Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 130761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
“You’re never going back to him either,” AK said firmly, and I felt my heart break at the promise.
Fresh tears flooded my cheeks. I could not believe this man was fighting for me. “I do not . . . I do not know how to live in this world, AK.” I swallowed. “I do not know how to be anything but a . . . whore.” I laughed without mirth. “People on the outside world would talk of us. ‘God’s whores,’ they named us in the bars. Prophet David and Judah would call us ‘David’s Whores’. It is what Meister wanted me to stop being. I was to be his whore and his alone.” I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the salt from my tears sting my lips. “In this world, whores are not revered but punished. What man would ever want a woman like that as his life’s love? A woman who had taken men in every way possible? Who had sucked and stroked and fucked so many men that she could not recall a single face among the masses?” I shook my head, choking on my words. “Who would want a woman who lost her innocence as a ten-year-old and was frequently touched before that?”
And then I felt it rise up within me. My most secret confession, my deepest pain. I tried to hold it back. I had tried to hold this, my biggest regret, inside for so long. But I could not. AK was safe. Here was a safe place for me to shed this guilt.
I had to finally let it free.
“What man would want a woman who was with child at the age of twelve?”
As the words left my lips, I felt AK tense underneath me. His breathing stopped, and his hand stopped moving on my back.
“Phebe . . .” he eventually said, softly. My eyes scrunched up as I hid my face in agony. I shook my head, trying to not let the floodgates of those times open in my mind, but I could not resist. So I let my story—my sins, my failure—spill forth . . .
I looked in the mirror and ran my hand over my stomach. The bump was so large now that Brother John had taken me from Sacred Sister duty and ordered me to rest. My back ached, and since this since this morning, waves of blinding pain had clenched my stomach, making me scream. Martha had told me this was normal, that this was my baby coming. She had been assigned to stay with me. She had been with child, too, but delivered a few weeks ago. Since then, all she had done was cry. She had been punished for those tears, lashes taken from her flesh, yet she could not stop crying.
Because they took her baby boy. They took him for the cause. And they would not let her see him.
My back ached as another agonizing slice of pain ripped through me. I cried out, feeling a dull pressure building at the bottom of my spine. I stumbled on my feet. Martha ran through the door just in time to catch me.
“Come, Phebe.” She led me to the bed. I clutched the bump, screwing my eyes shut as the pressure became unbearable and my entire body was overwhelmed with the need to push. “I think it is coming,” I said, just as my bedroom door opened and Sister Leah entered.
“The baby is coming,” Martha told her.
Sister Leah parted my legs, and I felt her hand inside me. “You have to push,” she ordered.
Martha gripped my hand. “You can do this, Phebe,” she said, tears pouring down her face. I knew she was thinking of her boy. I knew she was in great pain.
With every ounce of strength I could muster, I pushed, feeling as if my body must surely split in two. I breathed as deeply as I could through the agony and exhaustion racking my body. And then, I did not know how long later, a loud cry sailed into my ears. Martha leaned down to view the baby in Sister Leah’s arms. “It is a girl, Phebe,” she said and squeezed my hand tighter.
“A . . . girl?” I said breathlessly and felt something switch inside me. I felt something unknown take root, something I had never felt before . . . a blissful kind of peace. Such peace and love that it robbed me of my breath.
Sister Leah placed the baby on my chest. I blinked, overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment, then I eventually looked down. Two dark-brown eyes stared up at me. To the side of her left eye lay a large, dark freckle. I stared at that freckle, mesmerized at such beauty.
She came from me.
She . . . she was mine . . .