Kallisto had just turned 17, and found herself spending more time inside the temple than ever before. She had been learning different forms of dance that were far from suitable for children's eyes, with fluid, sensual movements that oozed power.

Her training continued as she learned how to walk, talk, and most importantly, dress. The priestess commissioned outfits for her that she only wore inside the temple, at the priestess' behest. These outfits were layers of red silk that pushed up her chest and exposed her abdomen, with gold chains adorning her olive skin. The clothing screamed respectability, fear, and power, but also just as loud, sex.

As she matured, her body filled out  and she grew taller, with each day looking less like the awkward girl she had been. Her breasts overflowed from the low-cut tops of her outfits due to various oils and massages she had to perform upon herself to stimulate growth; while her waist remained trim and narrow. Her thighs were round and muscular from her combat training in the dirt arena.

At night, the priestess would tell her stories filled with love and passion Kallisto sometimes enjoyed them, but often grew tired of them.

Certainly! Here's a rewrite of the next part:

Returning to the palace to train with her father and brother was harder for Kallisto. Her strange feelings towards Alastar only grew stronger, and the words that the priestess had previously spoken finally took on a physical understanding and a name.

Kallisto desired Alastar, even if she hadn't fully come to understand what she was feeling. Whenever they were around each other, it was both effortless and difficult to pretend that everything was the same as before. They still played games and laughed together as they had before his marriage, but despite being only a few feet apart most days, it felt like miles.

Despite her now more educated understanding of what she was feeling, Kallisto remained confused. What the priestess described as desire seemed dark, sinful, and burning with a strange, indescribable fire. The emotions she felt for Alastar felt much purer, like he was the only person in the world who truly saw her.

Some of her feeling was jealousy, and that she now knew. She was jealous of his spouse and the closeness they shared. Though she was learning everything thing she needed to manipulate and manufacture those feelings in the men, she would have to one day marry, she still yearned.
She wanted to be glad for him, ordered herself to be happy for him, and in a way she couldn't help but like Desdemona, the shy beauty made her old friend happier and more full of joy than she had ever seen.

"Is everything alright?" A voice she always loved to hear found its path into her head, breaking her path of thought.
"I'm fine." She answered swiftly.
"Just trying to remember the lesson."
They were taking a stroll through the garden, the long course back from the training grounds to her room.
"I've got great news, and you were the very first person I wish to share it with" He declared, wearing a broad smile that beamed brighter than the Sun God himself.
"Oh, do tell?" She couldn't help but smile, her heart aflutter from how handsome his smile made him.
"Desdemona is with child! Isn't that wonderful?" He said, amidst a glowing face. The joy in his spirit was obvious.
Kallisto stopped in her tracks, and her heart did the same, skipping a beat before it kicked start again. It raced, and she wished he hadn't told her about it. She wanted to be happy about it, but she couldn't help the feeling of complete jealousy that lingered at the top of her chest, almost choking her.
"Th-that's great news." She said, stammering. Her voice came out in a croak, but his joy blinded him to it.
"Who would have thought this for us all those years ago?" He beamed, placing a hand around her shoulder in a brotherly embrace.
"I mean, look at us. You are going to be a Sultan and I'm going to be a father. Hell itself, I didn't think either of us would even manage to live this long!"

But his joy was short-lived.
A few months passed, and just as his beloved wife's belly was finally beginning to show the fruit of their love, tragedy struck.

Kallisto was in the inner sanctum, learning about male pressure spots, or pleasure points, as her quarter grandmother had so knowingly referred to, when a loud banging on the door startled both of them.
"Sir, you must stop this at once! For the last time, I cannot let you in!" The voice of the outside guard argued loudly to an unknown intruder.
"But I must see her, I must!"
A male voice begged, it was wracked with pain and despair, and in a heartbreaking moment, Kallisto recognized it.

Setting her book down, she scurried to the door and threw it open, her panic making the heavy stone swing with an ease not equal to its weight.
It was Alastar, his face red, uniform in disarray, eyes slick with tears.
She had never seen him in pain of any kind before. Immediately she knew something terrible had taken place.
Desdemona must have lost the baby.
That was all she could think must have happened to evoke this level of grief in such a sound person.
"What is going on out here?!?"

"You have my apologies Princess, but as I have explained to your guard as he's pushed his way into the sanctuary, the innermost sanctum can only be entered by the ordained virgins, and those who have been tragically widowed!"
Yelled the flustered guard, holding a spear to the back of the distraught intruder, clearly not wishing to kill him, but bound by duty to protect the sanctity of the temple.
"This man is none of those things! You must leave immediately!"

