. ;)
Love you.
Prologue
“For thine God is a jealous god…”
Wanting to roll my eyes at the pious statement, which was the precursor to an endless lecture on why one of the six-year-olds, a boy called Elliot, had to stop running down the hallway of the small schoolhouse where I helped out, I controlled the urge and used his perfidy to slip away from Sister Mary. While I wanted nothing more than to run as Elliot had, I managed to contain myself.
As I usually did.
Life in the New Order was surprisingly easy if one contained oneself, but that wasn’t why I did it. Avoiding punishments, lectures, and beatings was enough for most people to toe the line, but not me.
I had more to hide than most.
More sins than anyone could even begin to imagine.
The small schoolhouse was unnaturally dark thanks to the low ceilings, and as my soft-soled leather slippers slid against the worn wooden floor, I felt as though the white-washed walls were closing in on me. My heart began to pound and my lungs burned as though I weren’t getting enough oxygen inside them as the need to get out of the too-small space overcame me.
Though I tried to contain my panic, some days, it just wasn’t possible. Not when I felt like my mind was about to burst open like an overripe pomegranate.
As I burst through the gable-roofed overhang and out onto the low veranda, the door slammed closed behind me. I jerked in surprise at the overloud noise, then winced as it had the shutters on the windows either side of the door fluttering as the force ricocheted their way.
Quickly peering around, I noticed I was alone, and, thanking God for small mercies, I took a second to calm myself down. Now I was outside with the heavy canopies of the trees sheltering me from the heat of the day, I could breathe a little easier. My lungs stopped burning and I regained the calm I used to control my moods.
I called them that because I didn’t know what else to call them.
If anyone else knew, even my mother and father, they’d call them demons. Would say I was possessed, and perhaps I was. Perhaps that was why I was plagued with these terrors that assailed my body and soul, leaving me with no option other than to hide within the flock of Father Bryan’s sheep.
If I followed each order, stuck to each rule, embracing them more than anyone else ever had, I could control my moods. I could find shelter in a place where I was most in danger.
It was only noon, and I was still needed in the school, but the Sisters knew I was prone to sickness and would forgive me of my need to return home.
Though it was a sin to lie, I used my frail disposition as a means of hiding when the moods overtook me. Unfortunately, it was getting harder and harder to hide them, and I knew the Sisters would tell one of the Brothers soon. I’d be monitored more than ever if that happened.
My illnesses didn’t require medical attention, however, and they knew that, so I doubted I’d be in any danger. Children who needed hospitals and doctors rarely lasted long on the compound. Not because sickness took them either. No, their deaths plagued another’s soul. But in the grand hypocrisy that was life here, that was permitted.
Nothing could endanger the New Order, after all.
Not even a sickly baby.
And as much as the death of an innocent disturbed me, I couldn’t loathe being here anymore than I already did.
Every day, I endured, every day, I struggled.
In my case, however, because no medicine was required for my ‘illness,’ and a nap restored my good humor, I was allowed certain freedoms that the Sisters knew and accepted. If I disappeared at lunch, they knew I’d be back before the end of the day to help out and to assist after school too. I prayed, daily, that my willingness to help would be enough to keep me safe.
A shaky breath escaped me the second I saw someone up ahead in the distance. It was close to lunch bell so most were busy at work. I didn’t need anyone catching me scurrying home so I swiftly hustled my way along the stretch of gravel path that connected each property on the compound.
Four dozen cabins were contained here, each tiny, consisting of no more than four rooms apiece. They were made of roughly hewn logs, the roofs gabled, with no real adornment. Three new cabins were usually constructed each year, and in the distance, I could hear the men hammering nails into the sheets of the new roofs on the cabins that were under construction.
Thankful I wouldn’t pass that area, I scurried past the communal halls where we cooked, ate, and gathered on an evening. These were clapboard, painted white, with bright green shutters that had little cutouts that reminded me of a flower. These halls clustered around a church with a steeple.
The black pitch of the roof looked like it sucked up all the light it was so dark, so well-tended. I sometimes thought the community bribed the birds not to mess on there, as if that was even possible. Still, I wouldn’t have put it past them. The men who tended the roof were prouder of that then their own children, and the sin of pride was allowed when it came down to the church. Irony of ironies—not that anyone seemed to appreciate it.
As I glanced over the white walls of our house of worship, they gleamed in the low sun, so bright it hurt my eyes, and it was a relief to walk away from them and onward to the back of the compound where my cabin was located.
