Holy Wrath

Chapter 1

I n a garden at the end of the world, a marble statue weeps tears of blood. My breath catches as I stare, lungs skittering in my chest—clumsy as wet, newborn things. Reverently, I step toward the plinth. Toward my salvation.

“Saintess Lucia,” I murmur, tipping my head back to address the statue, “have you chosen me?”

Elation flutters through my body. My Sainting is finally upon me. I draw a deep, triumphant breath of the mist-thick air. I’ve thought myself too old, too forsaken, too useless for any holy patron to take notice of me.

And yet tears of blood shimmer ruby-bright upon my favorite Saintess’s statue. I step closer, that ever-present weight lifting from my shoulders. For a long, golden moment, it is only me and all my tender-hearted hope. But only for a moment—doubt careens in a second later, teeth bared. I clutch my gathering basket to my chest and turn on my heel, opening my mouth to call out for a witness to this small miracle.

My cane catches in the soil, still damp with dew, and I stumble. My vision moves in short flashes: the gray sky, the thicket of rosebushes and tomato vines and hedgerows, and then the ground, rushing up to meet me.

Pretty hands I know better than my own grab my forearms, catching me before I fall. “Ophelia!” The familiar voice curls around my name. “By the Saints. Are you all right?”

I steady myself, letting out a strangled sound as I desperately try to slow the frantic gallop of my heart. “Carina,” I finally manage, my mind swimming. “Look at the statue. Tears of blood. It’s happening .”

Still grasping my arms, Carina glances past me to examine the statue at my back. I catch my breath, my heart keening as I await my oldest friend’s testimony of what might be my Sainting.

For so long, I have lingered by Saintess Lucia’s statue each morning after my work in the garden. For so many bells, I have pleaded at her rosy marble feet, tracing the carved embroideries in her long, flowering robes with my fingertips. If anyone can save me, it’s Saintess Lucia, mother of the healing arts, mistress of the green.

Tears overflow my eyes, dripping down my cheeks, clear as quartz. I clutch at Carina, overcome with joy. Now that a Saint has finally chosen me to work the Mysteries, the Twelve can no longer withhold their approval of my engagement. That horrible goetia trial will become a distant memory. I will bring honor to my betrothed’s House. I will elevate myself within the social fabric of Cathedral Hill. I will finally be more than the Saved foundling with a limp. I will?—

“Ophelia,” Carina said, her voice gentle. Too gentle, I realize, the easy wonder draining from my body.

Leaning hard on my cane, I turn without meeting her gaze. Like when I had almost fallen, the world moves in sharp, slow images: the blur of the dawn-kissed garden, all greens and blooms; the concern and pity writ clear in Carina’s nebula-brown eyes; and then the soft, pale pink planes of Saintess Lucia’s statue.

No longer do beautiful crimson tears stud her marble face like rubies. “But,” I whisper, the word scraping at the sides of my throat as all the weight of the world crashes back onto my shoulders. “No, Carina, I . . . I just saw them. The tears.”

“Ophelia,” she soothes, almost too quickly—like it was no surprise to her that I would simply imagine the entire thing, as if I am drenched in desperation the same way dew clings to the foliage around us. I suppose I am. My veins pound under my skin, shame heating my face.

“I saw it,” I whisper miserably. Silence blooms again in the garden, so quiet that, for a moment, I can hear the roar of the ocean as it crashes against the base of the cliffs below.

Carina releases one of my forearms, her long, dark lashes—delicate as a swallow’s wing—dipping down as she looks away from me.

Nothing has changed. No Saintess has risen from the divine fabric of the world to rescue me. I am still a crippled foundling with no Mysterium. Despair grips me, and I yearn to throw myself into Carina’s arms and weep, but there are a thousand reasons I shouldn’t— couldn’t .

All at once, she meets my gaze, raising one hand to brush my face with her fingertips. A small consolation: Carina’s touch no longer calls forth the kinds of feelings I know are forbidden. At least I have finally mastered those errant desires. But isn’t that all the more reason for my Saint to finally appear with a christening of blood?

“Ophelia,” Carina begins, her voice soft as the lovelace flowers that grace the cliffside, “it’s very possible what you saw is the beginning of your Sainting.” Her hand wraps around mine in a way that once made gooseflesh scatter across my body. “That happened to Beatrix, didn’t it? She saw things in her dreams before her patron claimed her.”

I release a long exhale and pull away from Carina’s touch. The wind climbing the cliffs buffets the garden’s boughs, dewdrops falling in a shower of crystals. I tuck a stray lock of blonde hair back into my braid, thinking.

“Beatrix’s patron is the Saint of prophecy,” I reply, chewing my lower lip. “Of course he gave her prophetic dreams to begin her Sainting.”

Carina sighs and says nothing, though she reaches for me, as if to wade into my misery alongside me. When she brings her brow to mine, my control breaks and tears slip down my face, falling to the grass at our feet. She speaks no more, offering only a soft, bone-deep understanding of my plight. No one seems to understand me like Carina does. But we could never be together—not like that. Not the way I’ve daydreamed about in stolen moments so many times in the anni we’ve known one another.

“Ophelia?” she says, her voice louder than usual, as if she’s had to repeat my name more than once.

I return myself to the waking world, looking up from the ground to find Carina still holding my hand tightly, though she’s stepped back, creating space between us.

