Chapter 89 Grace
Three Weeks Later
The scent of incense is the first thing that registers. It’s layered over the smell of new stone, fresh polish and the faint, cold dampness of a place that wants to be ancient but is, at its heart, a newborn imitation.
Antonio had me up early. He had me washed, dressed, and readied in a way that put the fear of God into me but I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t fight. He made sure to give me enough sedatives that I couldn’t do a thing.
My head swims, making every movement feel like I’m pushing through deep water.
I blink, forcing my heavy eyelids apart and the world swims into a horrifying, beautiful focus.
We are in the cathedral, the same one I know they murdered my father in.
The vaulted ceilings soar, every inch painted with intricate frescoes of angels whose faces are strangely severe, more like warriors than messengers of peace.
Where the great rose window was blown out, a new one burns with a furious, dark glory - a crimson phoenix rising above molten flames, the symbol of the Brethren, swallowing the light of the setting sun outside and casting the entire nave in a bloody glow.
The pews are filled. Rows and rows of them, a silent, watching audience. Every face is hidden behind a mask of polished gold, expressions frozen in serene, anonymous judgment. Their eyes, visible through the slits, are unblinking. Hungry.
And I am walking amongst them.
Antonio’s arm is a steel bar locked through mine, his grip a brutal, unyielding brand on my bicep. My feet, encased in delicate silk slippers shuffle silently over cold marble.
I look down. Blink, as I see white fabric billowing beneath me.
I am drowning in a river of fine white silk, the dress a confection of lace and pearls that feels like a grotesque parody. It’s a wedding dress.
No.
Nooo.
The thought is a spark in the drugged fog. It’s a tiny, frantic flame, but it’s enough. This is a wedding. My wedding.
Panic, sharp and clean, lances through the chemical haze in my veins. I try to dig my heels in as a feeble attempt to halt our procession down the endless aisle.
A sound escapes me, but it’s a weak, guttural protest, as futile as my fight is.
Antonio’s head turns in a smooth, predatory movement. His face is all sharp, handsome lines under this menacing light. His eyes gleam with a possessive triumph that makes my stomach roil.
He doesn’t break stride.
His fingers dig deeper with a silent, cruel warning, and he simply drags me forward.
The masked faces turn in unison, following our progress. Not a word is spoken. The only sounds are the whisper of my dress, the click of Antonio’s heels and the ragged, terrified wheeze of my own breath.
“How are you even lucid?” he murmurs, his voice a low, intimate thrum that feels like a violation. “I gave you enough to put down a horse. Be still, Dumpling. You’re making a scene.”
A scene? The absurdity of it almost chokes me. He is parading me, a drugged prisoner in a wedding gown before a cabal of monsters, and I am the one making a scene?
I try to pull back again, summoning every ounce of strength the drug hasn’t stolen.
But it’s like trying to fight the tide. His grip is absolute. He is relentless, a force of nature I cannot hope to battle in this state he’s put me in. The altar looms ahead, a monstrous slab of black veined marble.
And standing before it, waiting, is Konstantine, our Grand Master. His mask is more elaborate and terrifying than all the others, depicting a face of beatific calm that does nothing to hide the chilling emptiness of his real eyes.
We reach the steps. My legs buckle, but Antonio holds me like a macabre dance partner. He forces me down, his hand a heavy weight on my shoulder, pressing me to my knees on the cold bottom step.
A sob finally breaks free, a raw, broken sound that echoes too loudly in the silent cathedral.
Antonio kneels beside me, the picture of devout reverence. He leans in, his lips brushing my ear. His breath is warm, his words ice-cold.
“Accept your fate, Grace. It is done. We are already married in the eyes of God anyway. This…” he gestures slightly with his chin, “…this is merely a formality. A way to give you a bit of honour. You should be grateful I’m bestowing this upon you, after all your betrayals.”
The whisper is for me alone, but it feels like he’s shouting it from the rafters.
Grateful.
Honour.
Betrayal.
The words are poison twisting around my already broken heart.
The fog recedes another inch, burned away by a pure, undiluted hatred. I turn my head, and for the first time, I meet his gaze directly. “I hate you,” I snarl, my voice trembling with the force of my conviction. “I will always hate you.”
He tuts softly, as if chastising a stubborn child. He actually rolls his eyes, a gesture so casually cruel it steals my breath.
“I don’t need your love, my darling wife. You see, I’ve realised I have enough love for both of us.”
Konstantine’s voice booms out, a sonorous ritual chant in Latin that reverberates through the stones.
It’s a perversion of prayer, a dark sacrament.
He holds up a ceremonial dagger, its blade catching the red light from the phoenix window.
He takes Antonio’s hand first, slicing a quick, clean line across his palm.
Antonio doesn’t flinch, his face a mask of fervent devotion.
Then he turns to me. I try to curl my hand into a fist, but Antonio is faster. He uncurls my fingers, pinning my hand flat, offering it up. The cold edge of the blade bites into my palm and I gasp at the sharp, bright pain. Blood wells, a dark, vivid red against my pale skin.
