Priestess (Gods of Tintar, #1)

by Kara Voorhees Reynolds

I am not a religious woman. I do not deny the idea of gods and their demands on us mortals. I am not against the existence of the otherworldly. And I do not judge those who wish to know what is beyond death or to see into their future. The idea of stepping into a fortuneteller’s has never been beneath me. Simply, I have never wanted to know. I was brought up by stringent believers and their faith exhausted and abused. But instead of a justified bitterness towards belief, I have chosen only to dismiss it.

I had spent nearly nine winters trying to make him love me the way I loved him and another ten winters without him after I realized I could never make him love me that way, in the way of men in books, of men in love stories, poems and sagas. I could not even make him love me as his companion. He had wanted to possess me. And I had run from that possession.

Having come from a city where piety was put on display and the donations to shelters used, in my opinion, less so for the hungry and more so for the ostentation of the pious, I was bemused by this logical use of a chapel.

We were as a winter traveler crossing a river, hoping the ice is thicker than thin, more solid than bubbled.

I felt, at that age, if time could put lines on my face, I could put them on my body.