Alastar fell to his knees at Kallisto's feet, completely broken.
"But, I am one of those." His voice broke and a series of sobs followed.
The guards eyes widened, and he pulled back the spear in pity. The distress of the man finally making sense.
"Its Desdemona..." He raised his eyes to meet hers, the tears on his cheeks as thick and as glistening as glass.
"She... she drowned."
He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face into her stomach, wracking.

He had seen the whole thing, but had been to far away to save her in time.
She had gone for a swim in the river, like she did every morning, and he watched her from the banks, in the midst of sharpening his sword in the yard of her father's grand villa.
The current pulled her under, and by the time he had noticed, and swam out to save her, it had been too late.

And that day, the day he lost his wife and child, and kneeled crying on the temple floor, wrapped in the arms of the only other girl he had ever cared about, that was the day the light died within him. For how little she had come to see him during his marriage, she came to see him even less after. Weeks passed, and he fell headfirst into a somber darkness.

The days she wasn't in the palace, and he actually had to guard her, he did just that. He stood stoically outside her door, staring at the wall. They spoke little, and he never smiled or joked.
He began to drink so much that he couldn't stop, and it began to affect his work. He would be late to guard her, and a lot of the times he wouldn't even show up at all, and she would cover for him, sending servants out to find him and drag him unconsciously from one pub or an another back to his quarters. She lined their pockets heavily with gold, so as to keep these transgressions out of the castle gossip, and away from the ears of her father.

Alastar never realized the depths of his own situation, or that she was the one helping him, he was too forgone to realize, and always simply assumed he managed to stumble back on his own.

She wanted to help him, to ease his suffering, but there was nothing else she could do. She tried to get him to discuss his feelings, but instead he chose to bury them. She knew she could do nothing else but cover for him as he went through his grief, for if it was ever found that the one man whose sole duty was to guard the princess, was not actually guarding the princess, he would be put to death. Alastar was lifebound to her, and it not in her service, much like if she ever died, he would be set to death.

3 days before what would be the beginning of the final part of her training, and about half a year after the accident.
Alastar stepped into her room, his entry took her slightly by surprise.
He didn't look as disheveled as usual. His leather armor had been polished, and his raven black hair, which had grown scraggly and unkempt, was cut back into its normal military fashion. He almost looked like his old, devastatingly handsome self, despite the dark circles under his eyes which now had all but become a permanent feature.

"You got a haircut, what's the occasion?"
She did her best to joke, insides begging to see any semblance of a smile on his now stonelike face.
"The emperor wishes me to accompany you to a meeting in his study this afternoon."
His voice answered, as monotonous and void of emotion as had become usual.
"Whatever for?"
She raised an eyebrow.
"I wasn't told, but since I was asked to be their I'm assuming it will be about Akia."
He responded.

Later, when they both arrived for the meeting, she was shocked to find the priestess at the king's side.
It was almost an out-of-body experience for the princess to see her anywhere other than the temple, and to be wearing such modest, and respectful attire.

"Sultan..." she greeted her father before turning her head to the priestess,
"Your Eminence, I wasn't expecting to receive you here. I'm not due back at the temple for another 3 days, or has there been a mix-up?"
She worried, had she miscounted?

"No, daughter, there has not been. The hand of Cary's has been here all morning. We have been discussing..."
Her father paused for a moment to pinch the bridge of his nose, as if what he was about to say made him quite uncomfortable.
"the final stage of your harem training."
He said with a sigh.

"Oh..."
She replied.
"Then why did you ask for my bodyguard to be here?"
Kallisto motioned towards Alastar, who stood by her side but one pace respectfully behind, standing with his arms behind his back, at attention.

"The final stages of your training is..."
Her father paused, sighing uncomfortably again.
"exactly why I asked Alastar to be here."

Kallisto watched her old friend's face fill with unhindered horror as the priestess described just exactly how he was going to assist in the final part of her training.
"Of course, she knows in theory how to please a husband, but field practice is unfortunately essential."

Her father sat awkwardly, twiddling his thumbs, obviously quite uncomfortable with having to listen to the details of the things his daughter would be practicing on his best generals second born son.
"One can only read so much about the proper way to melt into the arms of a lover; and I've taught her quite well how to sigh, and how to moan appropriately, but the correct way to kiss, to touch gently, and occasionally harshly, that is only learned through experience."

Kallisto yearned for those things, and from Alastar himself no less. She dreamt about what his skin might feel like against hers, or how tightly he might embrace her. His pleasant, clean and masculine scent enveloping her is all she'd been able to think about ever since she had been exposed to some of the priestesses more vulgar literature.
But not like this, oh Cary's, not like this.
She did not wish to use her broken friend like a teaching aide. He was still so damaged that she fears even laying a finger on him might cause him to break apart.

