Both guards flinch and then look at each other before one leans against the golden gate, conferring with someone on theother side—a Knight of the Host, I suspect. Then the simple metal chandelier hums, a clean, bright white light appearing a few moments later.
I set my jaw and turn back toward the Lupa Nox, legs shaking. The asphodels are still there, inked clear as anything. The long, powerful stalk begins in the middle of her rib cage, where her muscles are sharply defined. From there, the plant shoots upward, its petaled crown adorning her sternum and chest. For a long moment, I wonder how far beneath her breast band the tattooing continues. Shame slams into me like an ocean, and I burn.
“Would you like me to remove more?” the knight asks, the tips of two long fingers hooking into the bottom of the slim cloth band that binds her chest.
I hesitate, the blood vessels in my face pounding. “No,” I manage to get out, rummaging through the healer’s kit. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Keeping my gaze on the labeled bottles and tins feels like a fight for my very soul with the knight’s lean, long torso exposed. I find the draught I’m seeking and extract it, pleading with Saintess Lucia that the Lupa Nox might not see how my fingers tremble.
“For now, take this,” I say, pulling the cork out of the glass bottle’s tiny mouth. I hand it to the knight before remembering her bound wrists. Under no circumstance will I bring the bottle to her lips and tip the contents onto her tongue. Under no circumstance will I put myself in a position that reeks of sin.
Thank the Saints, her bindings just allow her to grasp the bottle and bring it to her mouth, though the Lupa Nox stops there, her gaze pinning me in place. “May I ask what this remedy contains?” she murmurs, one of those ink-dark eyebrows arched again.
I explain the herbal properties and the distillation process, as well as how I believe it will help her. She watches me, utterly silent, just as unmoving as the High Ecclesia—it must be a Fatum trait, I think, tucking the tidbit away into the back of my mind. At no point does she interrupt my words or grow bored, or even attempt to make me speak faster. She simply listens.
“Goldenrod for internal bleeding,” she says only when I am done, sniffing the bottle’s mouth. “Interesting.” And then, without hesitation, she tilts the opening toward her lips and downs the entire draught.
“I am surprised you trust me.” The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“I don’t,” the Lupa Nox returns with a grin, leaning back in the chair that imprisons her, though she looks more like she’s at the head of a feast table. She makes no attempt to pull her blouse all the way back down. “But I am terribly susceptible to beautiful women.”
I freeze, and blood roars through my body, thundering so loudly in my ears that for a moment, I cannot hear anything else at all. That old, desperate yearning I thought I had cut out of my chest rattles inside me like it was not dead at all but merely sleeping. Shame and despair send my stomach plummeting into the ground.
“You speak of blasphemous sin to a betrothed woman,” I inform the knight without looking at her, tripping over the words. From the healer’s kit, I pull more gauze for her head wound, trying to focus all my attention on the feeling of the fiber moving across my hands, on the tight restriction of my corseted bodice, of the pain blooming in my hip. On anything but that hunger—the one that’s stalked me all these anni.
“Do you love him?” the Lupa Nox queries, her voice dropping into a low, husky murmur.
“Of course I do,” I reply too quickly.
Her mouth curves into something I cannot name. “Well, I wish you many happy days, then,” she replies.
I refuse to meet her gaze as I pull away the dressing. The wound has improved tremendously in only a day. The gauze is soaked in dark, dried blood, but the gash on her skin looks two weeks healed. It doesn’t even need redressing, just a gentle cleaning.
“Let me know if this hurts,” I say, soaking the gauze in watered-down chamomile oil. I have no choice but to pull the knight’s hair away from her face with my own hands due to her shackles. The strands slide like silk through my fingers, releasing more of that sweet, spicy scent.
“You are incredibly gentle with me,” the knight murmurs after a few moments. I’m so focused on cleaning the blood from her skin and hair that I almost don’t hear her. “Surely I’ve killed people you cared for, haven’t I?”
It all comes rushing in then—the way I admired her hands, the lean column of her body, the powerful line of her shoulders. How looking at the Sepulchyre’s best weapon made my blood pound, pulled that dead yearning right out of its grave. How depraved I am, swooning like a girl over the blade that has torn through the bodies of my friends. Of my congregation. All the air goes out of my lungs, and I feel the Lupa Nox go still beneath me, a predator in the shadows just waiting for the right moment.
“Yes,” I reply, the word a croak from my hoarse throat. “And yet you still deserve gentleness, I think. That is what my Lord teaches.” I pull away, reaching for a clean, dry pad of gauze.
The knight looks at me with more animation in her features than she’s shown thus far: velvet-dark eyes narrowed, head tilted to one side, mouth pulled tight. “What else,” she begins, “does your Lord teach you?”
I nearly drop the gauze pad out of shock. I am not always the best judge, but the knight’s interest seems genuine, like thereis something she truly cannot understand and wishes to know more about. Purpose flares up my throat like a lit candle.
Perhaps Renault’s plan is not so far-fetched. I swallow down fluttering excitement, trying not to look too eager; that is not a desirable trait in young women, as I well know. My heart pounds against my chest. I chew on my lip, folding the gauze into a thick square before pressing the fabric to the knight’s head wound.
“We are a people of peace, Lady Knight,” I tell her, thankful that I need not look into her eyes, lest the tide of them sweep me away. “Even to our enemy, we turn the other cheek.” Satisfied that the healing wound is clean and dry, I pull away and discard the used gauze into a side pocket of the kit.
Something flashes across her expression—furious and shadowed, like a wolf baring its teeth—but then her features smooth over, leaving only those large blue-black eyes and sculpted mouth. I find myself standing utterly still, my heart racing, my entire future poised upon the next words that leave the mouth of the Lupa Nox.
“For a talented healer,” she says, tilting her chin up in a haughty movement, the light dancing along her knife-sharp jaw, “you are an absolute fool.”
I freeze, all the hope dashed out of me, and something rears inside me. “D-do not...” I manage, scrambling for a shred of dignity, something that has been taken from me over and over again of late. My chin trembles as I meet her gaze. “Please do not speak to me like that.”
To my surprise, the knight’s expression softens. “Yes,” she says on an exhale. “I’m sorry. You’ve done nothing but help me. It is your God, your leaders, that I’m angry at. I imagine you know nothing of the truth.”
Her words dangle in the air between us. The attention of the guardsmen suddenly burns across my back. My skin itches.
