Page 98 of The Castle & the Cloister

Hadrian’s words still rang in the Priest’s ears, so he fixed his mind on the sharp, immediate pain in his arm and the work of the needle. When Fia had finished her stitching, she washed the wound once more with clean water, dried it carefully, and bound it with a neat linen bandage. It was easy to tell she’d carried out the motions hundreds of times—she did everything with a spare efficiency born of practice.

In the wake of all that had happened, the Priest felt worn out and ill. He wasn’t Inver enough to revel in killings and intrigue and conquest. Even willfully damaging another—he’d changed the gods’ lesser mode of worship because as little as he enjoyed being cut to pieces by petitioners, he hated doing the cutting more. There’d been no way around it today, though, and he felt as if he’d never be rid of the scent of death.

“I don’t know why Hadrian said he wants you dressed like a noble, not a Priest,” Fia said, getting up and crossing the room to Orden’s massive bureau. The Priest had already donned breeches instead of linen trousers, out of deference to Hadrian’s expertise. “You’re not king, and you’ll be keeping the role of Priest in addition to the regency. At least you and Orden were a similar height, though you’re leaner than he was. I think this will suit.”

She returned to him, setting a loose shirt and heavily embroidered broadcloth doublet in his hands. The Priest bowed his head but made no move to put them on. He didn’t want to wear Orden’s cast-off clothes, to occupy his cast-off throne, to execute his cast-off wife, to raise his cast-offson. He wanted a world in which he was unremarkable—a farmer, or an apothecary, perhaps—and in which Fia and Justus and Ariana and Celina were all truly his. He would care for them as well as any man had ever cared for family. In such a life he could even have cared for Orden and been a true brother to him.

“I’m sorry,” Fia said, surrounded by the trappings of Orden’s failed reign. The Priest had never heard her speak so softly before. “I know you didn’t want any of this. I know I pushed you into it. But I couldn’t see any other way to keep Justus and the cloister and Ariana safe. It isn’t fair that you have to hold the throne and pay the highest price. I’d have done things differently if I’d known how.”

Taking Fia’s hand, the Priest drew her back down beside him.

“I would do it again,” he said. “The reasons are all good ones, and I’d make the same choice a thousand times over, but that doesn’t mean it would weigh any more lightly on me. It’s going to be a very long regency, even if Justus and I live through it.”

“You will,” Fia said, the words a prayer. “I will make sure of it. Nikolau will make sure of it. Even Hadrian, though I don’t care for him, will, I think, work to keep you and Justus alive.”

“Nikolau is Miriel’s father, isn’t he?” the Priest asked. He took great care not to imbue the question with too much interest, or even a hint of envy. He didn’t deserve to be told—didn’t deserve any confidence from her, not burdened with secrets as he was, but he wanted to know.

“Of course,” Fia said. “He’s spent the last decade hiding and organizing deserters in the north mountains. You’ll find the palace guard is two hundred souls stronger by nightfall than it was this morning—he’s brought a number of his own people with him, to fill important positions and swell the ranks. But his service will come at a price. He wants the practice of impressment discontinued. No more forcing Honorian citizens into the army, and off to Vesper.”

“It may take some time to bring that about,” the Priest said. “But I’ll lend it my support. Do you trust Nikolau?”

“Yes,” Fia answered without hesitation, and a pang of the jealousy he was attempting not to feel bit at the Priest. “Even without Miriel I would, but our daughter means I have something to hold over him that he values greatly. And I’ve made him swear an oath by his mark, to doeverything in his power to protect Justus. He’s honorable enough that he’ll feel bound to keep that oath.”

“Do you trust me?” the Priest asked. He felt compelled to voice the question, even as he knew the answer should be no. He was holding too much back, and sprang from a line that bred tyrants. It was possible power would change him, reworking him into something vicious and conniving. Better she kept on her guard around him always, as she would in the presence of a jackal or a snake.

“For now,” Fia said.

“Not in future?”

