Chapter 4: Feast of Envy
The sun bled out over the western treeline as the southern fieldworkers trudged toward the center of The Garden, their tools left to lean against the drying racks. The scent of woodsmoke and roasting meat drifted from the long table that had been carried out from the stores and assembled beneath the ancient oak, its surface groaning under the weight of what Vera and her kitchen helpers had produced. Bowls of stew steamed beside platters of fresh bread, and the remaining vegetables from the day's harvest had been sliced and dressed into salads that shone with oil.
Members filtered in from every corner of the property. The laundry shift came up from the well, still drying their hands. The barn workers arrived in pairs, their boots scraped clean. The newcomers, the old ones, the ones who had been here since the first days when the church was still a half-collapsed barn, they all took their places along the benches without being told, a practiced choreography of eighty-three bodies settling into a single, humming mass.
But one seat remained empty.
The chair at the head of the table, the one with the slightly higher back, the one that had been carved by Margot herself in a fit of devotion, sat vacant. A plate had been set before it, the best portions reserved, a glass of water drawn from the deepest part of the well. For a long moment the table fell quiet, heads turning toward the empty seat, then toward each other.
"He's not coming," Karin said softly from somewhere down the bench, not quite a question.
Someone else murmured that Abel often took his meals alone, that he had work to do, that his absence was a sign of his trust in them to govern themselves. The murmur carried, and the tension broke. Plates were filled, bread was torn, and the noise of eating and conversation swelled to fill the space his presence had left.
It was Margot who, within minutes, steered the talk exactly where she wanted it. She had been sitting with the loose, boneless satisfaction of a woman who had been thoroughly used and was still humming with it. Her tan skin gleamed in the lantern light, and her voice carried just enough for the nearby benches to catch.
"I've been training for months," she said, tearing a piece of bread with deliberate slowness. "He told me exactly what he wanted, how he wanted me shaped. I thought about it every night. Every single night."
Some of the newer members leaned in. Margot let them wait, let the suspense build, then smiled.
"This morning he had me kneel for him, and he watched. He watched me stretch myself on the toy until I squirted all over his floor." She said it plainly, without shame, and the women around her exchanged glances of pure, aching envy. "And then he walked away. He didn't touch me. He never touches me when he trains me. He just watches, and he knows I'm his. That's the whole point."
Bambi, who had been seated across the table, shifted in her seat. The thin white string bikini he had chosen for her gleamed under the lanterns, and she was very aware of how many pairs of eyes kept wandering to the outline of her body under it. She had heard Margot's boast, and something flickered behind her wide, vacant gaze. She turned her attention to the table, lifting a goblet of water and taking a slow sip, letting her lips purse around the rim.
"I was chosen too," she said, setting the goblet down. There was no aggression in her voice, just the bright, shameless confidence of a woman displaying a prize. "The clothes I'm wearing. He picked them himself. His hands touched this fabric. He decided what I would wear the day that I arrived."
A ripple of murmuring passed down the bench. Several of the older members looked at Bambi's barely-there covering, at the way the fabric strained over her surgically enhanced breasts, at the tiny triangle of white that barely protected her cunt from the evening air. They did not need to speak their thoughts aloud. Clothing chosen by Abel was a mark of favor that could not be bought or earned. It was given.
Nia, seated near the middle of the table with her arms crossed and her stew untouched, watched the exchange with sharp, unblinking eyes. She had been silent for most of the meal, and when she finally spoke, her voice cut through the chatter.
"You keep saying he ordered you to train," Nia said, looking at Margot. "Orders are for servants. I was chosen because I serve without needing to be told. There is a difference."
Margot met her gaze without flinching. "And what has he asked of you, Nia? This week, what did he command?"
The silence that followed was a small victory. Margot knew it, and she let it settle before she leaned back, letting the moment breathe. Karin, seated beside Bambi, glanced between the two women, then spoke up, her voice carrying a teasing edge.
"Don't be jealous," Karin said to Nia, grinning. "Bambi's new. She has to work twice as hard to catch up. You've been here long enough to know that a pretty face alone doesn't get you to his bed. Right, Margot?"
Margot smiled. It was not a kind smile, but it was not unkind either. "Right. It's about what you do when he's watching. And what you do when he isn't."
Around them, the table had split into smaller conversations, but all of them were about the same thing. A woman near the end of the table described the way Abel had looked at her in the barn that morning, how his eyes had lingered. Another boasted that he had allowed her to kneel in his presence while he read. Still another went quiet when someone asked if she had ever been summoned to his quarters, she shook her head in a clear no, no one has been in his private quarters since it had built.
Vera moved along the table with a jug of water, refilling cups, her thin body wrapped in the same apron she had worn all day. She did not speak, but her eyes lingered on Bambi's string bikini, and for a moment her expression flickered with something neither envy nor admiration, but a quiet, aching hunger.
At the head of the table, Odette sat with her hands folded neatly in front of her. She had not contributed to the boasts, had not competed for attention. The black dress she wore was buttoned to her throat, and her hands were steady. She watched the banter the way a gardener watches seedlings, with patient satisfaction. The way they competed, the way they envied each other, the way they bragged about the crumbs of Abel's attention, it was all proof of their devotion. Every word spoken in his absence was a prayer for his presence.
"You see," Odette said finally, her voice calm and warm, cutting through the chatter with the ease of a woman who had once commanded boardrooms. "This is what he builds. Not just obedience. Want. You all burn for him, and that fire is what keeps The Garden alive."
Nia looked at her, and for a moment her sharp gaze softened. "And you, Odette? What do you burn for?"
