CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER THREE
Autumn—Winter 493
Two years came and went in the ceaseless rhythm of sacred festivals and lunar cycles. In the House of Nine, change began to unleash its unsettling force as bodies began to blossom. The Goddess saw fit to give Morgan ample curves, while I had little more than budding breasts and barely perceptible hips beneath my gown. But my moon time came first, and with that sacred milestone, I was finally able to trade my white robes for the forest green of a second-degree initiate.
Were I still at home with my mother, a different kind of ceremony would have marked my entrance into womanhood, one which had been passed down from mother to daughter for countless generations among the Votadini. I imagined my mother at her mortar and pestle, crushing leaves of w
