Lustborn

They only see what I let them.

The softness in my eyes. The curve of my hips. The silence in my smile.

But inside? There's a storm. A slow-burning hunger that never sleeps.

They said no one is born of lust.

But I was.

I remember the first time it moved under my skin — not like a heartbeat, but a tremor. A calling. I was barely six, sitting beneath the stained-glass light of the Temple Hall, while the priestesses spoke of purity and virtue. I watched their lips form hollow words and felt nothing. Nothing... until my eyes met his. A boy no older than me — but in that moment, I felt something ancient stir. Something not mine. Something older than anyone in that room.

I didn't understand it then.

Now I do.

The pendant at my neck is warm tonight. It pulses in rhythm with a truth I've stopped trying to bury. I lie still, tangled in scarlet sheets, my bare thigh catching the faint flicker of candlelight. The night air is heavy — too quiet — like the world is holding its breath.

I wonder if it knows what I am.

Some say lust is a sin. Some say it's weakness.

But to me? It's breath. It's blood.

It's the fire beneath the skin.

I used to hate it — the heat, the longing, the ache I could never name. I thought it was brokenness. A flaw in my soul. But now... I see it for what it is. A birthright. A curse, perhaps. But one that burns beautifully.

I rise from the bed and cross to the mirror, trailing fingers across my collarbone where the pendant glows softly, pulsing with hidden power. My reflection stares back — wild hair, dark eyes, skin kissed by secrets. The mark on my spine, faint as moonlight, is a whisper of the old ones. Proof I carry their blood.

The priests would burn me for it.

I should be afraid.

But I'm not.

Tomorrow, they'll come again. With questions. With chains. With holy water.

They want to cleanse me.

But how do you cleanse fire?

---

I wrap myself in a deep crimson shawl, letting it hang loose over my shoulders. It's soft, worn. Stolen, really — from a woman who tried to save me once. Or maybe save herself from what I represent. I never asked which. She cried when she gave it to me. Not in fear, but sorrow. Like she knew what I'd become, even before I did.

The pendant rests between my breasts like a sleeping eye, always half-aware. My fingers brush it lightly, and a thrum of heat travels up my spine. It doesn't speak, not in words. But it knows. It always knows when something's coming.

And something is.

The night outside my window is coated in a velvet blue, stitched with thin red stars. This is the hour the monks call the Devil's Breath — the moment between prayers and waking, where shadows are thick enough to hold secrets. I love this hour. It's when the world stops pretending.

In the distance, across the ridge of ash-colored rooftops, I hear the bell of the inner sanctum toll once. A warning. Not loud enough for the commoners. Just enough for those of us who listen between silences.

They're coming.

---

I move through the stone halls barefoot. The old floor remembers every step, every echo, and yet I leave no sound behind. I've learned how to exist just beneath the skin of this world — how to walk like a ghost with a heartbeat.

At the end of the corridor, the prayer room waits. But I don't kneel like the others. I light no incense. I trace no circles of purity on the ground.

I sit.

And the goddess statue watches me.

She's blindfolded, carved from white marble, with hands cupped in offering. They say she's the protector of virtue, the guardian of sacred bodies. They say she weeps for those like me. But she doesn't weep tonight. Her face is calm. Empty. As if even stone has grown tired of lies.

"I know you feel it," I whisper.

The pendant pulses in agreement.

A sound behind me — the shift of fabric, the brush of leather against stone. I don't turn. I already know who it is.

Aren.

His voice is a sword drawn in darkness. "You shouldn't be here."

"I was born here," I reply, still facing the statue. "This hall remembers my first breath. My first scream. My first sin."

He steps closer. I can feel him behind me — tall, rigid, bound in layers of black-and-silver Order robes that don't quite hide the man underneath.

"Sin isn't born. It's chosen," he says flatly.

I turn my head, just enough to catch the edge of his face. His jaw is sharp, lips pressed thin. But his eyes — they betray him. A war lives there. A war between faith and... me.

"I didn't choose this, Aren. Or did you forget the prophecy?"

His breath catches. Just enough.

Ah. So he remembers.

---

The prophecy was old. Buried. Forbidden to speak aloud. But I'd found it years ago, hidden in the texts no one reads — the ones locked beneath silver and wax, bound with prayers no one believes anymore.

"Born of heat not womb, from hunger not hope. She will walk clothed in longing, and no flame shall consume her. She will be temptation incarnate. And the gods will either crown her or burn her."

They thought it was a metaphor. A warning, maybe. They didn't expect me to bleed.

But I did.

And no flame consumed me.

---

Aren walks past me now, placing a hand on the offering table. His fingers twitch — not from fear, but restraint. He wants to touch me. He always has. But he never does. Because he's good. Because he believes in something I was never given the luxury to believe in.

"You're being watched," he murmurs.

"I always am."

"They think you've started the rites."

I smile, slow. "Maybe I have."

He turns to face me now, fury and fascination battling behind his eyes. "You don't understand what you're playing with."

"I'm not playing. I'm becoming."

---

The bell tolls again — louder this time. A ripple of magic cracks through the air like static, making the pendant flare brightly. Aren sees it, and for the first time, he flinches.

"They're sending someone else," he says darkly. "Not just the priests. Someone older. Someone who remembers the old fire."

"Good," I say.

"You could still run."

"I'm tired of running."

---

I rise slowly, walking past him. Our shoulders brush — fire to ice. And though he says nothing, I feel the tremor in him. I feel his pulse spike. I don't turn. I don't need to.

"Tell them," I whisper, just before the shadows swallow me, "the Lustborn does not kneel"