Chapter 16
M y heart still pounds furiously as I stare at the floor. I dare not utter a single word, my hands clasped so tightly in front of me that my knuckles turn white as death. Nausea stirs in my belly, and I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
Still, Renault says nothing.
We are within my chamber in Foundling Hall, and I have just confessed everything to him. The way I once yearned for Carina, how I thought I had silenced that old devil, and the sin the Lupa Nox now stirs within me. How she said such wicked, terrible things that fly in the face of my beloved Lord, and how I—meant to be her shepherd into the Host—did nothing but flee.
“I should’ve stayed, I know,” I choke out, fresh tears tumbling from my lashes to the stone floor below. The fire Renault stoked in the hearth turns them to orange-red gems, too fine a thing for my quarters. “Should have rebuked her. Set her on the right path. But I was so . . . I was . . .”
“Tempted, yes,” Renault finally says, his tone bare of any emotion. I dare to glance up at him. My betrothed stands with his back to me, staring out the small window.
At this bell, there is little to see outside, particularly under a dark moon. No silvered orchards or illuminated paths of celestial bodies stitched like embroidery into the sea beyond. Just the black, velvet sweep of night, thick as the darkness I feel myself tumbling further and further into.
“It’s all right,” Renault says as he turns to face me, gaze catching mine.
My mind works slowly, unable to latch onto the words he’s just spoken. “What?” I stammer.
“It’s all right, Ophelia,” he tells me, closing the distance between us. Gently, he reaches for my hands, taking them within his own palms. “The Lupa Nox is a formidable foe. It’s why I feared you might not be up to the task. Not due to any failing of yours, no—just that you are a foundling girl raised in heathenry. It would take a strong background in the faith, and a stronger bloodline still, to handle this crucible.”
I stare straight ahead, past Renault’s shoulder, feeling both relief and frustration at once. “Why has the High Ecclesia asked me to do this, then?” I whisper, my vision blurring with more useless tears.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Renault replies with all the conviction of a titled Apostle born into the Twelve. “And your victory will only be more glorious in the end.”
I startle, trying to pull from his grasp, but his hands hold mine firmly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, his eyes boring into mine, grip near-punishing, “that together, we will overcome this test. Imagine the exaltation it will bring House Amadeus if I can guide a simple foundling girl through converting one of our enemy’s greatest warriors. Can’t you see it? The Lupa Nox in her baptismal shift, descending into the waters, you and I just off to the side, that leafy crown of victor’s laurels about my head. How could anyone deny our union then?”
I want Renault’s words to motivate me, to send something holy and bright coursing through my blood. He’s right, of course—not even the High Ecclesia could stand against our intention to be wed if we managed such a victory.
Two bells ring out in the corridor, the sound rattling through my bones, reminding me I should’ve been asleep three bells ago. My eyes slide from Renault’s as I swallow, my mouth dry.
“I am to be your husband,” he says, one hand reaching to grip me by the chin, bringing my gaze back to him. “I will pull you from the pits of your own sin.”
“Yes,” I whisper. Desperation seeps into the pit of my stomach, nausea lashing at my intestines. “Please, Renault. I don’t want to feel like this. I’ve never wanted to feel like this.”
“Of course not,” he replies, his tone gentling, hand reaching to brush my hair away from my face. “It’s the work of the Sepulchyre. We took their best sword, so now they seek to infect us with poison from the inside out. You are kind and good, and our God loves you, Ophelia.”
Relief—and maybe hope—blooms in my chest. Tears spill down my face, my next breath a wet, shuddering inhale. Perhaps I can yet be worthy of my betrothed, of Lumendei, of the First Son.
“And if it is poison we must excise,” Renault continues, releasing me and taking a step back, “our Lord teaches us the way, doesn’t He?”
I know the Catechisma verse, like any good Host girl. Consider it pure joy to cleanse the body by blow, for after you have suffered, the King of All Kings will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you in His heart .
But my tongue refuses to recite it. Wrongness careens through my body like a tide, and rebellion hums in my marrow, teeth bared. I have been good, and I have been kind, and I have been faithful, and still, it has landed me here—at a man’s mercy, my own agency, my own flesh more under his command than mine.
“No,” I whisper hoarsely, tilting my chin back to meet Renault’s gaze. And then I stand there in the half-lit gloom of my room and wait for my betrothed to say something. To say anything.
But he does not. Instead, he just sighs and shakes his head, turning away from me to stride toward my bedside chest. From the top drawer, he retrieves my flail. Weakness crawls up my throat.
My back isn’t yet healed. My body already knows pain so intimately. And though I desperately want to repent—not like this. Not like this. Sin has circled me like a predator all the days of my life, and yet nearly fifteen summers of the flail have yet to purge it from me. Why, then, would tonight be any different?
