Chapter 7
“ N o Saints,” I rasp, hands curling into fists as though I might manage to grasp onto my old reality one last time. “Renault, I have?—”
“I know,” he says, his voice so quiet in the firelight-hemmed space that I almost don’t hear it over the hammering of my heart. “But your devotion hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
The fire sputters in the hearth, strangled and spitting, and I imagine the same kind of sound leaves my throat. I say nothing of meaning, errant syllables darting across my tongue like a rabbit in the hedge. My chest feels as though it might cave in, worse—so much worse—than the attack I suffered back in my room. And directionless, too, I realize as the parlor spins around me. For my sins, there is always an opportunity to purify, to confess, to be forgiven.
But for this ? There is no retracting the bells I’ve spent at Saintess Lucia’s marble feet, the prayers I’ve uttered in desperate, tear-choked whispers. The twelve-day-long services I’ve undertaken in His Holy Church, the marble floor cold beneath my knees as I sweated through my garments, feverish for salvation.
“What about all the mortals who pledge themselves to the Saints?” I ask, sounding wild now, my legs trembling. The fine, high-backed chair suddenly feels like a prison or a vise, the walls of the pretty room closing in until I am choking on hearth smoke. “The rituals, the prayers, the rites? Who is interceding on our behalf with the First Son if not the Saints, Renault? We are not permitted to speak to Him directly. Do you mean to tell me?—”
“Yes,” he says definitively, his shoulders straight, his eyes dark pools in which I can see no bottom. “Our Lord cannot be bothered with every trivial wish and hope of the common people, Ophelia. The Saints were created as a way for the lesser souls of our Church to feel as though they have a channel of communication to the divine.”
My hands grasp near-violently at my skirt beneath the table. A chasm is opening in my chest, so wide that I fear nothing can span it. There is no prayer, no Catechisma passage, no pontifex’s advice that can account for having my world torn out from beneath my feet. For so many anni, I’ve thought Saintess Lucia would save me, would finally bestow favor upon me and grant me the Mysteries. I thought she understood me—she, the only female Saint, the only one who served our God by tending to the garden and baking the bread and birthing the babies.
“Ophelia,” Renault says, and I have little idea how long I’ve been trapped in my own thoughts, a thicket-dark spiral that slashes at my skin like brambleberry thorns. “That does not mean He is not listening.”
My head snaps up then, and I stare at my betrothed, the hearth-light turning his auburn hair to flame. “He . . . He is ?”
“Yes,” Renault replies with a warm smile, reaching over to grip my shoulder. The weight of his large hand is almost comforting.
“But how am I to be granted the Mysteries,” I begin, my tongue too thick in my mouth, the wine I’ve drunk gone sour on my palate, “if there are no Saints?”
Renault releases my shoulder and leans back in his chair. “You must convince the First Son Himself.” He speaks the words like a son of the Twelve, a titled nobleman who was born with Apostle blood in his veins. Of course he successfully drew the attention of our God to grant him the Mysteries—his family has been faithful to the Church for hundreds of anni, before even the War of the Sundering.
My lineage, however, boasts little but sin. “How is someone like me meant to speak directly to our Lord?” Just saying the words out loud feels like sacrilege; I’ve been taught all my life that unproven souls such as my own are only to petition the Saints to intercede on our behalf. Someone like me is not worthy of speaking directly to the King of Kings.
“Actions, my dear Ophelia, are much louder than words,” Renault replies, swirling the wine in his glass again. Dusk’s shadows deepen outside, turning the liquid to something viscous and black, nearly blood-like.
My heart races, flies swarming across my vision. Forcing air into my lungs consumes all of my energy, to the point that I almost miss what Renault says next.
“I have little doubt our Lord would happily bestow the Mysteries upon you,” he muses, his tone light, though his eyes are locked on mine, predator-bright, “if you converted the Lupa Nox.”
b ells later at Midnight Mass, my heart still flutters in my chest like a broken-winged bird. The heady, sticky resins of the Evening Devotions incense are cloying, sitting heavy as thunderclouds in the air. My mind twists and scatters, the pontifex delivering his homilia distantly, as if through a wall of seawater.
My gaze jumps around the Church of the Host—a cavernous chamber of gleaming marble and intricately carved wood and burgundy velvet banners and the city’s emblem of a crown, sword, and white lily. But it always seems to return to the enormous mural behind the altar. The painting depicts the First Son, seated at a long dinner table with His siblings. Like me, all of them know what they must do. Unlike me, not a single one of the gods shows an ounce of fear. They are resolute. Their focus is directed where mine, too, should be—upon their eldest sibling, the Lord.