Konstantine produces a length of crimson silk ribbon. He wraps it around our bleeding hands, binding us together. Antonio’s blood is warm and slick against mine. It feels like poison, more poison slipping into my veins. The ribbon pulls tight in a brutal knot, and we are tethered. Manacled.
But the physical tether is nothing compared to the metaphysical horror of it. With every word Konstantine speaks I feel a part of my soul being shackled, claimed. Sealed away in this terrible, beautiful place.
Konstantine’s empty eyes settle on Antonio. “Do you wish to consummate the union? To seal this covenant before God and this assembly?”
A slow, terrifying smile spreads across Antonio’s face. A smile of pure, unadulterated possession.
And it hits me then, why he hasn’t fucked me yet. Why he passed that deadline the doctors gave him. Oh god, he has been waiting for this. Planning it.
“I do,” he says, and his voice is thick with anticipation.
My heart stops. “No,” I whisper, the word a dry leaf rustling in the wind. “No, Antonio, please…”
He ignores me, his eyes blazing with awful triumph. He gets to his feet, and with our hands still bound, he hauls me up beside him. The world tilts, the drug and the dread making my head spin.
“No,” I say again, louder, pulling back against the ribbon but it only cuts deeper into the wound on my palm.
He leans close, his voice dropping to an intimate, vicious whisper meant only for me. “Be the good whore I know you are.”
With a sudden, brutal movement he sweeps my legs out from under me and lifts me, dumping me onto the cold, hard surface of the black marble altar. The impact jars my bones, making my cry even louder, even more desperate.
It feels like the masked audience leans forward in unison, like one single multi-headed beast.
I am a sacrifice laid bare before them.
A whore to be used at their bloody altar.
He doesn’t bother with tenderness. His hands fist in the delicate silk at my neckline and he rips.
The sound is obscenely loud, a scream of tearing fabric.
The fine white dress is shredded, peeled away from my skin until I am exposed from the waist up, shivering on the cold stone.
A collective, hushed sigh ripples through the crowd.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to disappear, to will myself into the sweet nothingness I discovered during my kidnapping. Only, it doesn’t work. I feel his weight as he leans over me, I hear the unmistakable sound of his belt buckle clinking, the rasp of his zipper.
“Look at me,” he commands, his voice guttural.
I keep my eyes sealed shut, tears streaming down my temples into my hair. He slaps me, not hard enough to bruise, but enough to shock my eyes open.
“Look at me,” he repeats, and I am trapped in the dark fire of his gaze.
He enters me in one brutal, claiming thrust. I scream then, a raw, ragged sound that is swallowed by the vast, uncaring cathedral.
There is no pleasure, only a searing, violating pain.
This is not the act I remembered the last time we had sex, the one he’d manipulated and controlled. The one that convinced the stupid part of me that he cared for me, loved me even.
No, this is punishment.
This is ownership.
This is his way of stamping his name on my very soul for all the Brethren to see.
He sets a ruthless rhythm, using my body on the altar of his god. My sobs are the only music for this perverse ceremony. As he moves, he lowers his hand between our bodies.
“Be my good little wife,” he grunts, his breath hot against my ear.
His fingers find my clit in that cruel, skilful manipulation he knows so well.
My body, traitorous and weak from the drugs and his expert touch begins to respond the way he expects, the way I’ve been trained to so meticulously.
A hated, shameful heat begins to uncoil deep in my belly.
“Come for me. Come for all of them. Let them see that this cunt, this body, all of you are mine.”
I shake my head frantically in a silent plea, but he knows, he feels the tension coiling in me, the betrayal of my own cursed flesh.
His lips are at my ear again, his words a dark, possessive promise meant to shatter what’s left of me.
“I’m going to get you pregnant again, Grace.
Right here, right now. I’m going to keep you fat with all my children.
I’ll keep you tied to our bed, swollen with one baby after another.
You will never leave me. You will never get the chance to do it. ”
The words are the final key. The shame, the terror, the horrifying, unwanted pleasure, and the devastating future he has just painted, it all crashes together.
A broken, guttural sob is torn from my throat as my body convulses in a climax that feels like it’s ripping me in two. A wave of agonizing pleasure, so at odds with the violation of my spirit, wrecks me.
Through the haze of my tears, I see the masked Lords watching, unblinking.
I see Konstantine’s approving nod.
I see the bloody phoenix window blazing like the gates of hell.
And above me, I see Antonio’s face, etched with an ecstasy that has nothing to do with love and everything to do with conquest.
He finds his own release with a final, deep thrust, letting out a groan of absolute victory, and then he collapses on me for a moment.
When he pushes himself up, he stills, looking down at my broken, exposed body on the altar. He smiles, a tender, terrifying smile, and gently brushes the hair from my wet cheek.
“My wife,” he says, for all the cathedral to hear.
And I lie there on the cold marble, surrounded by monsters, bound to my tormentor, and I know with a certainty that chills me to the marrow.
Hell is not a place of fire.
It is a beautifully rebuilt cage, and I am its eternal prisoner.