Tempted

light!
    “Listen with your soul . . .”
    I thought I cried aloud at the sweet, reassuring sound of the Goddess’s voice in my mind, but when her words were gone, there was only the unrelenting silence and darkness.
    How in the hell was I supposed to listen with my soul?
    I tried to calm myself and hear something, but there was just silence—a soul-sucking, black, empty, utter silence like nothing I’d ever before experienced. I had no framework to guide me here, I only knew—
    The realization struck me and my mind reeled with understanding.
    I did have a framework to guide me. Part of me had experienced this darkness before.
    I couldn’t see. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t do anything but turn within myself, questing for the part of me that might be able to make sense of this, that might be able to guide me out of here.
    Memory stirred again, this time taking me back long before the night in the tunnel under the abbey. The years fell away with my re sis tance until finally, finally I felt again.
    My senses returned slowly. I began to hear more than my own thoughts. There was a drumbeat that pulsed around me, and within it were woven the distant voices of women. The sense of smell returned to me, and I recognized the dank scent that reminded me of the abbey tunnel. Finally, I could feel the earth against my naked back. I only had an instant to sift through the flood of my returned senses before the rest of my awareness was jolted awake. I wasn’t alone! My back was pressed against the earth, but I was being held tightly in someone’s arms.
    Then he spoke.
    “Oh, Goddess, no! Do not let this be!”
    It was Kalona’s voice, and my immediate reaction was to cry out and struggle blindly away from him, but I wasn’t in charge of my body and the words that came from my mouth were not my own.
    “Sssh, do not despair. I am with you, my love.”
    “You trapped me!” Even as he cried the accusation, his arms tightened around me, and I recognized the cold passion of his immortal embrace.
    “I saved you,” my strange voice responded as my body settled more intimately against his. “You were not meant to walk this world. That is why you have been so unhappy, so insatiable.”
    “I had no choice! The mortals do not understand.”
    My arms wrapped around his neck. My fingers twinedthrough his soft, heavy hair. “I understand. Be at peace here with me. Lay down your sad restlessness. I will comfort you.”
    I felt his surrender before he spoke the words. “Yes,” Kalona murmured. “I will bury my sadness within you and my desperate longing will finally be spent.”
    “Yes, my love, my consort, my Warrior . . . yes . . .”
    It was that moment that I lost myself within A-ya. I couldn’t tell where her desire ended and my soul began. If I still had a choice, I didn’t want it. I only knew that I was where I was destined to be—in Kalona’s arms.
    His wings covered us, keeping the chill of his touch from burning me. His lips met mine. We explored each other slowly, thoroughly, with a sense of wonder and surrender. As our bodies began to move together I knew complete joy.
    And then, suddenly, I started to dissolve.
    “No!” The scream was wrenched from my throat and my soul. I didn’t want to leave! I wanted to stay with him. My place was with him!
    But, again, I wasn’t in control, and I felt myself fading away, rejoining the earth, as A-ya sobbed, her broken voice echoed one word in my head: REMEMBER . . .

    The slap burned against my cheek, and I sucked in a big breath that cleared the last of the darkness from my mind. I opened my eyes and the beam of the flashlight caused me to squint and blink. “I remember.” My voice sounded as rusty as my mind.
    “You remember who you are, or should I smack you again?” Aphrodite said.
    My mind was slow to function because it still screamed
no
at being wrenched from the darkness. I blinked again and shook my head, trying to clear it. “No!” I cried the word with so much emotion that Aphrodite automatically moved away from me.
    “Fine,” she said. “You can thank me later.”
    Sister Mary Angela took her place, bending over me and smoothing my hair back from my face, which was sweaty and cold. “Zoey, are you with us?”
    “Yes,” I said in a broken voice.
    “Zoey, what is it? What caused you to hyperventilate?” the nun asked.
    “You’re not feeling sick, are you?” Erin’s voice was a little tremble-y.
    “Not getting the urge to cough up a