One last meal. The final moment the First Son shared with His beloved family before summoning the strength to consume all twelve of His siblings.
I swallow, my breath tight. My Lord’s siblings went into His maw willingly, reverently—for it was the only way to defeat the Creatrixes of our land, who had gone mad and rotten with power. Once, Moryx and Vitalia had dreamed Sylva and all life upon it into being—a miraculous thing. But that sacred, wonderful ability to create as they pleased caused a vile darkness to overtake the Creatrixes, requiring their children to make that horrible sacrifice. It was the only way the First Son might gain the power to overthrow the primordial goddesses and save Sylva from their wicked plans.
Reciting these familiar Catechisma passages does not soothe me this time. Incense curls around my throat, and my eyes water. I push the back of my hand into my brow, the pontifex’s words drifting across the stone and marble space. He warns us about the inherent danger of creation, of the beings made in the Creatrixes’ image—any of us with a womb. How life is so sacred, how creation is so precious, that surely such a great power must be led and directed by men. Otherwise, would we have learned anything from the treachery of the Creatrixes all those anni ago?
Panic gathers in my throat. I pull air sharply into my lungs, earning me a glare from Sister Alma, who sits to my right. Returning my gaze to the mural, I consider the pontifex’s words. As my husband-to-be, Renault is my spiritual leader. He will temper the wickedness in me, that lingering sin I cannot purge. And he says I must convert the Lupa Nox.
Renault seems so sure . At supper, he wasn’t interested in discussing anything but tactics on how to accomplish such a task.
Sister Alma shifts in her seat, sending a creak shuddering down the ancient pews. I glance at the pontifex and catch a few more sentences; this is a recycled homilia, one he’s given before. I let my mind wander back to my prerogative. A holy task contemplated in a holy place does not feel amiss. If I manage to convert the Lupa Nox, Renault said a thousand times, I won’t even need the First Son to grant me the Mysteries—though He certainly would.
And then there’s the thing I barely dare to dream of—that I might help my God complete some of His most important work. If I can convert the Lupa Nox, help her see the truth, perhaps she may even become good and pure enough to join the High Ecclesia. To help my Great and Glorious God reach twelve Ecclesians—the divine number that rules Mysterium, the exact number of days it took the Creatrixes to create their First Son.
No one would be able to question my devotion to the Church ever again.
A gift. A wonder. The very thing I’ve been striving for, the reason I’ve begged at Saintess Lucia’s rosy marble feet. So why can I not go to this task the same way the First Son’s twelve siblings did: eyes clear, heart open? The original Twelve—after which the council of mortal men is named—went to their deaths with nothing but joy in their hearts. And yet here I am, unable to take up a much less dangerous yoke. Even though my betrothed commands it. Even though my heart leaps at an opportunity to finally prove myself beyond a shadow of a doubt—and to do so by bringing the light of the Host to someone who desperately needs it.
The pontifex finishes his homilia, tucking away his leatherbound Catechisma into the ornately carved lectern. To my left, the ministers of the Flesh sweep down the wide marble aisle, swaying censers puffing smoke that only makes my eyes sting more. A nameless grief claws at me, but I rise anyway, gripping my cane, and file down the pew with the rest of the congregation, approaching the altar.
Flanked by carved wood with gilded edges, a towering statue of the First Son occupies the center of the space. His wings lie severed at His feet, massive, feathered things that will never know the feeling of the sky again. His arms are outstretched, divine palms nailed to either side of a crude cross by the Fallen Sepulchyre Fatum. His gaze is directed toward the heavens, His face a mask of pain. He will hang here for three days, His holy blood feeding the Earth, the last remnants of His force used to destroy the Sepulchyre’s seat of power and save Sylva.
So many anni I have done it, and yet every day when I approach the altar, I am filled with awe and purpose. Tonight is no different. From a tray held by the ministers of the Flesh, I offer up a small disc of flattened bread and pour out the thimble-sized glass of wine at my Lord’s feet.
“Eat of my body,” I murmur, bowing my head. “Drink of my blood.”
“His Divine will be done,” the minister replies, anointing my forehead with oil before I turn and process back down the aisle to my pew. The ritual is a promise to our Lord—that, like His faithful siblings, He may devour His congregation should the need arise. We exist only for His glory.
Doubt trembles across my skin like the first frost. My Lord has not even deemed me worthy of the most minor of Mysteries. And now through Renault, He sends me into a spiritual battle like His holiest warrior.
What if instead of saving the Lupa Nox, that lithe, midnight-haired creature seizes hold of the dark seed burrowed deep within my bones and corrupts me completely?