When Renault offers me the worn leather handle, I do not take it. In the firelight, I watch the muscles in his jaw clench as he reaches for my hand and forces open my fingers, placing the flail in my palm. I try to pull away, opening my mouth to stutter out something stupid and half-formed, but my betrothed speaks first.
“I am to be your husband,” he says, reaching for the ties at the front of my work dress. Instinctively, I shift away, but he catches me by the small of my back with his other hand. “I will stay and guide your purging, since you seem . . . resistant this evening.”
My heart beats in my throat, desperate as any soft thing with its neck grasped between sharp teeth. All the words I wish to speak, all the ways I wish to say no, simply won’t come to my tongue. And so I freeze, my mind going blank, body utterly still.
My dress is already unlaced when Renault commands me to my knees before him. With no other option—no wings to spread and fly away—I obey, inelegantly and painfully, clutching at my cane as I lower my body to the ground. The stone floor bites into my knees, my hips awash with pain from the position. I steady myself, preparing the flail.
From there, everything happens in short, sharp flashes—as if my mind cannot comprehend the whole of it, so even reality itself is doled out in bite-size pieces appropriate to the apparent smallness of my spirit and my intellect. Renault’s hands tear away my dress’s bodice, much farther than necessary, the garment pooling around my waist.
My chest heaves in a terrified gasp, and the movement reveals my fiancé has seen fit to rid me of my shift as well, the underthing pulled down with my gown. Heat from the fire sears my back at the same moment goosebumps race across my bare breasts. I watch from somewhere far inside myself as I hurriedly grasp at the worn linen of my shift, trying to pull the garment back up to cover my nakedness.
Renault lowers himself to one knee before me, still towering over my huddled form. His left hand restrains my wrist in an iron grasp, stilling my attempts to restore my modesty. The other wraps around my hand that holds the flail and yanks it painfully into position.
“I am to be your husband,” Renault repeats in a voice that hardly sounds like his, drone-like and low, as if a hive of bees has taken up residence in his throat. “I know what is best for you. Endure this humiliation of your purity and cleanse your soul with holy blows.”
I am frozen, lost, as far away from my room as if I’ve been summoned to the gardens or Physica Hall. For all I know, I’m standing at the cliffs and wondering what it would be like to pitch my body off the ledge into the dark, churning abyss of the sea.
“ Now , Ophelia,” Renault snarls, the two words cutting into me so deeply that I’m forced to return to my room, to my body, to my place on my knees before my husband.
I do as I am told. Each strike against my body bites me twofold—the pain on my already-wounded back, the humiliation of my exposed and sinful flesh. I do not know how many blows I deal. I exist entirely within agony, the world beneath the world.
Only once or twice between strikes do I dare to glance up at Renault, seeking any scrap of comfort he might give—a gentle look, a hand brushing my cheek, a reminder that, once purged, I will renew myself in both his and our Lord’s eyes. Instead, the gloom of my room and the shadows cast by the fire hide his features, and I see only the column of his legs and the bottom of his doublet.
I should stay in my body, I know—I should endure the full brunt of this punishment, yet my mind seeks to leave such confines. Once again, I’m in that small inner chamber, watching everything as it happens but not experiencing it, not truly.
It’s from that tiny, safe place that I notice the strange tenting at the apex of Renault’s thighs, beneath the front of his pants. It seems to strain against the fabric, pulsing and thriving like a living thing eager to be released. I do not understand this, but it seems I am forever overwhelmed by a thousand things I do not understand.
Finally, one of Renault’s hands slides around my wrist, pulling the hand that grips the flail into my lap. I release a tear-choked gasp and slump forward. Just like that, my interior room crumbles, the walls blown out, the door disintegrating, and I am left with only the bone-deep pain of the lashes and my sin.
Renault offers soothing noises, like I am a child, not a grown woman he stripped half-naked. For some reason, I let myself sob. Not because I feel safe with him and not because I feel purified, but because the tears come in a relentless monsoon I cannot control. My betrothed pulls me against him, my head to his chest, fingers running down my back, oblivious to the sting of open cuts.
Humiliation sears into me again, and I grasp for my shift.
“Shh, Ophelia, I’ll dress you,” Renault murmurs.
I lean into him only because my hips have long since given out from the strain of being on my knees. His hands slide across my skin from my back to my chest. He grips my breasts for a long moment, filling his palms with their heaviness, thumbs drifting across my nipples in a way that makes me recoil.
Yes, I know little of the ways a married couple might touch each other, but I know far too much of how Sergio’s advances, proposal, and accusations made me feel: powerless, a thing to be possessed and fondled and taken at will. Sadness beats both fists against the inside of my sternum when I understand in a horrible unfolding that perhaps Sergio and Renault have never been different, not in the way I’ve always believed. And, worst of all, Sergio might be right about my betrothed.
I clench my jaw as Renault moves to re-dress me. Apparently it is his decision whether I am clothed or bare.