Odette's smile did not waver. "I burn for his pleasure, which he withholds from me. It is my tribute. My surrender is not a prize to be won. It is a tithe I pay gladly." She reached for her water glass, raised it slightly, as if to toast the evening air. "And I would not trade it for anything you all chase."
The words hung over the table like a blessing. For a moment no one spoke, and then the chatter resumed, softer now, warmer. Margot passed a bowl of stew down to Bambi, and Bambi accepted it with a smile. Karin leaned over to whisper something to Nia, and Nia's sharp mouth twitched into something almost like a laugh.
The empty chair at the head of the table remained empty, but no one looked at it anymore. They had all found their place within the design he had made, and that was enough. In their devotion, in their envy, in the quiet warmth of a shared meal beneath the old oak, they were his. Every one of them.
The meal wound down slowly, the way all good meals did when bellies were full and the evening air had turned cool enough to raise goosebumps on bare arms. The chatter softened into the comfortable murmur of a household settling. Plates were scraped clean, cups drained, and one by one the members rose and carried their dishes to the kitchen, where Vera and her helpers stood ready with basins of soapy water.
The rhythm of cleanup was practiced, efficient. Trays were stacked, bowls passed hand to hand, and within a quarter hour the long table stood bare, its surface wiped down with damp cloths and gleaming faintly in the lantern light. The benches were lifted and carried, the table itself taken apart at its joints by four of the stronger members and moved piece by piece into the storage shed behind the church. Chairs followed, stacked in neat rows against the wall. The space beneath the oak was swept clean, and the earth there was left bare and waiting.
No one spoke the words aloud. No one needed to. The ritual had been established months ago, and it had never been broken, not once, not even when the rains came and the ground turned to mud. Every member of The Garden knew what came after the evening meal.
They gathered in the open space between the well and the church, the same space where morning prayers were held, where the terrace of Abel's quarters overlooked them like a stage. The members moved into their positions with the practiced ease of a flock settling, ranks forming in loose arcs, the eldest and most devoted nearest the terrace, the newer members farther back. Eighty-three bodies knelt in the cooling grass and packed earth, hands resting on thighs, heads bowed.
The silence that fell was complete.
It had a texture to it, that silence, a physical weight that pressed against the skin. The wind had died with the sun, and the only sound was the faint creak of the old oak and the distant lowing of a cow from the barn. No one coughed. No one shifted. They simply knelt, their breath slow and even, their minds focused on the empty terrace above them.
Odette knelt at the front of the ranks, her black dress pooled around her knees on the grass. Her hands were steady now, folded in her lap, and her face was peaceful. Beside her, Margot's head was bowed but her shoulders trembled slightly, a eager, nervous energy that she could not entirely suppress. Further back, Nia knelt with perfect stillness, her back straight, her eyes fixed on the ground. Karin was somewhere to the left, his pink twin tails bowed forward, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
Minutes passed. The moon had begun to rise over the treeline, silvering the edges of the church roof. The air cooled further, and still they knelt, and still the terrace remained empty.
Abel stepped out of the door that led from his quarters onto the terrace. He moved without hurry, his boots quiet on the old stone, and the moment he appeared, the silence deepened into something almost painful, a held breath shared by eighty-three throats.
He did not speak. He simply stood for a long moment, his gaze sweeping across the kneeled ranks below him, taking in the curve of bare shoulders, the bowed heads, the waiting bodies. The lantern light from the windows caught his face, but his expression was unreadable, patient, the face of a man who had all the time in the world.
His hand lifted. He pointed.
Nia rose first, smooth and unhurried, her chin lifting as she stepped out of her rank and walked toward the church entrance. She did not look back.
He pointed again. Bambi, seated near the center of the gathering, rose with a small, eager motion, her string bikini catching the moonlight as she moved. She walked with a sway to her hips, her head high, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.
He pointed a third time. Vera, standing at the back of the ranks near the kitchen door, straightened with a quiet gasp. She had been kneeling with her hands clasped, her face pale in the dim light, and now she moved forward with the careful, frightened steps of a woman walking toward something she had wanted and feared in equal measure.
No one else moved. The silence held, and Abel let it stretch, let every kneeled member taste the weight of his choice. Then he lowered his hand and turned, stepping back through the door into the darkness of his quarters.
The ranks broke apart like a wave receding. Members rose and scattered, some toward the dormitory buildings, some toward the barn, some toward the kitchen where the wash water still steamed. The tension that had held the gathering dissolved into murmur and movement, but there was a sharp edge beneath it, a hunger that would have to wait for another night.
Nia, Bambi, and Vera stood before the main entrance of the church, the tall wooden doors that led into the hall of worship. The doors were closed, the wood dark and worn smooth by a hundred hands. They did not speak to one another. They simply stood, side by side, their breath misting in the cooling air, their eyes fixed on the wood before them.
Behind them, a few paces back, Odette stood with her hands folded before her. She had not been chosen. She had not expected to be. Her role was to watch, to witness, to hold the space until Abel decided otherwise. She stood as still as the others, her face calm, her eyes tracking the three women with a quiet, maternal vigilance.
Minutes passed. The moon climbed higher. A night bird called from the orchard, and somewhere beyond the church a door closed, soft and final.
Then, faint through the thick wood, a single word.
"Enter."
Nia moved first, her hand finding the iron ring and pulling the heavy door open. It swung on oiled hinges, silent, revealing the dark interior of the hall, lit only by the single lantern that burned beneath the empty throne. The three women stepped inside, one after another, their feet silent on the stone floor.
The door swung shut behind them, and Odette was alone in the moonlight.