“Oh,” I say, my heart pounding against my ribs, my mouth dry.
Renault returns the document to the table and then slides one hand over to grip mine. His flesh is feverishly hot. “I suppose you needn’t worry about any of this. I just want you to be prepared, as an Apostle wife. This scroll, it’s Sepulchyre-made,” he says, his thumb sweeping over the back of my hand. For some uncharitable reason, my skin crawls. “Propaganda, you see. That’s why it’s usually locked away in the Crypta. But Sir Cassius is interested in studying such things. Do understand, Ophelia, that it’s a documentdesignedto make our Lord and our Church look monstrous.”
His wordsshould release the anxiety that’s squeezed tight around my lungs, that’s bidding my heart to race. It is, I think, exactly what I might want to hear after gazing upon such a disturbing thing. My eyes track to the scroll, this time examining the First Son’s siblings. Instead of looks of adoration or even determined preparation, the lesser gods are depicted here as glassy-eyed, hollow, slack-jawed things.
Before I can look closer, Renault slides the document away, tucking it into the return cubby at the top of the alcove. I try not to watch his movement, try not to track it with the keenness I feel. I twist my hands into my skirts under the table.
Why do I not believe my betrothed, the man meant to guide the rest of my life?
Chapter 15
Renault keeps me in the Sanctum until well past supper. My hand cramps into a claw from all the notes he has me inscribe, fingers and palms stained with blue-black ink. We speak little about anything other than his work, and there is a strange relief in it—as if we are just friends, as if the goetia trial never occurred, as if so many things do not feel like they dangle from the side of an abyss.
I find nothing in the Catechisma to explain what I saw this morning, but the familiarity of my day allows me to convince myself it was a dream. All I need to do is not think about it too often, not relive how real the soil felt between my fingers.
I stop in the kitchens, having missed suppertime in the Great Hall. The cooks are wrapping up their work for the evening, but, as always, a long, narrow table by the door holds the meager leftovers for anyone who missed the meal bell. I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and reach to wrap an apple into the fabric. It is bruised and the flesh is a bit mealy, but it’s easy to eat as I head into the Vincula.
My ever-present feeling of dread should increase, I think, as I board the attollo, a wordless guardsman at my side. Here I go into the mouth of the beast with little protection from itsfangs. And yet something in me releases instead as the attollo comes to a halt, depositing me into the depths of the Vincula. It makes little sense. Last time I was here, a member of the High Ecclesia attacked me and my very virtue was called into question. There is nothing here for me but strife and failure. And yet my shoulders drift further down all the same, the knot in my stomach loosening.
I have little time to question such things at the present moment. Instead, I must ready myself for the Lupa Nox’s temptation. As the guardsman leads me to her cell, I try to practice standing tall, my mouth set in a firm line. I repeat passages from the Catechisma again and again in my head, praying for the strength of my Lord to infuse me. To help me resist the sway of her darkness.
All my lines of defense crumble when I see her. The knight is chained, seated in the chair beside the straw pallet.
This time, she does not make it look like a throne.
Her head lolls to one side, her breathing harsh as a winter sea. Bruises cluster on her collarbone, exposed by the neckline of her blouse, and one eye is slightly swollen. I clutch my healer’s kit tightly, my heart pounding as the guardsman checks the knight’s restraints. Satisfied, he places a tall stool beside me. And then I am alone with the Lupa Nox.
She stirs, the muscles in her forearms flexing against her shackles, and then draws her head up from her chest. Her hair is loose and wild, a dark veil across her face. One lip is split, marred with blood. “I’m fine,” she tells me. “Looks worse than it is.”
Something like guilt, of all things, clutches my throat. “I’m...This ismyfault?—”
“No,” the knight says, shaking her dark locks out of her vision. “No, it’s not. Not at all. Though if you insist upon feelingbad about it anyways, you can make it up to me by holding a cold compress to my eye. It hurts.”
I just stand there, frozen, unable to comprehend her words. A manipulation, surely, in response to the way we have tried to manipulate her with the show of High Ecclesian force. But her voice is so honest, so without the guile and double-meaning I often hear in others’ words and can never parse out. I cannot pretend to know her, but as I hesitate, staring into her face like a fool, I find only the very same exhaustion I feel in my own bones.
“Of course,” I murmur so low I’m not sure she even hears me. I set the kit on the stool and prepare a cut of flannel with clean, cold water from a glass flask tucked into a side pocket. “It’ll be ready in a second. Is that all right?”
The knight says nothing for a long moment, her gaze falling onto me, sweet as fresh snow. “Areyouall right?”
Her eyes dip away from my face, trailing down my throat, and I swear I can feel it as deeply as though it were her fingertips on my skin. My breathing suddenly presses tight against my bodice, heat pooling somewhere forbidden between my legs.
It takes me too long to realize she’s just examining my neck because she saw the High Ecclesian grab me there. Not because she longs for me in the wicked, endless way I fear I might long for her, just as I once did for Carina.
“I’m fine,” I say tightly, rehearsing all the lines Renault suggested in my head. Make the knight think I’m scared.
Iamscared. I’m scared of everything, of the way it feels like invisible walls press closer and closer to me at every moment, so it will hardly be difficult to fake. Then I’ll appeal to her delusions of the Host. Without making any requests, I must convince her I need help and that the best way to help me is to open herself to talk of the Host.
“What happened to you after you left last night?” the knight asks.
I swallow hard. I should approach her, wipe the blood from her lip, check her collarbone to ensure it’s not broken. But it is so terribly clear that something happened toherafter I left, and instead she inquires about me. She is sitting here, chained and imprisoned and wounded, and yet she asks about me. Confusion muddles me, twisting my thoughts.
I look toward the guardsmen, far off on the other side of the large, empty cell. The earthen walls absorb sound in a way all the marble and stone aboveground surely do not. “My betrothed helped correct me,” I say, the rehearsed words sour on my tongue. “Reminded me of my priorities. Of how important it is I help heal your soul.”
“Convert me, you mean,” the knight says, her brow creasing. She winces for a heartbeat, the expression clearly paining her swollen eye. “Why is it so important? Why don’t you just kill me?”
Traitorous words threaten to leap to my mouth—that I have so little idea about anything that is truly going on here, that sometimes I worry I am as much a prisoner as she is, that I’m afraid and confused and I don’t know who I can really trust. I grit my teeth and swallow those dramatic, silly phrases back down. With a shaky exhale, I force myself to dab at the crusted blood on her mouth. It’s hard to think about anything else at all with my gaze there—on the sweep of her lips, an elegant curve. Of that dream, when she?—
“Because we don’t wish to harm you at all,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound as choked and fragile to her as it does to me. I clean the remaining blood from her lip and step away, preparing a compress for her eye. “But you are . . . very dangerous. You understand that, yes? How many of our people you’ve killed? But if we can change you, help you see the way . . .”