Moving down the path had chunks of gravel biting at the soft soles of my slippers, and as my pace quickened, the white skirt of my gown flapped against my legs. The wind picked up, forcing my brown cape higher so that it soared behind me. While a nuisance, it made me feel like I was flying, and on some days, that might have been a welcome respite, but today? It was anything but.
The sensation was freeing, but it was exactly what I wasn’t. I wasn’t free. There was no freedom anywhere on the compound.
Though I wanted to raise my arms and let the wind cling to me, let it cool down my overheated body that was still wrestling with the panic I’d felt at being enclosed in the small schoolroom, I didn’t. Couldn’t. If I did, and someone saw me, it would be noted. Everything was noted down that was out of the ordinary, and I couldn’t afford to be anything other than a dark stain amid the shadows.
The reminder was exactly what I needed. I didn’t have the luxury of freedom. My brain clicked into gear, making maintaining my blank face easy. Since I’d learned to shield everything—my thoughts and feelings—from ever showing in my expression, I had become a blank canvas by choice.
Two months to go.
The four words were a prayer of my own.
Two months until I’m eighteen.<
br />
Until I could leave this place. Until I was free.
I wanted to shudder but didn’t. There was no relief to be found just yet.
The gravel crunched under my feet, but I tilted my head back as a sunbeam drenched me in its warmth. After the sharp cold from the wind, it was a delicious sensation that made me want to curl up like a cat in a ball.
“If that isn’t the prettiest picture I’ve seen in a long time.”
The words had disgust whispering through me, and though I swiftly tipped my chin forward to stare at the man whose interest was becoming unavoidable, I allowed one emotion to bleed through my expression.
Embarrassment.
I knew Father Bryan would take that for chastity, for humility, for self-deprecating shyness in the face of a man of his stature’s interest.
I allowed myself to catch and be held by his gaze for a second, but I quickly ducked my head and dipped into a curtsey. It meant my glance grazed over his light blue shirt which bulged against his belly, his pants too, with only the belt keeping things proper. I forced my eyes lower, flinching away from the sight of the leather belt that had whipped me far too many times for me to count, and studied his matching black leather shoes.
“Thank you, Father,” I murmured softly, keeping my voice low-pitched. Today was not a good day to talk. I wasn’t sure why, but certain days, when I spoke, the words or the pitch did something to men around me. It was unnerving to find myself the center of their attention when I did my best to blend into the background.
To my left, I could see Sister Josephine peering at me through her cabin window. I didn’t like Sister Josephine. She was Father Bryan’s latest wife, and our dislike was mutual. She would often glower at me when she saw me around the compound.
I knew that if she ever became aware that I was unusual, even to a small degree, she’d make me pay for the break in my control.
A whipping wouldn’t be the result, however. If they knew the true extent of my situation, they’d bestow the ultimate punishment upon me.
Death.
I didn’t even have it in me to tremble as I ignored Father Bryan’s wife, and focused on the man himself. His wrinkled skin was loose about his face as he studied me like I studied the roast chicken on my plate at dinner time—with hunger.
But his variance of hunger? It had my stomach churning.
“You’re welcome, child.” He called me that, but I knew he was thinking the same thing I had been a few moments before—two months to go.
Father Bryan liked me. I knew because he complimented me often, and though my parents were low in the compound’s ranking, these past two years, since I’d blossomed from teenager to woman, he’d taken to speaking with them, dealing with them more frequently. They’d gone from pews at the back of the church to the middle, and everyone knew what that meant.
Most might think me simple because I remained quiet, demure. But I wasn’t. I was no fool.
He wanted me.
I was to be wife number seven.
“May I serve you in any way?” I asked quietly, trying to contain my voice once more.
“No, child. But, are you well?” I believed he was the reason my need for naps was accepted, so I knew what he was asking.
“Yes, Father. I just need to rest a little.”
He tutted, then reached forward to cup my cheek. I wanted to flinch but didn’t as, with his thumb, he rocked my head backward. The movement dislodged the stiff headdress that covered my dark brown hair, allowing a thick clump of rich, chestnut locks to be whipped away in the breeze.
All the while, Sister Josephine was watching, her gaze making the tiny hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge.
He reached up and tucked those wayward strands of mink hair behind my ear, and the tender skin reacted to his touch in a way that had me forcing an unnatural stillness to my expression.
If he sensed my revulsion, that was it.
My life was over.
I must have succeeded in hiding my disquiet because his thumb carried on tracing over my jawline, tilting me this way and that until I was looking at him square in the eye. There was a heat in his gaze that belonged in no religious text I’d ever come across, and in this place, there was only one that counted.
