Page 52 of The Castle & the Cloister

Looking upon the earth, and the scant few who survived in the wake of that great darkness, Raea was moved with compassion. She spilled her light over all of them like seed, until every living creature, whether male or female, from the lowliest crawling worm to the mightiest of beasts, was filled with her glorious presence and the ecstasy of her being, and each brought forth offspring in their own kind. Thus was the world renewed and filled once more, through Raea’s love and blessing.

—FROM “RAEA AFTER THE SHADOWS,” A SACRED STORY OF THE BELOVED THREE

Fia sat with her back to one of the ridiculous drums the Invers had hauled down to the sanctuary, silently fuming.

Orden and his inner circle had withdrawn from the altar rise to a long, richly set table laden with extravagant foods. Around the cavern floor, scattered between torches, makeshift stalls had been set up to hawk roasted meats, spiced buns, honeyed figs, and mulled wine to celebrants who did not warrant an invitation to the king’s table, and people milled about, talking and laughing and eating.

Away on the altar rise, the prisoner who’d been sacrificed still lay chained to the altar, spread-eagled before Tyrus, his throat a bloody mess. No one seemed to care or even to notice, now the deed had been done.Fia wondered briefly if Nikolau had known the man—likely not, for the prisoner would have been some highly placed Vesperin officer.

Stuffing her hands farther into her kirtle sleeves to hide the thick blood that had half dried on them, Fia scowled. Orden had taken his son—Justus, she supposed she’d best get used to calling the child now. The royal parents were busy showing him off, accepting congratulations offered to them with a smug and satisfied air.

No. That was wrong. Ari wasn’t smug and satisfied, even if she was forced to seem so. But Fia felt bruised all over on the wrong side of herself, the inner side, and couldn’t manage a charitable thought for anyone at the moment. She wanted Miriel. Wanted the cloister. Wanted to be anywhere but here, in this goddess-forsaken cave, where sorias had bled and died and Invers now stood toasting each other among their ghosts.

It had taken Fia some time to realize that spirits were the source of the odd, high-pitched singing that permeated the cavern. She’d thought at first it might be wind, keening over some hidden outlet to the mountainside. But in the absence of voices, when she stood at the war god’s altar with only drums piercing the sanctuary dark, the song had risen into an eerie, melodic wail.

She’d heard it once before, Fia realized then. When the king’s pressers had found a moon-marked woman in her village, accused her of still cleaving to Silith’s ways in defiance of Inver law, and drawn and quartered her at the crossroads. They’d been right about her faith. For the village’s sole midwife sang to Silith even as the horses tied to her took off at a run, and her limbs tore from their sockets.

Fia hadn’t been able to watch. But she’d heard the hymn, and it was the same melody that rang from the cavern walls, sung by a choir of sorias who’d lived and died scores of years ago.

“Postulant,” the Priest said from above her. Fia did not bother looking up, choosing to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. “You’ve been making yourself hard to find.”

“Priest,” Fia muttered. “Your sanctuary’s haunted.”

“I know,” he said. “It’ll be a misery down here for days after the ceremony’s ended. The sorias take to screaming and sobbing when a crowd’scome and gone, though very few can hear them. The queen can’t, which I’ve always thought a mercy.”

Fia said nothing. She pushed her hands still farther into her kirtle sleeves and glowered silently, all her anger a mask for how she felt about this wretched place. If she began to sob herself, for Ariana and her plight, for the sorias and their long-ago fate, for the brutal thing the Invers had made of Honoria, she’d never stop.

“Give me your hand,” the Priest said, still standing above Fia.

“I can’t,” she answered. “You ought to know that. If I do, they’ll all see the truth on me.”

The Priest nodded. “I haven’t been able to get near enough to the queen to be sure you’d done it. But I thought you would.”

“Of course I did it,” Fia said scathingly. “It would have killed her if she’d been the one. Maybe not outright, but eventually. She’d have lived in that moment for the rest of her life. Some things, you never get past.”

“And you?” the Priest asked. “You’ll get past it?”

Fia shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see the uncertainty of the gesture. “Perhaps. But there are already a hundred things haunting me. I’ve waded through so many moments that ought to have been the killing one, another won’t make much difference.”

“Do you want to wash?” the Priest said, and it was so entirely not how Fia had expected him to respond, that she looked up at him for the first time. He stood above her, patient and self-contained, the quiet wariness at his core all the more apparent against the backdrop of the raucous and celebratory court.

“What?” Fia asked.

“Your hands,” the Priest said. “Would it help if you could wash them properly, so that the blood’s treated with respect?”

“Not unless the body at that altar is given the same respect too,” Fia snapped. “Not unless his family’s told what happened. Not unless you can wash the rest of the blood out of the stones of this mountain.”

“His name was Acaius Berentos,” the Priest said evenly. “And I’ve already written to his people, though I had to send word through… unofficial channels. The body I’ll tend to myself when all this is over. The mountain, I can’t do much about. I’ll only ask once more—do you wantto wash? No matter how careful you are, someone’s bound to notice your hands and realize what happened, if you don’t.”

“Why do you think I’ve been skulking over here like a recluse?” Fia said irritably. “I know that.”

“Come with me. I’ve got everything you need in my cell, which is nearest and easiest. Or I can make excuses for you while you go back up to Her Majesty’s rooms.”

Fia scrambled to her feet. “Best be your cell, it’ll only look out of place if I leave the sanctuary.”

For the first time since her path had crossed his, the Priest seemed uncomfortable. He shifted in place, frowning slightly as he spoke again. “Yes, but I offer the chance to go upstairs because my people love nothing more than gossip and idle speculation. Someone’s bound to see me taking you off into the dark, and it’ll be all over the castle by tomorrow that I’ve bedded one of Dolenza’s women.”

Fia looked at him blankly. “Does that bother you?”