Purity Test

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

At the Keep, women serve one purpose: pawns for greater power. Power belonging to Micheline's father. He uses magic to achieve that goal, but that magic serves another purpose, as well. It tests a woman's purity. And what Micheline learns about this test will change her forever.

"Rusch's short fiction is golden."

—Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201315566

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Purity Test

PURITY TEST

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

WMG Publishing, Inc.

CONTENTS

Purity Test

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

PURITY TEST

My feet are scraped and bleeding, my slippers shredded and almost useless. The dress hangs in tatters around me. No longer white, it still bears the pearls along the bodice, and I hope I can keep them close, and sell them in whatever town I find myself in.

Provided I find a town. Provided I ever leave these woods.

I have traveled for two days, surviving on puddle water and berries, hoping that the sounds I hear behind me aren’t my father, Roland, and the dogs.

I was but a child when Sutton came to the Keep. He seemed like an old man even then, with a beard that trailed to his knees and white hair that fell about his shoulders. His fingers were long and fine, but his back was broad, like a laborer’s, and his skin was rough to the touch.

His eyes frightened me. They were a pale blue, so pale that, in a certain light, they seemed clear. When I mentioned them to my mother—she was alive then: alive, vibrant, and beautiful—she laughed.

Of course, Micheline, she said in her lilting accent, using—as she always did—her people’s version of my name. He is magic. It is fitting he has devil’s eyes.

My father said my mother was a witch, but she had no true magic powers. She knew the gentle arts—herbs for healing, mostly—and she had an enchanting laugh. Men were drawn to her, and women too. She had a personality that overshadowed all others, and dwarfed my father’s.

Apparently my father had once loved her. Perhaps he loved her still in the days surrounding Sutton’s arrival, but he did not trust her. If my brother and I had not had my father’s auburn hair and freckled skin, his green eyes and his hooked nose, he would have disavowed us