Fia reached out and placed a hand on the Priest’s bare chest, and her touch felt like fire. At first, she’d been a distillation of the goddess to him—Raea made manifest, in all her brilliant and stubborn glory. Now, she was both more and less than that. Fia was herself only: a woman with weaknesses and shortcomings like any other, but with a force of will and a taste for living like none the Priest had ever known. He wanted everything about her—her mulish, sharp temper; her refusal to abandon those she cared for; her ruthlessness in protecting the very same. He wanted her so badly it ached within him, resting alongside the knowledge that he couldn’t save Ariana, and the two twined together, becoming the same pain.

Fia, after all, had never known a definitive failure. And the Priest was deathly afraid that losing Ariana would damage her in some way, dimming the radiant fire at her core.

When Fia spoke again, there was a slight smile in her voice. “I will stop trusting you the moment I leave this mountain. I will trust Nikolau forever, whether I can keep watch over him or not. But that’s only because I understand him completely—he’s easily known, and straightforward in his tempers and desires. You are a different soul entirely. I’ll never fully know you, as you’ll never fully know me, and I couldn’t feel for Nikolau the depth and breadth of what I might one day feel for you. I can grow fond of what I’m able to control, but I can’t love it, not truly. I can only love those who are equal to me—who may choose to yield, but could just as easily force my own submission. So I suppose the matter rests in your hands. Which would you rather receive from me someday, Silas Inver? Perfect trust, or love?”

At the sound of his name coming from Fia’s lips, a shiver ran throughthe Priest. When she’d finished speaking, he had only one reply. He reached up, fitting a hand to the warm, arching back of her neck, beneath the thick rope of her heavy braid, and claimed Fia’s mouth with his own.

The Priest kissed her slowly at first, reveling in the softness of her, the sunlight and honey taste of her lips and tongue against his own. If this was the only reward he gained for two decades of servitude shackled to an Inver throne, it would have to be enough—to kiss a woman he’d once considered an embodiment of the sun.

But as always, the sun was surpassingly generous, and intended to give him more. It was Fia who pushed closer to him, pulling loose the drawstrings at the front of her kirtle and turning aside a little so that his mouth traveled along the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the velvet softness of the tops of her breasts, still bound by a strip of linen. With a single fluid motion, Fia lifted herself, shifting until she was on his lap, her legs straddling his waist. Everything in the Priest caught fire as he raised his face to her and met her mouth again, their kisses deep enough now to drown in. Fia grinned wickedly as she kissed him, and moved against the long, hard swell of the Priest between her legs until he couldn’t help the groan that escaped his lips.

“Now touch me,” Fia murmured, and he obliged, sliding a hand beneath the linen that bound her swollen breasts. Two of his fingertips brushed her nipple, and a stifled, yearning sound broke from Fia, an echo of the Priest’s own longing.

The Priest took her breast in his hand, and he could hear from the ragged, wanting cadence of her breathing that his touch was a sweet torment. She kissed him as if she was starved for it, her hands on either side of his shorn head, the movement of her body against him growing rhythmic. They were both wholly abandoned to the moment, out beyond themselves, wanting nothing but to sink further into each other’s welcoming heat.

From the bassinet near the bed, an irritable squall escaped Justus. Fia froze, her forehead pressed to the Priest’s, and then it came—the full and unhappy cry of Honoria’s infant king. The Priest tried and failed to hide a smile as Fia caught her breath suddenly, and the warm trickle of her milk let down.

“Silith’s pearl,” she ground out. “Whynow?”

But the Priest was laughing, a low, amused sound.

“He’s Orden’s son,” the Priest said as Fia pulled herself away and scooped up Justus, then settled onto the bed. She put the little king to her breast, and the soft sounds of Justus’s contented feeding filled the room, which had previously echoed to the precursors of passion. Getting to his feet, the Priest went to Orden’s washstand and cleaned his hands, then pulled on the shirt and doublet Fia had given him.

He’d put off going out to Hadrian and the nobles long enough, which meant he needed to gather his courage and tell Fia about the queen. Not all of it, but the necessary part.

“You look different,” Fia said as the Priest fastened his doublet. “More like an Inver. I’m not sure I like it.”

“You put me in this room, in these clothes, and on Honoria’s throne,” the Priest said. “So you’ll just have to live with everything that follows.”