Still, Father was the head of our people. I knew my mother would slap me if another man touched me like this, if another man looked at me this way, but it was Father Bryan, therefore I should be proud to hold his attention.
Especially if it meant they’d be seated closer to the altar upon our marriage.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I stared back at him, aware that the blush on my cheeks was blooming brighter than ever. How I’d even come to his attention, I had no idea.
“We must pray together, child,” Father Bryan said gently. “Would you like that?”
Did I look like a fool?
“To pray with you would be an honor,” I rasped out the lie.
“I will arrange it with your parents. Prayer and God’s will shall ease your suffering, child.”
“I’m not suffering, Father,” I quickly told him, not wanting him to think I needed a doctor. “I just need to rest before I overdo things.”
“There are ways of building your stamina.” He licked his lips. “In time, I will teach you these things.”
Things of the flesh.
“I’d be—” The words sounded flatter than I’d liked so instead, I gushed, “Honored.”
His smile made my skin crawl like a million ants were scurrying down my limbs. “I’m sure you would be. Now, run along. Get some rest. The Sisters informed me of your fatigue, and I wished to see for myself that all was well.”
To make sure I wasn’t defective.
Even though he wanted me, I’d never survive the day if he viewed me as a threat.
I dipped another curtsey, and although I wanted to flee, I didn’t. I kept a regular pace as I stepped further down the path, processing the fact that the Sisters had already spoken of my continuing need for naps with a Brother who had informed the Father himself.
This time, I felt like my heart was about to beat out of my chest in panic. My skin felt flushed and dizziness hit me, but even as I contained the terror that filled me, I knew on the outside I looked normal. Sister Margaret smiled kindly at me as I passed her on the gravel path. Brother Jacob nodded at me, as did Brothers James and John.
They were all I saw though, and I was thankful for it.
With our low status, my cabin was far from the central properties on the compound. But with each step, I felt as though I was heading deeper into the spider’s web, and that was my home—but it was most certainly not my haven.
I was trapped here, stuck until my eighteenth birthday. That was the only day I’d be allowed off the compound to sign on for something the Father called Welfare, before I was returned here, and would live and die here.
That was my only chance to escape.
The terror I lived with was a constant companion, wrapping me so tightly in its confines that I felt its chill like an embrace, until, that is, I was about a hundred yards from my house.
That was when I heard it.
The voice.
The trees on either side of the compound whistled in the air, but the voice seemed to entwine with the wind itself, forming a kind of poetry I’d never encountered before. The branches swayed as they danced, making me wish I could move with them, lose myself to that timeless beat.
I stepped closer to the house, knowing that was where the voice came from. I needed to hear more. To be nearer to it.
What on earth was it? Who among my family had a voice like that?
A visitor?
Unheard of, but still, I’d have recognized anyone who spoke this way.
The cabin was small, constructed out of the same roughly hewn logs that every other cabin was built of. The trees in the forest that surrounded our home not only sheltered us from the outside world, the inclement heat of summer, but were also our source of fire
in winter, and the material with which we made our homes. Three planed planks were forged together with wrought iron hinges, beside it there was a window that peered out onto the arterial gravel path. It had a roof that leaked no matter how hard my father worked to stop it. There were four rooms—a washroom and three sleeping rooms. One for my parents, one for my sister and I before she’d wed, and the latter for my brother before he’d moved to his own as well.
When Father Bryan and I eventually married, my parents would move to a smaller cabin to give a larger family in need of the space this home. That was another reason they were eager for the nuptials. If they could have forced me to wed our leader now, I was under no doubt that they would have because the roof was my father’s nemesis—one that always beat him.
“Eve is a special child, is she not?”
Though I was too far away to be able to hear the words, I still caught them. It was like the wind brought them to me. Like whoever was speaking wanted me to hear.
“A very special child. We’re very proud of her.” That was my father. He did sound proud, ironically enough, but there was something strange about his tone.
Did he sound dazed? My brow puckered, even as I hurried my pace, scurrying closer to catch every word. I didn’t want to miss anything this person had to say, not when my whole body responded to the visitor’s voice like a physical caress.
“I have an opportunity for Eve. A chance for you to be even prouder of her. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
With every step I took, I heard the nuances in the voice. I already knew it was a woman, but more than that, I heard the lilt to the words. The cadence. A melody. She made her conversation a song, a song that I could dissect.
Understand.
Seven Wishes: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part ONE Page 1