Chapter 13
F or the second time, I am seized and dragged from the Lupa Nox’s chambers as if I am little more than a corn dolly in the hands of a child. I clutch my cane tightly this time, though my head swims, my throat throbbing. Other parts of me—strange parts—pulse, too.
Do not touch her . The words echo through me, that ferocity in her tone burrowing into my bones. It is almost enough to banish the deep-seated fear flooding my veins—almost, but not quite.
The High Ecclesia is disappointed with my efforts. With me. I have failed this last attempt at salvation, my final prayer directed to a God that I only just learned might be listening. My back meets one of the wide stone pillars in the corridor, and I slump against it.
The Vincula is in chaos. Knights and guardsmen are running, shouting orders, Mysterium thrumming so loudly it makes my head hurt. My breathing comes in ragged gasps, my chest burning. I watch, useless, as the High Ecclesian is escorted from the chamber, supported on either side by knights dressed in full mail, as if they are about to head into the fray of battle.
It is difficult as always to tell what direction the High Ecclesian has cast Their divine gaze, but I feel Their attention sear across my body for a moment, and then it is gone. The Vincula quiets, and the Mysterium lessens to a low thrum. I tip my head back against the cool stone, my breathing finally evening out.
I am, it seems, doomed.
A burst of motion draws my attention before I can collapse into despair, and I see more knights coming through the Vincula’s narrow golden gate. Among them is Renault, who rushes toward me. Without a word, he pulls me into his arms, entrapping me in fine woolens, in the smell of clean soap and teak.
“Ophelia, you’re all right,” he murmurs, cupping the back of my head in one hand, the fronts of our bodies pressed together in a way that my mind distantly identifies as unseemly, improper. “You’re all right. It’s just part of the play.” His voice drops even lower, and my heart dares to throb with something not unlike desperate, keening hope. “The High Ecclesia is not angry with you. They simply wanted to make the Lupa Nox think you would truly be hurt. That’s all.”
Tears stream down my face. I manage a long inhale, then another. “So that wasn’t real?” I whisper into Renault’s chest, the words scraping the sides of my throat.
“No, no, love, it wasn’t,” Renault tells me, his lips moving against my ear. “Just for show. Just to trick the Lupa Nox. It’s difficult, I know. But we must meet her wickedness with some degree of trickery on our own part, or I fear we will fail.”
“What do They even want with her, exactly?” I ask, trying to pull away, leaning my weight against the enclosure of Renault’s strong arms. He gives, only a little, raising one hand to wipe a tear off my cheek.
“Let’s get you home,” he replies, examining my face, my eyes surely puffy, my hair no doubt mussed. “I think you’ve had enough of the Vincula and these political games for today.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply, but he knows me so well that he doesn’t need to. Of course I wish to go home. An errant desire to peer into the Lupa Nox’s prison, to see her again, to make sure she’s okay, rises within me—surely just a stray thought, the influence of her darkness. An image of her standing bare stirs in my mind, and I shove it away roughly.
Renault takes my arm, and I steady myself on my cane. Then we begin to walk toward the gate with slow, measured steps. His attention sits heavily on me, and I dare not turn my head, dare not give into that strange urge. It is only my eyes that move, snatching at the barest chance to see her.
Through the openings in the Mysterium gate, I find the shimmering silver shoulders of knights and little more. The Lupa Nox is surely somewhere in their midst, but I cannot find her in the brief glimpse. My heart does something strange in response, and I have to force myself to keep pace with Renault.
We say nothing on the attollo, nor on the walk to Foundling Hall, moving through corridors that have nearly emptied with the fall of evening. I am grateful to see no one I know. Shame still burns like two bonfires on either cheek, bright and red and hot. A clear marking of my sin, of my temptation. Of the trial I nearly failed. Renault takes my keys from my waist chain and unlocks my door for me, guiding me inside.
I sit down on the bench at the end of my bed, listless, as he lights the fire in my tiny hearth. My mind volleys between two things: the hard, muscular planes of the knight and the sure, godly bite of the flail.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, surprised to hear my own voice, tear-choked and raw. “Why didn’t you tell me what the High Ecclesian was going to do?”
Renault turns, half his face cast in shadow, and approaches me, reaching out to run his thumb along my jaw. “It needed to be as real as possible,” he replies, smoothing my hair. “I’m sorry. You must have been terribly frightened. But surely our Lord will look upon you with favor for your suffering.”
I close my eyes, tears falling from my lashes. It is true, I know it—the teachings in the Catechisma have always found beauty and godliness in suffering, in pain. It’s what I tell myself whenever my hips hurt terribly or my heart aches. Even all of my turmoil over my feelings for Carina—just a raw stone to transmute into a shining gem of divinity.
