“I mean,” he says, his eyes boring into mine, grip near-punishing, “that together, we will overcome this test. Imagine the exaltation it will bring House Amadeus if I can guide a simple foundling girl through converting one of our enemy’s greatest warriors. Can’t you see it? The Lupa Nox in her baptismal shift, descending into the waters, you and I just off to the side, that leafy crown of victor’s laurels about my head. How could anyone deny our union then?”
I want Renault’s words to motivate me, to send something holy and bright coursing through my blood. He’s right, of course—not even the High Ecclesia could stand against our intention to be wed if we managed such a victory.
Two bells ring out in the corridor, the sound rattling through my bones, reminding me I should’ve been asleep three bells ago. My eyes slide from Renault’s as I swallow, my mouth dry.
“I am to be your husband,” he says, one hand reaching to grip me by the chin, bringing my gaze back to him. “I will pull you from the pits of your own sin.”
“Yes,” I whisper. Desperation seeps into the pit of my stomach, nausea lashing at my intestines. “Please, Renault. I don’t want to feel like this. I’veneverwanted to feel like this.”
“Of course not,” he replies, his tone gentling, hand reaching to brush my hair away from my face. “It’s the work of the Sepulchyre. We took their best sword, so now they seek to infect us with poison from the inside out. You are kind and good, and our God loves you, Ophelia.”
Relief—and maybe hope—blooms in my chest. Tears spill down my face, my next breath a wet, shuddering inhale. Perhaps I can yet be worthy of my betrothed, of Lumendei, of the First Son.
“And if it is poison we must excise,” Renault continues, releasing me and taking a step back, “our Lord teaches us the way, doesn’t He?”
I know the Catechisma verse, like any good Host girl.Consider it pure joy to cleanse the body by blow, for after you have suffered, the King of All Kings will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you in His heart.
But my tongue refuses to recite it. Wrongness careens through my body like a tide, and rebellion hums in my marrow, teeth bared. I have been good, and I have been kind, and I have been faithful, and still, it has landed me here—at a man’s mercy,my own agency, my ownfleshmore under his command than mine.
“No,” I whisper hoarsely, tilting my chin back to meet Renault’s gaze. And then I stand there in the half-lit gloom of my room and wait for my betrothed to say something. To say anything.
But he does not. Instead, he just sighs and shakes his head, turning away from me to stride toward my bedside chest. From the top drawer, he retrieves my flail. Weakness crawls up my throat.
My back isn’t yet healed. My body already knows pain so intimately. And though I desperately want to repent—not like this. Not like this. Sin has circled me like a predator all the days of my life, and yet nearly fifteen summers of the flail have yet to purge it from me. Why, then, would tonight be any different?
When Renault offers me the worn leather handle, I do not take it. In the firelight, I watch the muscles in his jaw clench as he reaches for my hand and forces open my fingers, placing the flail in my palm. I try to pull away, opening my mouth to stutter out something stupid and half-formed, but my betrothed speaks first.
“I am to be your husband,” he says, reaching for the ties at the front of my work dress. Instinctively, I shift away, but he catches me by the small of my back with his other hand. “I will stay and guide your purging, since you seem . . . resistant this evening.”
My heart beats in my throat, desperate as any soft thing with its neck grasped between sharp teeth. All the words I wish to speak, all the ways I wish to say no, simply won’t come to my tongue. And so I freeze, my mind going blank, body utterly still.
My dress is already unlaced when Renault commands me to my knees before him. With no other option—no wings to spread and fly away—I obey, inelegantly and painfully, clutching at mycane as I lower my body to the ground. The stone floor bites into my knees, my hips awash with pain from the position. I steady myself, preparing the flail.
From there, everything happens in short, sharp flashes—as if my mind cannot comprehend the whole of it, so even reality itself is doled out in bite-size pieces appropriate to the apparent smallness of my spirit and my intellect. Renault’s hands tear away my dress’s bodice, much farther than necessary, the garment pooling around my waist.
My chest heaves in a terrified gasp, and the movement reveals my fiancé has seen fit to rid me of my shift as well, the underthing pulled down with my gown. Heat from the fire sears my back at the same moment goosebumps race across my bare breasts. I watch from somewhere far inside myself as I hurriedly grasp at the worn linen of my shift, trying to pull the garment back up to cover my nakedness.
Renault lowers himself to one knee before me, still towering over my huddled form. His left hand restrains my wrist in an iron grasp, stilling my attempts to restore my modesty. The other wraps around my hand that holds the flail and yanks it painfully into position.
“I am to be your husband,” Renault repeats in a voice that hardly sounds like his, drone-like and low, as if a hive of bees has taken up residence in his throat. “I know what is best for you. Endure this humiliation of your purity and cleanse your soul with holy blows.”
I am frozen, lost, as far away from my room as if I’ve been summoned to the gardens or Physica Hall. For all I know, I’m standing at the cliffs and wondering what it would be like to pitch my body off the ledge into the dark, churning abyss of the sea.
“Now, Ophelia,” Renault snarls, the two words cutting into me so deeply that I’m forced to return to my room, to my body, to my place on my knees before my husband.
I do as I am told. Each strike against my body bites me twofold—the pain on my already-wounded back, the humiliation of my exposed and sinful flesh. I do not know how many blows I deal. I exist entirely within agony, the world beneath the world.
Only once or twice between strikes do I dare to glance up at Renault, seeking any scrap of comfort he might give—a gentle look, a hand brushing my cheek, a reminder that, once purged, I will renew myself in both his and our Lord’s eyes. Instead, the gloom of my room and the shadows cast by the fire hide his features, and I see only the column of his legs and the bottom of his doublet.
I should stay in my body, I know—I should endure the full brunt of this punishment, yet my mind seeks to leave such confines. Once again, I’m in that small inner chamber, watching everything as it happens but not experiencing it, not truly.
It’s from that tiny, safe place that I notice the strange tenting at the apex of Renault’s thighs, beneath the front of his pants. It seems to strain against the fabric, pulsing and thriving like a living thing eager to be released. I do not understand this, but it seems I am forever overwhelmed by a thousand things I do not understand.
Finally, one of Renault’s hands slides around my wrist, pulling the hand that grips the flail into my lap. I release a tear-choked gasp and slump forward. Just like that, my interior room crumbles, the walls blown out, the door disintegrating, and I am left with only the bone-deep pain of the lashes and my sin.
Renault offers soothing noises, like I am a child, not a grown woman he stripped half-naked. For some reason, I let myself sob. Not because I feel safe with him and not because I feel purified, but because the tears come in a relentless monsoon Icannot control. My betrothed pulls me against him, my head to his chest, fingers running down my back, oblivious to the sting of open cuts.
Humiliation sears into me again, and I grasp for my shift.
