Free Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy by Miya Kressin

internal fortitude would be harder than reaching those stones. I had left Sheelin in defiance. Now, I must return in a fashion of the most pious. My faith was being tested; once I used those gifts, I could not be a simple, wandering healer again. Calling upon the Goddess like that would change me.
    Becoming a Sister had been a transformation from girl to something divine. The change I undertook in the walk to Sheelin would be something greater. While nothing could compete with the first aislings I endured and the moments that followed, to harness that much raw power, holding wild magic inside me for that walk to (and hopefully from) Sheelin, I would go through a form of metamorphosis greater than what I bore in my initiation. If I was to survive my time in this new world I would have to change. While I would not lie about my faith, even the Oracles of generations past have stated we must learn to blend in with the modern world.
    I sat watching the changing world from my bedroom window until the sun began to set and Cade abandoned his forge to prepare our fare. My stomach voiced its complaint of only having had a few bites of bread. “Soon,” I promised. Cade began cooking for my parents when he was only eight. It gave them more time to work and him a way to earn his keep after his mother passed away from a life of drink and prostitution.
    The languor of my second rest fell away as I stretched in the dying light. No blood remained on my dress or the quilt, though it stained the bed as proof it was not entirely a dream. Reaching deep inside, I could no longer feel Liand’s tainting touch. Aya had burned me free of the past, akin to farmers’ use of controlled fires to reclaim fields that had gone to weed or filled with diseased crops. A little loss could give an impressive gain if done with care.
    It was with careful loss and necessary change filling my thoughts that I reversed my earlier steps and slipped out into the rose path. I could still hear Cade’s voice in my head, an echo of the words shared in our last encounter before I left. “Until you accept me, I will plant two rose bushes each thaw. One for you along the road and one for me from the back garden. When they meet in the middle, I will finally set my dream free.”
    I walked down the path, feeling the ghosts of our young adulthood selves standing there as I examined the different rosehips still hanging upon trellised vines. There were but three paces left open between the sets of roses. Cade was due an answer before that time. In truth, I owed it to him once I determined the nature of the calling.
    No man deserved to wait for a woman who did not love him to the same depth as he loved her. My heart belonged to Fion.
    Does it, Lady? Aya’s whisper ran through my blood until my heart beat in time with His hammer. You’ve felt a Smith’s touch now, and I have felt your heart. There is a soft space there for Cade, one you hide behind a promise broken by another. A heated stroke of strong fingers down my sides became a firm grasping of my hips as Aya pulled me back against His body. Steel and restrained fire shifted against me as He tried to hold a human form. If I told you you were free to love another, would you deny My priest a chance?
    Ignoring Aya and His dark laughter as much as ignoring a God was possible, I broke free the moment I felt His grasp loosen. I sought refuge from Aya Wayland within His own holy space — the forge. The building was set up as my father had left it; what I needed could be found in my sleep. Here, in a place of familiarity, I would find my necessary change. I released my hair from its pins, the long braids continuing to hold the strands hostage. I wove them together in a single braid, then grabbed another hair band from my pouch’s inner pocket and tied it at the base of my neck. The scissors I chose were iron, ones sharpened to a fine edge.
    How fitting that you’d use a symbol of My priesthood to hide one of My Lady’s.