“Yes,” I murmur, hands fisting into my skirts. “The First Son will surely find honor here.” But the words don’t feel true, even as I say them. Where is the honor in this, in tricking the Lupa Nox?
Too many things in my life feel fake, two-faced—my engagement to Renault, my assignment to care for the knight. I yearn for easier times, when things felt more straightforward, when duplicity did not constantly leer over my shoulder like a phantom.
“Let’s get you ready for bed,” Renault says, his hands skimming the back of my dress, where the bodice fastens. He begins to undo the lacing, and I freeze.
“I can do it myself,” I say, leaning away from him, but he simply extends his arms, continuing his path.
“You’ve had a hard day,” he murmurs, closer now, his lips moving against the top of my head. There is a heaviness to his breath, an intention to the quickness of his fingers, and I panic, my mind taking me back to that abandoned corner with Sergio, his hands prying apart my dress.
“Stop, please,” I beg, my voice so small, my own room—with the narrow, worn bed and little window and frayed quilt I know so well—suddenly feeling alien, a battlefield for which I have no name.
“Don’t fret,” is all Renault says, his movements not ceasing for even a moment.
I clench my jaw, shoving my discomfort into a box deep inside my body—until I remember I have thrice now survived encounters with the Lupa Nox herself. I’ve been in close quarters with the most fearsome Sepulchyre warrior our armies have ever faced.
And yes, she is imprisoned and chained, and yes, she is a wicked thing, and again, yes, she has done nothing but respect me, at least in her own way. But if I can handle the Lupa Nox, I can handle making my betrothed aware of my wishes.
“No,” I assert with a fierceness I don’t feel, stumbling to my feet, barely catching myself on the bedframe’s edge. “I said no, Renault. I will do it myself.”
My chest rises in a grand heave, even though I’ve barely moved. As I look up at him, his brow furrows deeply, his mouth screwing up into an expression I don’t recognize. He lunges toward me; all the world slows to quarter-pace, my heart a drum.
And then Renault pauses, right before me, and a sheepish look—a familiar one—overtakes his features. “Yes, of course,” he replies, holding up his hands in some peacemaking gesture. “You’ve had a long day, and I just wanted to help.”
“You have helped,” I reply, fingernails digging into the wooden frame. I pause and then steady myself. “What would really help is knowing what the High Ecclesia wants from the Lupa Nox.”
Renault stands silent, examining me, and then sighs, his shoulders sagging. “I don’t want to burden you with all these machinations,” he says, sinking onto the bench I occupied a moment ago. “Besides, Ophelia, it’s the High Ecclesia. You think They’ve bothered telling me exactly what They want with her?”
I waver, eyeing the space beside Renault. For the first time, I find myself hesitant to be within arm’s reach of him. It’s a familiar enough impulse, to keep myself at a safe distance, but not with him. Never with him, until now. I swallow and chide myself before limping toward the bench and sitting next to him. I stare into the hearth’s flames, not sure what to say.
“All I know,” Renault sighs, his shoulder pressing into mine companionably, “is that They’re trying to turn her against the Sepulchyre. Open her mind, make her see the Way of Light that the Host offers. We don’t want to hurt her, but Ophelia, if we can’t save her soul . . . Well, we can’t exactly let a predator like her loose in the wild, can we?”
My mouth is dry as paper, my veins hammering in my neck. Of course it makes sense. We’re forced to burn mortals at the stake if they won’t relinquish their goetia practices; how could we let the last of the Fallen go if her heart is unchanged?
I consider this information, twisting my skirts in one hand. Beside me, Renault sighs, but I don’t have the energy to turn my head and look at him. A thousand thoughts swim through my head, swift as sea currents and just as deadly. I don’t even realize I’m speaking; words begin to tumble unbidden out of my mouth.
“What could I have done,” I rasp, fresh tears rushing down my face, “to deserve my fate being tied to hers ? What kind of a horrific thing am I, Renault? Do you understand the depth of wickedness that must be within me for this to happen? The Lupa Nox, who has killed so many of our people . . .”
I finally manage to look at him, though, between the low light and my tears, I can hardly see his expression.
“The Lupa Nox,” I repeat, her name like a curse, “will be my salvation or my doom.”
M y sleep later that evening is fitful and restless. I almost pull open my bedside drawer a thousand times. Only exhaustion stops me. Dreams come and go—horrors of a new goetia trial, of my wedding day with Sergio at the end of that long aisle instead of Renault, of my beloved Lord Himself appearing to tell me all the ways I have horribly and irrevocably sinned. All of them, at least, have that dream-like haze to them, that lurching strangeness that nothing in the waking world possesses.