"Once again, priestess, I implore you, is this absolutely necessary?"
Her father grumbled, the desire to plug his ears written desperately across his face. Kallisto shared in her fathers' sentiment., she, of course, was equally uncomfortable, as the details of her ultimate phase had never been totally unveiled to her, only ever wryly hinted at.

"Unequivocally."
The older woman crossed her arms.
echoing in the large throne hall.
Kallisto could feel her body tremble with shock, and a quick glance over at her bodyguard showed an equal state. Alastar was white, his eyes about to pop out of his head, much like the blue bugs that lurked in the desert.
His hand clutched at his stomach, appearing as though he may throw up at any moment.

The priestess noted this quite quickly, and raised a hand to reassure them. "Fear not princess, your virtue shall remain, and as for you good soldier, so shall your honor."
She promised.
"There shall be no actual sex, but the princess must learn how to kiss, how to pleasure and how to coax genuine desire from a man should she ever wish to tame a husband, let alone multiple."

Kallisto felt the bile ride in her throat, and she visibly gagged at her words.
Her reaction, oddly enough, brought her father just the tiniest bit of comfort.

"Father, I don't think this is necessary. What could all that have anything to do with ruling a..."
But her father's cut her off before she could finish.

"I'm your Monarch and I have made an order. You will not go against the words of your Sultan." Gnash said calmly, knowing it was going to be a difficult and uncomfortable path to tred.
"Alastar is the only true man I have permitted to be alone in your presence since you were but a girl."
The Sultan referenced the fact that Alastar was the only non Eunic In the harem employ.
"And while I still maintain my deepest condolences, his widower status also now permits him into the temple. The priestess asked me to pick a man to touch my daughter... and what a horrible thing to ask a father..."
He trailed off, rolling a chill off his shoulders.
"But if it must be done, it shall be done by no one else. By order of your Sultan, you are to follow the instructions of our wise lady of Carys."

Alastar just stood, his legs trembling. Head reeling. There was no way out for him. Maybe death, but he would not stoop so low. He could feel the world crumbling upon him, but there was nothing he could do any longer.
He was trapped like a rat in tar.

"As you command."
His voice utterly despondent.
He brought his fist to his chest and bowed in salute, fighting the powerful urge to empty the already sloshy contents of his stomach all over the ornate flooring.

After they were dismissed, Alastar walked hastily out the big door that enclosed the throne room, leaving his ward behind. Hot tears streamed down his cheek as he walked rapidly across the room. He reached for his alcohol at his side in the animal skin and quickly opened it, pouring the contents down into his throat.
He made his way into his chambers and with one quick movement smashed the nearest vase, it broke into the floor, splintering into an unrepairable number of pieces, much like his life.

It had been months, but he still couldn't believe his wife was still gone. He looked at his bed, picturing her lying there, though she had never actually had, since all of their marital time had been spent in her fathers' villa.
He sobbed some more. The pain in his heart and confusion in his head was unbearable. How could they ask him to do that? To touch an innocent girl like Kallisto? She was too pure and kind for what sounded like an utterly humiliation experience. Could he even lay a hand on her? Might a temple guard have to force a sword between his shoulder blades to make him put his hands on the young woman he doted upon like a sister?

A knock came from his door, and before he could wipe the tears that cloaked his face, the door was pushed open and Kallisto stood at the entrance. Their eyes met, and at that point, the innocent concern in them, it only drove more tears to his eyes.
His wailing sound filled the room once more, and Kallisto rushed to him, rubbing his back, and embracing him as forcefully as she had the day he lost his wife.

His grief was too much for her. She also broke down in tears and sobbed quietly with him. She wasn't happy with the fate of her bodyguard, her closest friend. She doesn't like the fact that he has now become a tool for the priestess, the man on whom she'll practice.
A quiet part of her, an older, darker part, would want what she had so badly. An opportunity to touch him and do whatever she wanted with him, and he couldn't refuse. And at that moment she hated her.

"I'm so sorry." "She said amidst sobs.
"But there is no alternative. We have no choice."

"There's should be a choice! There's always a choice!"
He cried, but Kallisto just pulled him in for a tighter embrace.

"I find this fate humiliating and painful, but there's absolutely no choice." Kallisto replied, her speech trembling.
"And as awful as this shall be, and as much as you may hate me for saying this... I'm grateful that it's you. I may have died of shame, or even by my own hand if that woman forced me to touch any other man than you."

The softness in her voice reminded him that she was still just a scared girl, a pawn in her fathers plans, at no fault and he pulled her tighter, returning her comfort while seeking his own.
"As you command."

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Hope you guys are enjoying this story so far. I'm having so much fun with it and so many big things planned.
Please don't forget to vote and leave a comment. ❤❤❤
-Catalina