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CHAPTER 12
I walk along the sunny street, my feet unconsciously falling into the rhythm of the sisters’ song drifting over the convent’s eastern wall from the garden. Their chant and scents of overturned soil and freshly trimmed rosemary unearth a hundred bittersweet memories, and I brush my fingers along the regular stone and cement pattern as I stroll. Even recognizing the safety and security they offered parentless girls like me, I resented these walls.
One stone juts out a little farther than most. I tap both it and a nearby fist-size divot in the mortar. Countless times this secret ladder helped me return to the abbey without using the gate.
The last time I scaled the wall was the day Magister Thomas followed me after watching me climb the side of a three-story building to escape a street gang. I thought I was in trouble, that he was the man they had robbed, but instead he asked Mother Agnes if he could hire me.
I also know that somewhere on the other side of the wall, behind a shed, the fat purse of coins from that morning is buried. Having stolen it from pickpockets and with no idea who the true owner was, I felt no guilt in keeping it myself as resourcesI would need when I left the convent for good. Working for the architect made such saving unnecessary, but the money is still there if I ever have need of it.
I turn right with the corner. The convent’s main gate is on the south side—the sunniest wall, which is supposed to be symbolic. Across the street is the northern section of the wall surrounding the Selenae Quarter. I’ve often wondered whether the People of the Night originally settled on Collis’s outskirts, or if Solis Abbey was built to stand between them and the rest of the city. Not even Mother Agnes knows, I think.
A tangle of vines covers the outer wall and most of the houses and windows facing the shaded north, while green arms arch across a few narrow avenues leading into their neighborhood. The delicate white and violet moonflowers only bloom at night, when Selenae confine themselves to the Quarter.
Flower of white, curled up tight,
In the day you hide from sight.
Selenae know, home to go
When your face begins to show.
I hum the melody without thinking as I ring the abbey’s bronze bell. The nursery rhyme is often the first children of Collis learn, but I haven’t thought of it in years. As I wait, I find myself searching window gaps in the heart-shaped leaves for signs the scarred man is watching me from within, continuing the tune like it will protect me somehow.
The woman shuffling to meet me little resembles the one who taught me that song. Three steps from the gate, a clawlike hand gropes to find it as foggy eyes stare past me. “Who is it?” she rasps.
“It’s me, Mother,” I say, unsure how she will react. Our last words were decidedly unpleasant.
Her wrinkled smile rises like the dawn and light comes to her eyes, though they remain unfocused. “Catrin?”
“Yes, I came to see you.”
The matron’s happy response is a surprise, but then sparse eyebrows lift and her mouth bends in skepticism. That’s more like it.
“You want something,” she says.
“Magister Thomas said you weren’t well.” When her expression doesn’t change, I sigh. “And I wanted to apologize.”
“Hmph.” The prioress produces a ring of keys from under her gray wool mantle. She immediately selects the correct one, but it takes her several tries to insert it into the lock. “You must want whatever it is pretty badly.”
The gate opens with a rusty screech, and I step inside the archway, blinking against the purple spots burned into my eyes by the sun. Mother Agnes closes and relocks the gate, then hooks the ring back on her belt. I decide humor might thaw the awkward moment.
“You’re right about my motive,” I say. “I could smell Sister Louise’s ginger biscuits all the way from the Sanctum.”
Mother’s thin lips twitch as she leads the way through the gloomy passage. “Well, since you’ve come all this way, you might as well have tea.” The prioress skims her fingers along the wall as I did outside, but she does it so she knows where to turn the corner and when she’s reached the door to her sitting room.
A sister jumps up from a desk cluttered with ledgers and parchments as we enter. “Catrin!” she gasps, a hint of the once bubbly smile coming through.
I roll my eyes. “It’s still just Cat. You gave me that nickname, remember?”
“Of course I do.” Marguerite glances nervously at the prioress, and that’s when I realize she’s in the full garb of a Sister ofLight, her hair completely covered by a white cowl and a beaded necklace hanging to her waist.
“When did you take vows?” I ask.
Mother Agnes makes her way to a worn cushioned chair like she’s not listening, but I know better.
“At midwinter,” Marguerite answers. “You know that’s traditional.”
The ceremony takes place on the shortest day of the year, symbolizing how a sister is supposed to grow in the Light every day after. “And you didn’t invite me?”