“Don’t bother,” I say, my voice wind-worn even though I haven’t been out-of-doors since this morning. “I’ll need to put salve on my back, anyway.”
“You did so well,” Renault murmurs, brushing loose strands of hair away from my tear-damp face. “So well, Ophelia.”
With a shaking breath, I look up at him and find radiant joy on his face, hazel eyes positively brimming with it.
And by the Saints, I detest him for it.
“Thank you for your guidance,” I reply after too long, hollow and shivering.
He does not even notice. His hands skim my sides, sweeping up from my waist, lingering again at my breasts, though this time there is at least the thin linen shift between his skin and mine.
“I will always be here for you,” he promises. “I will always ensure you stay on the path of light, in the flock of our Lord. No matter what it takes.”
I swallow, looking down at my lap, skirts pooling around me. Those are precisely the words I always wished my husband might say to me, delivered at just the right time, moments after witnessing the wickedness embedded so thoroughly in me.
So I do not understand why it fills me with a sorrow so thick and all-consuming that I feel, even having avoided the stake, like a woman set ablaze.
S leep does not come to me easily. When it does, the scant moments of near-slumber are marred by altered dreams of the goetia trial. In one, Renault is up on the stand, claiming I have bewitched him, too. Why else would a member of the Twelve wish to marry a foundling—no matter how supposedly beautiful she may be?
I open my eyes, finding no silvery light of dawn sneaking through my window. Four bells chime in the corridor. My back is an endless expanse of pain, made worse by the way I collapsed into bed without applying any salve. Even lying on my stomach with my face turned to the side, I find no reprieve.
My teeth grind together so hard my jaw cracks. I need to care for these wounds, ensure they heal well. Any Host bride would be expected to have marks from cleansing blows—but they should be minimal before marriage, nothing more than delicate, feminine lines of gentle penance. I do not wish to know how far my own skin departs from this standard.
What if Renault changes his mind? What if he only sees me for my supposed beauty, too, which grows increasingly marred? After all, it’s the sole reason the Host’s army didn’t leave me behind in that backward village so many summers ago. The First Son does not Spare a soul and bestow such loveliness for it to be wasted—to not be used as a reward for a devout man of the Church.
I sit up with a cry of pain, biting down on my tongue at the last moment. In the dim light, I scrounge around my bedside drawers in search of my tin of salve, only to find there’s so little left that it’s practically of no use. Carefully, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and gather up the remaining salve on my fingers. I let out a long breath, preparing myself for the pain that reaching my arm around to my back will undoubtedly cause.
With a pathetic, embarrassing whimper, I manage to cover a few wounds at the base of my spine, though even with a thin application, the salve doesn’t go very far. Pain digs its talons deeper into my flesh, sweat breaking out along my hairline. The darkness of my chamber spins and splits like seawater.
With a cry, I reach for my nightstand and feel around for a match to light a candle. I’ll have to get myself to Physica Hall for more salve—though I can’t have anyone seeing the condition of my back. The depth of my sin will become too obvious. My stomach churns at the thought.
Gripping my bedpost, I haul myself to my feet. Pain lances through me again, my legs shaking, but I clamp my jaw shut and pull a soft flannel work gown from my drawers. It takes me far too long to put it on, black stars tumbling across my vision, my skin hot and sticky, but eventually I am dressed. For one of the first times in my life, I leave my room without scrubbing my face or tidying my hair. Agony rules me entirely.
Every step down the stone corridor weakens me further, even with the help of my cane. The ever-present anguish settled deep into my hips and knees seems to intensify due to the throb of my open wounds, as if working together to destroy me. The guardsman at the end of Foundling Hall sleeps at his station, helm tipped back against the wall, his chest rising softly with long inhales. I continue my journey unseen, my cane like an oar, the distance to Physica Hall an unruly, angry ocean.
The Spine is quiet this early in the morning, only a few candelabras lit, no Morning Devotions incense yet wafting through the air. The Holy Guard is halved, most of them standing alert on our battlements instead of within the Cloisters, and I think I manage to slip by unnoticed. It is hard to say; so much of my energy is trained on keeping my clammy grip tight on my cane, on each and every step I force my body to take. Despite the early morning chill, the flannel dress sticks to my skin. As the Physica Arch comes into view, a large droplet of sweat trickles down my neck, stinging my wounds so badly I collapse into the wall at my side.
By the time I manage to right myself, pushing tears out of my eyes with my free hand, I find an unwelcome sight: the physician from the other night, who made such unsettling comments about my body, conferring with a colleague right in front of the entrance to Physica Hall. Horror races through me. A distant, rational thought tells me to wait it out in the shadows; surely he will move on. But that soft, terrified animal within me propels my body away, seeking a safer burrow to lick my wounds.