But early in the morning, sometime around two or maybe three bells, my dreams take a sharp turn.
I wait in a bridal chamber, the ceremony concluded, dressed in barely more than a slip of pale pink silk. Everything feels terribly real. My hair is loose and unbraided, falling in yellow-gold waves across the pillows. The door at the far end of the chamber opens, and I startle; I’m so exposed, lying on the bed like this in such a state of undress, with little knowledge of what comes next. Of what’s expected of me. I only know how desperately I wish to be a good wife, to please Renault, to ensure he never regrets marrying the crippled foundling girl when he could have had anyone he wanted.
But it is not Renault who walks in. My eyes falter in the low candlelight, but I know it is not him—nor is it Sergio. The stranger moves with a lithe, predatory grace neither of those men have, and knowledge descends on me, quick and many-toothed. Before she steps into the light of the lamp flickering on the bedside table, I already know it is the Lupa Nox.
She moves toward the bed like it is an island and she is shipwrecked. I find I cannot move, cannot pull the linens up over my body or tumble off the side of the bed or do anything at all. Or, if I am honest, perhaps I simply do not want to.
The knight is dressed in a bride’s pale silks, though it’s unlike any matrimonial gown I’ve ever seen. The whisper-thin fabric clings to her powerful body, baring muscular arms, dipping low on the bust. Chainmail adorns her broad shoulders. Her long locks are braided into a crown encircling her head, the shaved portions of her skull exposed, looking soft as downy feathers.
“Ophelia?” She says my name like a question, and for a moment I falter, not knowing precisely what it is she seeks. My heart careens in my chest, like all the arteries and tissue chaining it in place have been severed, leaving me unmoored.
The word comes to my lips before I truly understand, I think, or perhaps it is just the answer all sinners give when their last shred of morality fails.
“Yes.”
And then the Sepulchyre’s deadliest weapon is sliding into my marital bed, her thighs caging my hips, her hands gripping the pillows on either side of my head. I have no choice but to look up—to gaze into her thunderstorm eyes, to examine the slope of her fine, sharp features, the curve of her dangerous lips.
She brushes her mouth over mine—the simplest of movements, and yet she leaves me devastated in her wake. My chest heaves against the bodice of the silk nightgown, and her eyes slip to my bust, her lips quirked in amusement, though something heavier and darker sits on her brow like a stormfront.
That deft mouth meets my sternum, and heat erupts between my legs. The knight trails soft kisses across my exposed skin, one hand sliding to cup my breast. The warmth of her palm draws a strangled cry from my mouth, and her eyes glide back to me, amusement burning in their depths like torchlight.
“Ophelia?” she asks again, a dark eyebrow arched, her expression inquisitive and ravenous and yet still impossibly kind.
“Yes,” I gasp without a shred of restraint, without even a moment’s pause. I am tumbling further and further into her abyss, and not a single part of me is even trying to stop.
In response, the knight slips her thigh between my legs at the same moment her fingers ghost the tip of my breast, which has escaped the trappings of the silk nightgown’s bodice. Undeniable pleasure soars through me, and I cry out, my hips arching of their own accord, bringing that secret place at the apex of my legs to her thigh. Just that slight contact, the barest of friction, sends more pleasure rippling through my body like sacrilege.
“Nyatrix,” I gasp, her name dripping from my mouth before I can stop it. I dare to look up and meet her gaze again.
But there is no tall, lithe knight, no column of her flesh against my most intimate place, no thunderstorm eyes or arched eyebrows. Instead, there is only the yawning void of a mouth, a maw lined with teeth, and the terrifying weight of a predator’s gaze.
An enormous black wolf pins me to the bed now, its lips curled in a snarl, every muscle standing out from beneath its dark hide. And I know without a shred of doubt that it will devour me whole.
With a strangled gasp, I awaken—sitting straight up in my bed, hands clasped to my chest. I am feverish, my nightclothes sticking to my skin, a damp warmth between my thighs. My room is empty; it is no bridal chamber, and no wolf prowls the chipped tile in front of the hearth. Instead, sunlight presses gentle fingers against my window’s dressings, the light warm and natural. And too bright— far too bright—considering the bell I usually arise. Panic shoots through me, and I toss the bed linens aside.
For a long moment, I cannot quite make sense of what I’m seeing. There are my legs—one of even, pale gold flesh, the other a withered, discolored thing. There are the linens, a soft cream flannel to ward off the incoming chill of autumn.
And there, impossibly and unfathomably, is dark soil. Spread evenly across the linens, as if I had prepared my bed for planting. Within the black earth, tiny violets rise like purple diamonds—much as they do when spring is inbound, when the light is returning.
I dream of an unforgivable sin, and yet I awaken to a miracle.