Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
He fed me that morning.
Not with worship.
Not with command.
Just with his hands.
Quiet. Steady. Still half-cloaked in the silence that wrapped itself around us like old cloth.
He laid the food out on a piece of linen—a wedge of cheese, a cut of bread, and two pieces of fruit.
One red. One gold.
I sat across from him in the low light near the altar. My thighs still trembled from where he had filled me. My wrists still carried the mark of the ribbon he had used to bind me. My body ached like it had been sanctified and cracked open and made new.
He passed me the gold fruit.
His fingers brushed mine.
That was all.
No ceremony.
Just care.
I brought it to my mouth.
Bit into the skin.
Sweetness burst on my tongue. Ripe. Soft. Familiar.
But then?—
The taste shifted.
There was a sourness under the surface. A softness that wasn’t meant to be there.
I pulled the fruit away. Turned it in my hand.
The other side was bruised.
Not black. Not ruined.
But wrong.
Browning.
Spoiled from the inside out.
Sweetness sliding into rot.
I chewed anyway.
I swallowed.
And the aftertaste clung to my throat like grief.
He didn’t speak.
Or he noticed—and chose not to.
That was worse.
I set the fruit down. Wiped my fingers on my thigh.
And suddenly the chapel felt smaller.
Not sacred.
Suffocating .
The fire had grown cold. The basin was dry. The robe he’d worn still lay across the altar, neatly folded like a ritual left unfinished.
The silence didn’t soothe me.
It scraped.
“Is this all there is?” I asked.
His head turned.
“Here?” he said.
I nodded.
He didn’t answer.
And that silence said more than any yes ever could.
I looked down at the food, the clean linen, the soft ache in my belly. And I realized?—
This was stillness, not life.
This was memory on repeat.
This was the moment after the vow, when nothing moves and everything starts to ruin.
Even worship spoils if left untouched.
I stood.
He didn’t follow.
He just watched.
“I need… to know what else there is,” I said.
He didn’t speak.
But something in his jaw tightened.
Like I’d struck a sacred chord.
He walked to me.
Lifted the ribbon from the table.
He didn’t bind me.
He didn’t ask me to stay.
He handed it to me.
“In case you forget what your hands are for,” he said.
My throat closed.
I reached for him.
He kissed my fingers.
And let go.
I walked to the chapel doors.
My robe loose around my shoulders. The ribbon clutched in my hand like a relic.
And I stepped outside.
Not because I wanted freedom.
But because I wanted hunger.
Because I needed to remember what starving for him felt like.
The air outside didn’t feel like air.
It felt like absence.
Like breath I hadn’t earned. Like light that had never touched me before.
The sky was pale and too open. The wind had no weight.
I blinked against the brightness.
And I felt my ribs curl inward.
Because everything out here moved.
And nothing here saw me.
I walked.
Not fast. Not with purpose.
Just forward.
The ground was soft. The soil forgiving. Grass touched my feet like apology.
But none of it felt holy.
It felt indifferent.
I pressed the ribbon into my palm.
Tight.
Until I could pretend it was still his hand.
The sun touched my skin.
The robe clung to my legs.
But I didn’t stop.
I walked until the light changed.
Until the ache in my feet matched the ache in my chest.
Until I found a house.
Small. Wooden. Human.
A woman opened the door.
She didn’t ask questions.
She fed me.
Let me bathe.
And when she touched my wrist?—
Gently, kindly, sweetly?—
I flinched.
Because it wasn’t rough enough to mean anything.
Because she didn’t tremble.
Because kindness without need is not devotion. It’s distance.
That night, I stared at the ceiling.
And realized stillness here was not sacred.
It was silence with no vow.
I clutched the ribbon.
Held it to my chest.
And wept.
Not from grief.
From hunger.
Because no amount of soup could feed what he had carved into me.
Because I didn’t want peace.
I wanted to ache for something again.
I whispered his name.
Once.
Twice.
Until the air remembered how it sounded.
And then I knew.
I hadn’t left to escape.
I had left to starve.
And now I was starving.