Free Remembered by Hazel Hunter

pleasure.
    “I couldn’t afford not to,” she admitted. “The Oracle said that whenever you were done with me, I was to send you on to her.”
    Galia flinched. As the date of the Longest Day drew closer, she grew more worried. Though the power was seductive, she sensed––as with everything in Tenebris––it would come at a price.
    Rhea patted her hand in sympathy.
    “Here, come with me. I’ll have the kitchen pull together a tray for the two of you. That will help.”
    Galia had only had a bit of bread and milk, and realized she was starving.
    “Thank you again, Rhea,” she said, hugging her. “I don’t know what I would do without you.
    “Starve, most likely. Now come along.”
    The kitchen prepared a tray of black olives, soft white cheese and cured salmon. The latter was a popular delicacy in the city at the moment, and it gleamed orange and delicious on its bed of greens. Galia decided that Rhea was right. Hunger drove away nerves, and food would drive away hunger. A young girl carried the tray and a carafe of lemon water to the Oracle’s room with her. Galia knocked.
    “Come in.”
    Galia opened the door. But what she saw when she stepped inside destroyed her appetite. The Oracle sat at the small table at the window, her wolf resting easily at her feet. Standing at attention and dressed in a tunic of red silk was Strayke.
    Somehow, Galia managed to step aside to let the girl lay the table. She took her accustomed place across from the Oracle. If she turned her head to the side, she would see Strayke standing right there. She did not turn her head. She barely breathed.
    “Thank you, that will be all.”
    The Oracle dismissed the girl absently before serving herself a small amount of the cheese and salmon.
    “Hmm, delicious. Galia, will you not join me?”
    There was something about the calculated innocence of the Oracle’s tone that made Galia wary.
    “What game are you playing?” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “What do you want with him?”
    The smile on the Oracle’s face could have meant anything. She wore it right before she ordered a man hung high on the walls. She wore it right before she praised Galia for mastering something.
    “I think you should eat. It’s an old saying that when you are at war, you should never pass up on a chance to eat or sleep.”
    “Am I at war now?” Galia asked, her spine rigid. “Is that what this is?”
    The Oracle’s laughter was light.
    “You are jumping at shadows. I take it the presence of Commander Strayke here has upset you.”
    As if she had been given permission, Galia turned to him. With his dark hair and light eyes, he was still every bit that man who had come to her and Mina’s rescue on the ship. But like Mina, he had put on muscle. Terrible scars were on his arms, and she knew that they would be under his clothes as well.
    When she looked up at his face, it looked utterly impassive. It was so familiar and so remote that she could have cried.
    “I am not jumping at shadows,” Galia said, her voice strained. “As you well know.”
    “Indeed I do,” the Oracle said, as she broke off a bit of bread. “How could I forget the day I met you, when you made that choice?”
    Galia stiffened. The wound that had opened when she’d first seen Strayke in the courtyard, cracked wide.
    “What do you want?”
    “The same as always,” the Oracle said, popping an olive in her mouth. “Really, Galia,” she said around it. “Have you learned nothing?” She took out the pit and set it aside. “Your initiation into the role of Oracle will be conducted in just a few days.”
    “On the Longest Day, yes.”
    “You will submit to the Goddess in the deepest part of the palace, in the subsanctum.” She nodded at Strayke. “Your sacrifice will be the Commander.”
    Galia started out of her seat. She hit the edge of the tray, and the only reason it did not go spinning was because the Oracle steadied it with her hand.
    “Sacrifice? What are you