Salt spray stung what little of her face was bare as relentless waves crashed against the shore, her billowy robes rippling in the strong winds. The thin white material was somehow both durable and soft as silk, able to bend and fit to her body without clinging to her skin. Nadia shut her eyes, listening to the pounding of the surf. The other priestesses had never understood her fascination with the ocean, with that immense mass of blue-gray water and changing tides and the little sand crabs that scuttled about on the rocky shore. 

Then again, they were priestesses of fire, keeping the city's burned sacrifices and the hearths of the citizens fueled. The majority of the girls were born and bred street urchins or orphans taken in by the nuns. They had grown up wandering between the marble buildings and across the cobblestone streets, with the odours of horse dung and human refuse mingled with street food that vendors hawked and exotic fragrances sold in marketplaces. Not like her childhood, surrounded by the tang of salt, the warmth of sunshine, the rhythm of the tide. So of course, they would not understand her love of the ebb and flow against the sand and the tide that brought in mysterious creatures of the deep.

Nadia barely felt the cold, flinging her arms out and letting the breeze whip at her clothes, catching her brunette strands and tangling them. When she had first come here as a child she had been rubbing her gloved hands along her arms, teeth chattering, her entire body shivering with the chill. Now she had grown used to it and would come every morning simply to breathe in the salt air, to feel invigorated and alive. Not trapped or guarded by the dozens of matrons who would be watching over her for the slightest sign of injury, even a paper cut.

Only one guard stood sentry at her back, a good distance away but still able to keep her from any harm. As if she might be pierced by some blade or arrow all the way out on this deserted beach. It simply wouldn't happen: her gown covered her from ankle to chin; her boots came over the knee; her gloves were always on and she veiled her face whenever she was out of the temple. No inch of her skin could be exposed to risk.

But she never covered as much when she was by the ocean, trying to escape the suffocating trappings of clothes and guards and surveilling eyes. Nadia stared up at the position of the sun; it was dawn now and she had snuck out when the sky was at its darkest. There were no more minutes left to be out in this peaceful wilderness; she needed to leave and go back for the first ritual ceremony of the day with the rest of the priestesses.

She cast one last look at the grey water, the lightening grey sky, and felt more grey herself as she walked back into the city. Wrapping the veil back around her face and tucking its edges beneath the hood of her cloak, she strolled along the rocky path, gaze fixed upon the ground beneath her feet. Heavy footfalls made her spine stiffen and she stopped to listen. People rarely came along this stretch of the beach, which was why she liked it. But was that rule about to find its exception?

"Good morning," a masculine voice said, and she snapped her head up to see a tall man, his lean frame covered by a black wool coat that ended at the knee and brown knee-high boots. The sharp angles of his face were half in shadow by his hat, but a youthful aura belied his craggy appearance. "I am new to Milona; could you tell me where the temple is? I wish to offer my sacrifices before beginning a new day."

Relief sank in her as she realized her beach wouldn't be taken over. But the wariness that had been drilled into her rose up as she answered him. "I, too, am on my way to the temple. I will guide you there."

"So, fair stranger, what brings you to the temple?" This stranger was far too chatty in his strange accent.

He certainly was from out of town because the few men that did see her, saw a veiled woman and assumed she was either married or a celibate priestess. The veil symbolized a woman's devotion to either a husband or to a religious cause. Though for Nadia it was simply to protect her skin.

"The only part of my body visible is my eyes, sir. I do not think those could be found terribly fair or attractive," she sniped before tensing in regret, hoping her tone had not offended him.

Panic coiled in her stomach. She had been taught self-defence of course as every priestess had, to keep people from defiling the city's sacred fires. But she did not want to be killed out of anger by a strange foreign man who could easily leave and never be brought to justice. Perhaps it would be construed as simple humility, modesty?

"Oh, you would be surprised. Those green eyes of yours..." A smile spread across his handsome face yet the sight tightened an unpleasant knot in the pit of her stomach. "I think they could raise armies, destroy empires, even... burn a city."

Coldness trickled down her back, so harsh that she thought it was ice. But no—it was that frigidity in the man's blue eyes that led her to feel that. His words made her want to ask more questions than she had been taught was safe.

