Chapter 32

Sarah POV

That is, I knew nothing until I woke up. It was nice at first. The bed was pleasant, so white and soft.

Then I thought of a poem: “The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them.”

With a groan, I rolled over and buried my face in a pillow. Oh, goddess. They had to have drugged me, but I still said all those things! I talked about Zane’s body!

Not only that, I talked about his body in detail! I made comments about how great his butt looked!

The memory attacked me: “I would fight armies to be worthy to stand by his side.”

I groaned again, took several deep breaths, and then made myself open my eyes back up and look around.

I was in, of course, a small white room, though there were bits of color here and there. For one thing, there was a small high window through which I could see the blue sky, and there were blue flowers on the nightstand next to a small silver lamp. I must be in the living quarters, I thought, relieved that at least I was no longer in the temple.

After a bit, when I could no longer pretend I wasn’t stalling, I got up. I found another white robe, though this one was thicker than the last and had no hood, draped across a small white oak chair. Picking it up, I found my underwear, washed and dry and waiting for me. There were also some comfortable ballet-style slippers.

Dressed as much as I was going to be dressed, I walked out the white oak door and down a straight corridor where I could follow the smell of coffee and the sound of people talking.

I ended up in a communal dining hall. About a dozen Oracles (not wearing hoods now and using their hands freely) were there having breakfast along with a handful of priests. Conversation paused as I walked in, but no one looked hostile.

“Good morning, Sarah,” said a gray-haired but still lovely she-wolf I thought might have been the Oracle from the day before. Zane was sitting next to her. “Help yourself.” She waved toward the side table loaded with two coffee urns and breakfast foods.

“Thank you,” I said and made my way over, keeping an eye on Zane, who was giving me a neutral smile. Conversation resumed. I heard talk of the upcoming lunar cycle.

I got coffee, toast, and some fruit, and then I turned to see the Oracle who had greeted me gesturing to join her and Zane.

As soon as I sat across from them, however, the Oracle stood up. “You will wait here until the tribunal,” she announced, then took her dishes to the side table to place them there, bowed to the room, and then left.

Within two minutes all the others but Zane and I had followed, and we were alone. I sipped at my hot coffee and tried not to burn my tongue.

“Tribunal?” I asked finally, cursing him a bit for making me speak first.

“They call everything that,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. They’ll ask us questions, and we’ll answer them as best we can.”

I looked at him through coffee steam. “Just that simple, is it?”

He made a defeated expression. “All right. I have no idea what’s going to happen. The only thing I know is we both have to be completely honest.”

I tried to meet his eyes and failed. I closed my own. I couldn’t be honest with anyone until we had sorted something out.

“Speaking of honesty, I have to tell you something about yesterday,” I said. “When we were led down different hallways, I—”

“I saw you standing naked in the bath,” Zane said in a rush.

I stared at him.

“I take it you saw me?” he asked.

“Er, yes.”

We both sat there for a moment. I looked at my coffee.

“Did you like what you saw?” he asked almost bashfully.

I stared at him again, and then I started to laugh. He joined in, and then we were both laughing crazily.

“They drugged my tea!” I managed to gasp out.

“Mine too! And then they asked me what I thought of, well, you standing there naked in the bath!”

“I recited from a poem,” I confessed.

“Which one?”

“I Sing the Body Electric!”

We burst into laughter again. It died down eventually, and then I could drink the rest of my coffee and got up to get more. Zane held up his cup hopefully, and I refilled us both.

“You’re a very attractive woman,” Zane said when I sat back down. “Other than that, and that I have eyes, I’m not sure what the point of the whole thing was.”

“Maybe if we had nefarious intentions the situation would have made us talk about them,” I suggested.

“I suppose.” Zane leaned in close and whispered. “They could have just asked.”

I nodded, and in a comfortable silence we both finished breakfast.

Not long after that, an Oracle I hadn’t seen before came to ask us to follow her. I expected we would go back into the temple, but instead we ended up in what would have looked like a boardroom of a Fortune 500 Club member if there hadn’t been so much white.

At the head of the table sat the Oracle who had spoken to me before flanked by two other Oracles. They were all mature with in undyed gray or graying hair, and there was absolutely no sign of regalia or other indications of status, but it was still clear the Oracle in the middle was the boss.

“You are Zane Cavendish?” she asked in a tone that managed to sound formal and casual at the same time.

“Yes.”

“And you are Sarah Astor?”

“Yes.”

“Who were your parents, Sarah?”

“I have no idea. I grew up in foster families.”

The Oracles all nodded. They obviously knew all about me.

“Name each of your foster parents and tell us how they treated you, what values they instilled in you, and what you think was their best and their worst qualities.”

Oh, goddess. This was going to take forever. I was starting to wish I hadn’t drunk all that coffee.

Indeed, I spoke for a solid half-hour before they seemed satisfied. After that, it was questions about my schooling, my employment, my ideas about what made a good home, and then highly detailed, step-by-step explanations about how Chloe came into my life.

Fortunately, once I had discussed the tall man I had seen, they turned to Zane for a while, and he spoke about the murder of Marshal Kim and the investigation he was doing to help the police.

The Oracles nodded through it all. Surely, I thought, they didn’t know all of this already, but you couldn’t tell. Their faces were portraits of serenity.

Fortunately, we took a break, where I got rid of the coffee and then drank some more. When we sat back in the “boardroom,” I was more nervous than before.

The Oracle in charge looked at me and perhaps slightly narrowed her eyes.

“Now, Sarah. Tell us exactly how you feel about Chloe and about Grace.”