Chapter 1
In a garden at the end of the world, a marble statue weeps tears of blood. My breath catches as I stare, lungs skittering in my chest—clumsy as wet, newborn things. Reverently, I step toward the plinth. Toward my salvation.
“Saintess Lucia,” I murmur, tipping my head back to address the statue, “have you chosen me?”
Elation flutters through my body. My Sainting isfinallyupon me. I draw a deep, triumphant breath of the mist-thick air. I’ve thought myself too old, too forsaken, too useless for any holy patron to take notice of me.
And yet tears of blood shimmer ruby-bright upon my favorite Saintess’s statue. I step closer, that ever-present weight lifting from my shoulders. For a long, golden moment, it is only me and all my tender-hearted hope. But only for a moment—doubt careens in a second later, teeth bared. I clutch my gathering basket to my chest and turn on my heel, opening my mouth to call out for a witness to this small miracle.
My cane catches in the soil, still damp with dew, and I stumble. My vision moves in short flashes: the gray sky, the thicket of rosebushes and tomato vines and hedgerows, and then the ground, rushing up to meet me.
Pretty hands I know better than my own grab my forearms, catching me before I fall. “Ophelia!” The familiar voice curls around my name. “By the Saints. Are you all right?”
I steady myself, letting out a strangled sound as I desperately try to slow the frantic gallop of my heart. “Carina,” I finally manage, my mind swimming. “Look at the statue. Tears of blood. It’shappening.”
Still grasping my arms, Carina glances past me to examine the statue at my back. I catch my breath, my heart keening as I await my oldest friend’s testimony of what might be my Sainting.
For so long, I have lingered by Saintess Lucia’s statue each morning after my work in the garden. For so many bells, I have pleaded at her rosy marble feet, tracing the carved embroideries in her long, flowering robes with my fingertips. If anyone can save me, it’s Saintess Lucia, mother of the healing arts, mistress of the green.
Tears overflow my eyes, dripping down my cheeks, clear as quartz. I clutch at Carina, overcome with joy. Now that a Saint has finally chosen me to work the Mysteries, the Twelve can no longer withhold their approval of my engagement. That horrible goetia trial will become a distant memory. I will bring honor to my betrothed’s House. I will elevate myself within the social fabric of Cathedral Hill. I will finally be more than the Saved foundling with a limp. I will?—
“Ophelia,” Carina said, her voice gentle.Toogentle, I realize, the easy wonder draining from my body.
Leaning hard on my cane, I turn without meeting her gaze. Like when I had almost fallen, the world moves in sharp, slow images: the blur of the dawn-kissed garden, all greens and blooms; the concern and pity writ clear in Carina’s nebula-brown eyes; and then the soft, pale pink planes of Saintess Lucia’s statue.
No longer do beautiful crimson tears stud her marble face like rubies. “But,” I whisper, the word scraping at the sides of my throat as all the weight of the world crashes back onto my shoulders. “No, Carina, I . . . Ijustsaw them. The tears.”
“Ophelia,” she soothes, almost too quickly—like it was no surprise to her that I would simply imagine the entire thing, as if I am drenched in desperation the same way dew clings to the foliage around us. I suppose I am. My veins pound under my skin, shame heating my face.
“I saw it,” I whisper miserably. Silence blooms again in the garden, so quiet that, for a moment, I can hear the roar of the ocean as it crashes against the base of the cliffs below.
Carina releases one of my forearms, her long, dark lashes—delicate as a swallow’s wing—dipping down as she looks away from me.
Nothing has changed. No Saintess has risen from the divine fabric of the world to rescue me. I am still a crippled foundling with no Mysterium. Despair grips me, and I yearn to throw myself into Carina’s arms and weep, but there are a thousand reasons I shouldn’t—couldn’t.
All at once, she meets my gaze, raising one hand to brush my face with her fingertips. A small consolation: Carina’s touch no longer calls forth the kinds of feelings I know are forbidden. At least I have finally mastered those errant desires. But isn’t that all the more reason for my Saint to finally appear with a christening of blood?
“Ophelia,” Carina begins, her voice soft as the lovelace flowers that grace the cliffside, “it’s very possible what you sawisthe beginning of your Sainting.” Her hand wraps around mine in a way that once made gooseflesh scatter across my body. “That happened to Beatrix, didn’t it? She saw things in her dreams before her patron claimed her.”
I release a long exhale and pull away from Carina’s touch. The wind climbing the cliffs buffets the garden’s boughs, dewdrops falling in a shower of crystals. I tuck a stray lock of blonde hair back into my braid, thinking.
“Beatrix’s patron is the Saint of prophecy,” I reply, chewing my lower lip. “Of course he gave her prophetic dreams to begin her Sainting.”
Carina sighs and says nothing, though she reaches for me, as if to wade into my misery alongside me. When she brings her brow to mine, my control breaks and tears slip down my face, falling to the grass at our feet. She speaks no more, offering only a soft, bone-deep understanding of my plight. No one seems to understand me like Carina does. But we could never be together—not like that. Not the way I’ve daydreamed about in stolen moments so many times in the anni we’ve known one another.
“Ophelia?” she says, her voice louder than usual, as if she’s had to repeat my name more than once.
I return myself to the waking world, looking up from the ground to find Carina still holding my hand tightly, though she’s stepped back, creating space between us.
“Sorry,” I mumble. I glance between the bundles of yarrow flowers in my basket and the galaxies of her eyes. “Sorry, I just?—”
“I know,” Carina says fiercely, the salt-hemmed wind tugging at her words. “I know how badly you need this. And by the Saints, Ophelia, if anyonedeservesto work the Mysteries, it’s you. I hope you know that.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. It should be easy to agree with her; I was the sole survivor of a massacre that destroyed my village. A tiny, golden-haired child sitting among the rubble, the blood, the destruction. Surely the First Son would not Spare me—or anyone—simply for a quiet, small life of gardening and kitchen work.
“I just wish the Saints would see it so,” I reply, furious that more tears spill down my face, splattering the just-picked yarrow with my shame.
“One day,” Carina murmurs after a long pause, her tone gentle, though she looks at me strangely. She opens her mouth as if to say more, but instead she lets go of my hand, stooping to retrieve her own basket from the ground. It’s filled with white rose clippings, their petals bright as a dove’s breast.
