I was born a rarity and since the day it was discovered, I have been sheltered. To keep my skin pale, my hair red, I was locked away from the sun's rays. Because of the marking of my hair it was known that I would join the Queen's harem, but what it actually meant I had no idea. My education was not like that of my sisters.
They were made to weave cloth, learn the art of strategy and battle, learn trades and land management. My brothers were taught the arts and made servile for their future wives. I was given knowledge.
My own mother had died upon my birth and my father was little more than a handsome face and trained muscles, so a tutor was brought in. It was a man, a man the villagers referred to as "light keeper," but the meaning of that was never explained.
He was tall and thin, not as bulky as the other men his muscles were long and lean and natural, his face all hard angles, his eyes harsh or kind depending on the light, or my mischief. All day long I was taught the history of our elders the science of our brethren, the politics of modern day. I learned ledgers and ciphering, languages and philosophy, and strange arts.
My brothers were taught fighting and dancing so as to please their future wives, some arts not taught to women, but what I learned was very similar. I learned things no one else knew, secrets of the elders I was sworn to uphold.
It seemed every age brought a ritual, and like all things I was made to look forward to them at night. My first Equinox Vernal I was baptized into the Order of the Moon, a religion only practiced by the High Priestesses of Caldor, the capital city a thousand miles away. My second, a tree was planted in the village center in my honor. My third a new kind of rose was sent from Caldor, bred by the High Gardener herself. My fourth I passed the trials of Caldor, becoming a low priestess. My fifth brought my tutor, at my sixth my hair was cut for the first time. On my seventh there was a draught and they sacrificed two white bulls to me while I blessed the fields. Our harvest was large.
My eighth and I became a page to Lady Callie Marlowe, who had fought as a knight in the battle of Treole, my ninth and I became a published poet. At my tenth I sacrificed two bulls by my own hand so thirty women could have babies, my eleventh I became a healer of the village. My twelfth and I celebrated womanhood on the Equinox Vernal, as if it had been ordained. I was told it was.
That made me a high priestess. My thirteenth brought the markings around my ankles, braided tattoos that resembled restraints. My fourteenth and my Tutor brought me to the capital of our province with Callie Marlowe, and I was made a knight. My fifteenth and I joined the hunt. My sixteenth and I took a paige to train, my seventieth and I learned how to dance the dance of eight veils, a dance no other woman I knew hand learned.
Then my eighteenth came.
My tutor was named Cassipe, a man who'd been born and raised in Caldor as a servant to the queen, the old queen. The new queen had come to power during my twelfth year after the old one had passed. When Cassipe mourned her for ten days I knew he had been one of her men.
The Queen was forbidden to marry, forbidden to have children. She kept a harem of men and women to see to her needs, at that time I had no idea what that meant, and queens were chosen by merit and beauty from the harem.
When this was explained to me I began to realize I was being groomed to be a contender, but seeing as the new queen and I were only six years apart that seemed unlikely.
The old queen died a month before the Equinox Vernal and with every year the day was marked by a quiet Cassipe. When I was seventeen Vernals he was silent from that anniversary until the night when we all aged another year.
A year earlier I had been given my own servants, two girls from the village three years younger than I and forbidden to speak to me. Or they were supposed to be, but we talked openly. On the Vernal night they were ordered by my tutor to bathe me, dress me in thin white robes, and to bring me to the temple of the moon that had been built for me in the back of our gardens. Cassipe ordered my father to keep all of his remaining children inside the main house and I alone walked in the gardens.
Both moons were high, casting such a bright pink-blue glow that the torches were extinguished. I was shivering in the night air, unsure of what to expect. I never knew what would come, but so far my surprises had all been good.
I entered the temple to find it lit by what seemed like a thousand candles, all white tapers with perfectly gold flames. The roof was opened to the twin moons, shining their blue and pink light down onto the large altar that sat in the middle of the room. That night it had been covered in pillows and draped with white silk, fringed with gold.
Behind the altar stood Cassipe in a robe like my own, white with gold trim. It seemed strange to see him in the color as white was forbidden by all but the Priestesses to wear. The first time I had worn a white gown Cassipe had looked up from the breakfast table at me and pronounced it was to be all I wore.
He was tanned like a lowborn farm laborer and the white made his skin seem even darker a bronze, a shade closer to his dark eyes. His hair was blonde but the sun had made it almost white long ago, and tonight his long hair was loose and flowed into the robe as if they were one.
He was fifteen Vernals older than I, and a complete autocrat who taught me total obedience to him and the order, but that had not stopped my tender feelings. He was quite handsome, sought after by all the local women, but for eighteen years he had refused them all in order to raise me.
After the last Equinox Vernal, on a hunt, I had looked at him too long, and he had ordered that I never look him in the eye, so I fixed my gaze on his chin.
"Virtal, tonight you are eighteen Vernals."
I said nothing as I had not been solicited. The sense of obedience was commanded only by him, as even the mayor and governor were my inferiors. I wondered, not for the first time, how our statuses would be in Caldor. I secretly suspected he would also be my inferior.