The next morning sees the four students gather again in Ishaza’s office.

  Ishaza descends the spiral stairs from the upper floor of the office. She wears a deep red robe, patterned with fmes. She takes in the girls sitting at the round table in the room’s center in one look. She nods.

  “I will be taking you all, one at a time, to the kindling chamber in the third years’ wing. I will kindle you there, then you will be escorted to your new rooms. The rest of you will stay here in my office until the previous candidate is safe and stable.”

  Ishaza’s gaze settles on Camellia.

  “Camellia. You will be the first aspirant.” Ishaza comes around the table to Camellia’s side, and offers her a hand up. “With me.”

  Camellia looks from Ishaza’s face to the hand offered to her, squares her shoulders, and takes it.

  They leave together.

  Ember spends a tense hour waiting with Fianna and Maeve. She practices her control drills in silence. The students share looks across the table, but all of them go back to their own thoughts rather than speaking. Any one of them could be next. Best to focus.

  Eventually, Ishaza returns.

  “Camellia is stable and situated. She was able to retain control through the kindling process.” Ishaza has that half-smile on her face again.

  Ember lets out a sigh of relief. Camellia’s okay for now. And if Camellia can do it, so can she.

  Ishaza’s gaze falls on Ember. “Ember. It is your turn now.”

  She extends her hand.

  Ember reaches up and takes it.

  ~*~

  The kindling chamber is not much to look at: a squat, domed structure of ash-gray brick, with a heavy stone door sealed with a steel bar. Inside, there is a single bck sb of stone in the center of the room, as wide and long as a person, marked with a pattern of scorch-marks where it looks like the stone has melted and then re-solidified. The solid walls are bck and covered in soot. A single vent in the center of the ceiling provides a breath of cool outside air, but no light. The oil-mp in Ishaza’s hand fills the small space with its shuddery, orange-red glow.

  Ishaza gestures to the sb in the center of the room. “Sit. I will need to touch you over your heart, and it is best if you are fully nude in case I need to perform the technique. Take your chance to disrobe.”

  Ember goes to the sb, sits, and strips. Icy fear slides down her spine.

  Behind her, Ishaza turns the heavy bar in the door, presses it into pce, and fuses the two-part lock neatly with a brilliant spark of white-hot fme.

  “We are secure,” she says. “Now there are certain rites.” She comes across the room and sets the mp on the stone sb, by Ember’s side. Then, a moment ter, she sheds her own robe, and sits next to Ember, beside her on the sb.

  Ember gets one long look, the image of Ishaza’s nude body searing in, then tears her gaze away — but Ishaza tilts her head back and looks her in the eyes. “Now we are equals,” she says. Her lic skin gleams in the half-light, and Ember fights down a heavier stab of arousal.

  Ishaza smiles. “There are certain things that can be said within the walls of a kiln, and nowhere else. I will now tell you one of them, as your mark of initiation.”

  “This may shock you. However, it is nonetheless the truth. You were born with a male soul." Ishaza's voice is matter-of-fact.

  Ember blinks, then gives Ishaza an aghast look. That can’t be right. "What? No — There's no way that's true. I'm a woman, I've always wanted to be a woman —"

  "But you weren't born as one. Your spiritual anatomy was 'normal' for a man." Ishaza states it with no rancor. "Nonetheless, humans have the power to choose. You chose to become the woman you knew you were. You went to Lively Spark, and she used her kindling to artificially manipute the matter of your soul until it would force your body to express a female form. Effectively, she did surgery on it. To get it to express the form you wanted, she used a great amount of the energy and strength of your soul. Some who don't approve of our practice would say she maimed it." Ishaza's voice is ft.

  Ember opens her mouth, then closes it again. Ishaza’s nudity seems unimportant now. If her spirit isn't that of a woman what has she been doing all this time —

  Ishaza continues as if Ember had not attempted to speak. "Certainly, the costs are obvious. A greatly reduced lifespan, with chances for mental and bodily degradation over the longer term." She taps the gss of the oil mp, tracing its upper rim. "Yet nonetheless, you accepted those costs with open arms. You sought to be your true self, not the one that an accident of birth gave you."

  Ember falls silent. She bobs her head in an acknowledging nod.

  Ishaza gives Ember a secret smile. "And that, that striving to make your soul your own — that is kindling. There is a trick to it, to igniting the heart. It comes to people only in desperation, only in times of great need to be something else than they are — but your striving is how this order was founded, long, long ago, by women who knew that they would rather suffer than live a lie."

  Ember blinks. The founders of the guild were… like her?

  Ishaza looks Ember in the eye and nods. "Eventually, one of those women found immortality through targeted surgery on her soul. She spent centuries refining her methods, trying to develop a method that could be spread; and in time, she invented the kindling we know today. A method of igniting the soul with ever-replenishing, refining fire that cannot be stopped or put out, and can be transferred person to person, as if lighting a torch from a bonfire. It still came with great costs. Many who kindle cannot take the strain on their souls, and degenerate. But it worked. And so the sisters of the fme were created, to shepherd that gift and spread it judiciously throughout the world."