It makes no sense, I know, but in my delirious, pain-addled state, I find myself moving toward the Vincula’s attollo. There are at least three kinds of salves in the healer’s kit kept by the Lupa Nox’s cell. There’s quiet and privacy to apply it; the idea of obtaining the salve and then having to journey back to my room makes me want to collapse on the floor. I am a moth to a flame, a flower to the sun—propelled in one direction only in desperate search of relief.
The Holy Guard do not question me as I approach the attollo, though I know Sergio will hear of it. In truth, the fear barely even breaks the surface of the bone-deep agony. My descent into the depths is rote, automatic, like I know well the path to the places below.
How long have I been tending to the knight now? How many of my days have been spent beneath the earth of Cathedral Hill, down in the murky, damp darkness of the Vincula? And what did my life even look like before the Lupa Nox came slamming into it like a wave against Lumendei’s chalky cliffs?
“An outpost was hit hard about a bell ago,” a knight tells me in front of the Lupa Nox’s cell, a twin key to the one the High Ecclesian wore winking on his belt. “A lot of our men are out on the battlements. You should come back later, when you won’t have to be alone in that cell with her.”
I exhale raggedly and look around, trying to only move my eyes. The Vincula is much emptier than usual—some Holy Guard by the door, but no knights lining the wall like statues. My mind swims.
“It can’t wait,” is all I can manage, my voice so high-pitched and strange that the Knight of the Host turns to look at me, his armor glinting in the candlelight.
“Truly? I was not aware she was in any distress.” The knight peers at me through his chainmail-skirted helm.
Panic rolls through me like a stormfront, and the room pitches again. I slam all of my weight onto my cane and my bad leg, swallowing down the bile creeping up my throat.
“Yes,” I assure him, taking a painful step toward the gate, hoping he relents—I am here by the High Ecclesia’s order, after all.
The knight hesitates but then nods and unlocks the gate, holding it open for me. I fight to move as normally as I can, Mysterium humming as I pass over the threshold. I hear the gate lock behind me, the pitch of the Mysterium changing as the Blessing is closed, and let out a short sigh of relief.
Only the candle sconces in the Sepulchyre knight’s chambers are lit. I navigate the slightly uneven dirt floor by the low, sputtering glow. Just as I’d hoped, the stool and healer’s kit are tucked against the earthen wall, far out of reach of the Lupa Nox.
She’s curled up on her pallet in the far corner, her back facing me, though I can see the shackles encircling her ankles. Her feet are bare, soles caked with dirt, body curled up tight like a fern at the beginning of spring. It makes her look smaller than I know her to be. For a moment, my eyes trace the line of her hip before I shove the pain-induced delirium aside.
I drag myself toward the healer’s kit. But before I reach for it, I hazard a glance over my shoulder, even though it pulls at my wounded skin. Stifling a cry, I note that no guardsmen have joined me inside the cell, just as the knight warned. All I can think about is ending this pain—so the thought of being alone with the wolf-woman does not terrify me as it should.
Besides, I can see that she still sleeps, the pulls of her breath long and even. Tears cloud my eyes as I begin to search the pockets of the healer’s kit, my fingers frantic and shaking. I find the collection of salves and frantically eye the labels. A bolt of euphoria shoots through me as I find my quarry: chamomile and marshmallow in cattail jelly, charged with a healing Blessing. Exactly the salve I had gone to Physica Hall for.
I do not even hazard a glance at the woman sleeping on the straw pallet, nor at the gold-helmed knight on the other side of the gate. Instead, I collapse onto the stool, salve clutched in my desperate hand. Trembling, I set my weight onto my good leg, tuck my cane between my knees, and begin to undo the laces of my work dress. For a moment, shame creeps through me—what if the guard sees my back clad in naught but linen, or what if the Lupa Nox herself watches me partially undress?
But the pain drives me forward, rash and senseless. My entire body shakes, nausea tightening around my stomach. As I dig my fingers into the salve, I realize I’ve nearly soaked through my dress with sweat. I peel the fabric away with one hand and bite down on my tongue, knowing how much twisting at the waist and raising my arm to apply the salve will hurt.
A sudden rustle—impossibly loud in the early morning quiet—interrupts me. Sharp, anxious pinpricks of heat shoot through my body, colliding with the pain. I snap my head up, my cane slipping out of my clammy fingers and clattering to the floor, searching for the long, elegant body curled up on the straw.
The Lupa Nox is no longer on her pallet. She stands instead. Her deep, sleeping inhales are short and furious now, a darkness on her face that I cannot describe. Despite the ankle restraints that hobble her, connected to wrist shackles with a short metal bar to further limit her movements, she is as terrifying as ever. Those thunderstorm eyes rake across my hands, the tin of salve, my open dress, the flail’s marks. She bares her teeth, her namesake all the more real, straining against the chains that bind her.
“Who,” the Lupa Nox growls, “did this to you?”