"How very dramatic you are, sir." She paused in front of the oldest temple in Milona, built along the banks of the River Ileana. Canals had been carved around it with a little wrought-iron bridge connecting it to the beach. White marble towered in front of them, ivy crawling over its carved surface. Turrets rose up from its tops, and flanking the temple were courtyards with alcoves and pavilions built around fire pits. "We have arrived. I hope you have a pleasant sacrifice and that your desires are fulfilled by the gods."

That was the routine line parroted out to worshippers. So why did he respond as if she had crafted it especially for him? Those hazel eyes raked her form once and she was glad that it was so thoroughly covered. "I am certain they will be."

She sighed and walked into the temple.

•

"Nadia, you're later than usual," Mari, her roommate, commented as she pulled her linen sleeping shift over her head, smoothing down her dark hair. "What held you up?"

"Mari, I ran into a stranger today who asked me for directions to the temple. But he was so..." With a sigh Nadia flopped down onto her bed, a soft, cushy round affair without any sharp edges or corners. It had been deliberately built that way to keep anything from slicing into her skin, not that it was ever bare. She supposed it was good fortune that kept her extremely modest clothing from suffocating her in the nonexistent Milonian heat.

"He was so strange?" Mari joked, putting on her gold ceremonial bracelets; they stood out against her warm brown skin.

Every priestess wore those bangles but Nadia, yet another part of her and her curse that separated her from the other girls. It had been prophesied at her birth that she could not have her skin cut lest a terrible fate befall her.

"Well, he was!" Nadia protested, rearranging the veil over her face so that it was tucked securely into her collar. "He had such an... unusual way of talking."

"Well, that unusual way of talking could very well lead to us being even later. Hurry up or we'll miss the ceremony, and then Matron Abigail will be awfully upset with us." Mari hopped off of the vanity stool that they both shared, and Nadia straightened the veil one last time before they both left the room and shut the door.

Nadia felt the presence of the second guard—both of them had been rendered mute at one point or another, the standard Milonan form of ensuring their state guards' loyalty for all of eternity—at her back. She had never known their names but named them in her head: the taller one looked like an Ilyas, the older and shorter man she dubbed Jack. They had trailed her ever since she could remember, ever since she had been abandoned at the temple after her mother had heard of the curse laid upon her infant daughter, which had been predicted during a birth ceremony here.

Sometimes she wondered who she would be without this curse. Wondered if her mother would have kept her. Wondered what it would be like to expose more than a few inches of skin at a time, to feel the rain on her face and the sun on her bare skin. Wondered if she would ever know life beyond that stretch of beach, beyond this temple, beyond the ancient, stifling city. The marble walls, the inlaid ceremonial pools of water, the ritual fires, the aroma of herbs being burned for sacrifice, and the heavy robes and veils and guards were all that she had ever known. But wondering was useless. Dreams and wishful thinking, she had long learned, were pointless and only made you even sadder when confronted with harsh reality.

These potted plants, leafy green, spiked, and emanating a sharp, minty scent, were the only ones she would ever encounter. The other priestesses' and the matrons' company were all the company she would ever know. The books in the ancient temple's library were the only ones she would ever read. She had been deposited here, raised here, and she would likely die here. Many priestesses had similar fates but... why did hers feel so stifling? So very much like being born in a cage and growing until there was less and less room between those bars? Until one was completely trapped within those walls?

Perhaps it was only because her life and so many more hindrances and restrictions than the other girls' due to her curse. She was not even allowed to leave the temple during religious festivals when all the other priestesses did. Mari was her only friend and the other girls looked at her as if curses were contagious. Which it might as well have been... who was she to say? She knew nothing of her curse and the matrons refused to speak of it, saying she was too young to understand. Well, Nadia was eighteen. She could have been married with a child if she were not a priestess and yet she was not old enough to understand the circumstances of a curse that affected her and her alone?

It was sad. It was absurd. But there was nothing she could do to change it.

"O great oracle, we beseech you now..." the priestesses began chanting in unison.

She went along with the words as if going through the motions, trying to feel the same spiritual connection that other priestesses had described before. Like the touch of a soothing hand on one's shoulder, a sense of inexplicable peace, even goosebumps. But she only felt—not quite nothing, but a little whisper of something that slipped away from her whenever she reached for it. A thread being drawn away from her over and over, leading her through a labyrinth of sorrow and confusion and frustration.

Mari squeezed her hand through the glove. Nadia, grateful, tore her thoughts away from the dark path she could sense that they were taking, and pretended that she was normal.

That she was not cursed. That she was ordinary. Though she knew it was as far as possible from the truth.