  "That sisterhood, that you know merely as the Courtesan's Guild," Ishaza says. "Is to be yours. To be a woman who chose her soul, over the cries of the whole world. You are what this order was made for."

  A genuine smile comes to Ember’s face. She feels… proud. Like she’s carrying on a tradition.

  Ishaza smiles back. “And so it is now my honor to induct you. It is not too te to decide to stop, and there is no shame in it. But once I touch you over your heart, you will be a sister of the fme whether you wish to be or not, forever.”

  She looks Ember dead in the eye. “Are you quite certain?”

  Ember takes a breath, and nods. She forces her gaze to stay on Ishaza’s, rather than dropping to her nude body. “I am.”

  “Alright, then. This will hurt.”

  Ishaza reaches out, and ys her hand over Ember’s heart, between her bare breasts. Then she closes her eyes, and fire blooms at her fingertips.

  Ember startles, pulling away instinctually from the fire on her skin, but it burrows into her flesh, acting unnaturally, burning deeper and deeper as if searching for her core. The pain is searing, the burn of charred flesh driving deeper into her chest —

  And then, all at once, it reaches her heart and stops. There is no trace of ash on her skin, no fire in her chest. It is as if she hallucinated the entire thing — if not for the intense warmth still burning in her heart, and shifting deeper into her body, down towards her sex, spreading like a fever — and with it the primal, animal need for satisfaction. It breaks past all her defenses, and Ember finds herself clumsily groping at Ishaza, who feels like a second fme, brighter and more intense than her, something that she seeks to be part of, to unite with, to feed —

  Fme sparks at Ember’s fingertips and washes over Ishaza’s body, but passes without so much as singeing her hair. Ember moans, hard and low and ragged, and shoves at Ishaza, trying to meet her lips with hers, trying to have more of her nude body for herself. Every bit of pressure against her skin feels perfect beyond words. Her hands crave skin, her entire body filled with the need to touch and taste and grope and cim —

  Ishaza catches Ember’s hand as it reaches for her pussy, and pushes Ember down, controlling the position. She presses her thigh in against Ember’s sex. It feels heavenly, like every nerve in her body is singing with joy and desire and pleasure, like her every sense has been rebraided more finely, more precisely —

  Ember squirms up instinctually, groping at Ishaza’s breasts, and clenches deep in her core, craving something, anything, to fill the hollow ache within her, to bring her the satisfaction she needs so desperately —

  Ishaza forces her fingers into Ember’s dripping-wet sex, and pleasure sharper than she’s ever known blooms inside her and blots out her every sense completely. Her whole body sings like it’s an instrument that Ishaza is pying, phantom sensation of fingers and tongues and body against body, more intense than sex, more intense than the pain of a moment ago. It feels like she’ll break under the pleasure, like it’s pushing her, forcing her, making her into something else.

  She lingers in that intense ecstasy for moment after moment, an orgasm longer than she’s ever had before. It seems to take forever, like the heat flooding through her will never stop. Every part of her body burns with it, filling her up to bursting, like a tide of fme that cannot be put out —

  And then it slowly falls away, along with the feverish heat, and her lust fades enough that she can regain her senses. Ember comes back to herself with her sex pressed hard into Ishaza’s hand, her mouth on Ishaza’s neck, breast to breast, pressed in as hard against her as she can manage. Her hands are still occupied with Ishaza’s breasts, halfway through pinching and groping at her.

  Ember flushes, and pulls away. “I — um — ah —” Gosh Ishaza’s breasts are soft. She’s going to have that stuck in her head for the next week, she’s sure of it.

  Ishaza just chuckles, pulls her hand free of Ember’s sex, and wipes it haphazardly on the stone next to the oil mp. When Ember looks at her now, she sees a quiet fme burning in the center of her chest, star-white. She blinks, and it’s gone again.

  Everything feels raw and new, more intense, more real. The sight of Ishaza’s nude body feels intoxicating, like she’s getting to glimpse something only given to a select few. She’s fucking hot, from her hooves to her horns, every part of her perfectly sculpted to appeal to the eye — and no doubt the hand, too.

  “Congratutions, Sister.” Ishaza says. “Welcome to the Guild. May you kindle well.”

  She stands, and offers Ember a hand up once more.

  Ember pauses, dumb-struck by Ishaza’s gorgeous body. It’s as if this were the first time she really saw her, every inch of her nude body on dispy for her to drink in. She just wants to stare forever, to etch the sight into her memory to keep for always. But after a long, long look, she catches herself enough to csp Ishaza’s hand, her gaze still lingering on her curves, her mind still preoccupied with Ishaza’s sex and breasts.

  Ishaza levers Ember up off the sb, and leads her out of the kiln, leaving her charred-to-ash clothes behind.