“Sorry,” I mumble. I glance between the bundles of yarrow flowers in my basket and the galaxies of her eyes. “Sorry, I just?—”

“I know,” Carina says fiercely, the salt-hemmed wind tugging at her words. “I know how badly you need this. And by the Saints, Ophelia, if anyone deserves to work the Mysteries, it’s you. I hope you know that.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. It should be easy to agree with her; I was the sole survivor of a massacre that destroyed my village. A tiny, golden-haired child sitting among the rubble, the blood, the destruction. Surely the First Son would not Spare me—or anyone—simply for a quiet, small life of gardening and kitchen work.

“I just wish the Saints would see it so,” I reply, furious that more tears spill down my face, splattering the just-picked yarrow with my shame.

“One day,” Carina murmurs after a long pause, her tone gentle, though she looks at me strangely. She opens her mouth as if to say more, but instead she lets go of my hand, stooping to retrieve her own basket from the ground. It’s filled with white rose clippings, their petals bright as a dove’s breast.

My eyes sting. “I’m sorry, Carina,” I say, my voice low and miserable. “I don’t want to keep burdening you with all my troubles.”

The breeze tugs at my long skirts, ruffling the edge of my worn gardening apron. The accusations of goetia against me harmed Carina by association—and I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life. Everyone knows we are dear to each other, so when I was brought to trial, accused of making a dark pact with the diaboli in exchange for heinous, perverted powers, Carina found herself under much suspicion, too.

She’s not from an untouchable noble family, not like my betrothed, Renault. I couldn’t help her. Renault tried, wielding his powerful noble family name, but even he—the third son of the House Amadeus—had to resort to proposing to me to keep me safe. I set my jaw, staring at the ground, wondering if the soil might do us all a favor and swallow me whole.

Because now Renault’s entire family is outraged at him, talking about revoking his inheritance. Carina lost her work with the seamstress, finding herself back to basic labor beside me. All of it because my friends just wanted to help me. Shame burns my face, my throat raw. What a burden I am. The First Son must regret Sparing me.

I glance up to find my dearest friend looking at me with a tenderness that makes my breath catch, the sun breaking through the morning mist to turn her long strands of chestnut hair to gold. “You don’t need to apologize,” she says, her voice firm.

“Right,” I say, glancing back toward the Cloisters’ immense stone Spine at the far end of the garden. “Sorry. I-I’m going to take the yarrow inside and start processing it. The infirmary is low.”

Clutching my basket close to my chest, I slip past Carina, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. Instead, I wind through the familiar snaking paths of the garden until I come to the main walkway, marked by crushed white seashells.

My tongue tastes sour in my mouth as I greet a group of novices on their way to pick berries before the day grows too hot. By the time I reach the stone porte cochere leading into the Cloisters, I let out a choked gasp of relief, tucking myself into the shadows of the structure. The scent of incense from the Morning Devotions creeps from beneath the double doors to my right, their ancient wood surface whitewashed and studded with gold stars.

“Please,” I ask, directing my gaze upward toward the heavenly realm where I might find the First Son, the one true God I’ve dutifully served since my youth. “King of Kings. I beseech you. Deliver me from this torment. You know my heart. I am not worthy, no, but I am trying.”

Something about the atmosphere shifts, a ray of sun slanting through the garden’s mist in a way that brings to mind illuminated manuscripts and gilded goblets. My breath catches in my chest, my heart beating to a foolishly hopeful rhythm of maybe, maybe, maybe .

Then the Cloisters’ doors burst open with startling force. I jump, nearly dropping my basket, and slink deeper into the shadows of the porte cochere. Even though it should only be more novices or my fellow garden-workers coming through the doors, I still don’t want to be seen—not like this, my eyes red and puffy with tears, my hair knotted by the wind.

But it is no mortal who walks through the doors.

No, something much worse: a member of the High Ecclesia comes stalking out of the Spine. The hair on the back of my neck rises to attention, my throat crumpling. I press myself against the moss-damp stone, hoping the shadows are deep enough to conceal me from the closest thing to God that prowls these sacred halls.

The High Ecclesian pauses in the middle of the stone terrace, sunlight glinting off the chains of gold and pearl that drape from Their chatelaine. Billowing vestments conceal Their towering form in shades of steel-gray; a sacred heart is embroidered in the middle of Their chest, blood-red velvet and glittering thread. Silver pauldrons adorn Their shoulders, the looping layers of chainmail winking in the sun. A heavy hood and smooth gold mask covers Their features—the same as every member of the High Ecclesia.

I’ve never been so close to one of Them before. I hold absolutely still and wait for Them to continue on Their holy business. Surely They want no interruption from a mortal foundling woman cowering alone in the shadows. The High Ecclesia does not speak to the likes of me, and for that I am grateful.

They terrify me.

And perhaps it’s my terror that leaves me spellbound, for though I have been schooled since childhood to lower my eyes in Their presence, I find myself examining the High Ecclesian from the safety of my hiding place. To my surprise, the gray cloth of the hood gathered at the sides of Their metal mask has slipped away near Their cheekbone.

I peer closer, sure that my eyes are deceiving me for a second time this morning. Because beneath the edge of the mask, I see the pallid skin of a corpse—a blue-tinged paleness that no living creature should or even could possess. I gasp in surprise, tasting sickly sweet rot upon my tongue. Unadulterated fear races down my spine.

All at once, the High Ecclesian’s head snaps toward me, golden chatelaine charms viciously catching the sunlight. I stop breathing, my heart thundering against my trembling ribs.

“Foundling,” They intone in a voice as old as the ground I stand upon. “Come with Us. Now .”