Chapter 10
We call ourselves saints,and our sins sanctify us. Of this I’ve been certain since that first morning in Rome.
So why, when I see a fellow saint approach as the wedding planner leads my bridesmaids and me to the side door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, does my stomach sink?
I’ve seen her once before, in Manila, her dark hair streaked with ash as we left a politician’s smoldering mansion together. Today, she’s dressed like one of the cathedral employees, with a metal nameplate pinned to a blazer, her hair in a neat bun.
“Miss Laurence, I’m so sorry to be a bother,” she says in American-inflected English, not the flawless Tagalog she was speaking in Manila, “but one of your relatives flagged me down to give this to you.”
The saint hands me a note and, with an apologetic smile, leaves. I doubt I’ll ever see her again.
I fall a few steps behind my wedding planner, hopefully seeming like any other distracted bride. Mark and I agreed that the planner was best left as she was, conveniently relaying details of our very intense, very physical, and definitely real relationship to Drobny—but I’d rather she not relay this particular moment. I unfold the small paper, expecting my uncle’s looping cursive, but instead see a machine-printed font.
The Scales, then, my uncle’s right hand.
My uncle still has a part to play in the Vatican, in public, the smiling cardinal who is everyone’s friend. The Scales exists only in the shadows, on pieces of paper, in the brief whispers the saints are able to share during our assignments. It’s been guessed that he’s a priest or maybe a deacon—or maybe a layperson, like many of us. Some say that he served the Vatican spymaster before my uncle inherited the role and that there was another before him—a Scales before the current Scales.
What matters now, however, is why the Scales needed to contact me while I’m swishing in a cloud of silk and lace toward my wedding ceremony.
I glance at the note, reading it in an instant, and remove the slender metallic pin settled in the note’s crease. I fold the paper before anyone else walking near me can see. Bryn alone knows that I work for my uncle, but she thinks my work stops at information, at intelligence, and it’s safer for her if it stays that way.
Also I don’t know if I want to see the look in her eyes when she realizes that I’ve killed people, so many people.
People who sometimes I don’t know that I should have killed.
Anyway, the note itself is short, its instructions simple enough.
Make the Serbian banker dance with you at the reception.
Coming with the pin-like object, I know what the Scales wants me to do. There is a small microphone at the tip, and once the pin is slid into a shirt or tuxedo jacket, one could be privy to the banker’s conversations for the rest of the night.
I’m relieved—anything more elaborate would have been difficult to do while I’m the center of attention—and I’m also frustrated. All of today is something I’m doing as a saint—can’t I have this one day to come to terms with that?
I pretend to adjust my hold on my bouquet, and then I slide the pin into the lace of my sleeve, along the seam. The note is pushed between the damp flower stems, and the dissolvable paper will be unreadable in just a moment or two.
All communication has its risks, but there is something about the traditional methods of contact. No possible hacking or phone cloning, no digital footprints. Just memories.
We’re inside the cathedral now, tucked away in a corner, and Mark’s attendants are waiting there, along with my father. My uncle is already inside—he’ll be at the front, in full regalia—and Mark is already inside too.
And Tristan.
I knew he wasn’t one of Mark’s attendants, but my heart still twists when I don’t see him waiting here. I don’t know what I would have said or wanted said to me—I don’t know that I could have even looked him in the eye. We’ve been avoiding each other since that day in the dressing room, when it became clear that our self-control couldn’t hold up to any kind of test.
But I wanted one last minute with him before this. To apologize or to beg or to assure him that I haven’t forgotten a single moment on the yacht.
To tell him that, for however fleeting a moment, he made me feel whole.
Mark’s twin sister, Melody, smiles at me in a way that is as unsettling as it is familiar. Her hair is up in a sleek twist, waving away from her forehead in the same shade of pale gold as Mark’s. She’s wearing a fitted black tuxedo and a pair of heels that match the creamy shade of the floral arrangements perfectly.
“Nervous, Isolde?” she asks.
The CIA is not the Vatican’s friend or its foe—saints regard CIA agents the same way a cougar might regard a wolf as they prowl through the same trees. All the same, there’s something about Melody that I do truly like. I would never trust her, of course. But I don’t mind giving her an honest answer.
“A little,” I say.
“Good. I wouldn’t have a very high opinion of anyone who wasn’t scared to marry my brother.”
“All vows are frightening,” I reply. I don’t know how much Mark has told her about our arrangement or how much she might have guessed on her own. A vague reply is safest.
“Yes, you wanted to be a nun, right? Perhaps this will not be so different. Lyonesse has its own cloisters and prayers. Its own hymns.” Her smile is wicked now.
We hear the music begin—the cue for the attendants. My bridesmaids, a mix of cousins and college friends, start matching with Mark’s attendants: four men who have the look of the military about them, Dinah the club manager, and Melody. Melody offers her arm to Bryn with a rakish wink, and Bryn’s cheeks darken as she takes it.
The wedding planner guides me out of sight as the doors open, and out they file in silk and tailored wool and floral accessories that have required too much of my time. And even though the wedding planner is here, even though my father is fussing with his tie and cuffs and clearing his throat like a man about to go onstage, I suddenly feel so lonely I could cry.
Am I scared of marrying Mark Trevena?
Yes. I am.
I’m scared I’ll fail my uncle and my God. I’m scared Mark will discover every secret I’ve been keeping and use every single one of them against me.
I’m scared that I’ll betray myself for the love of him.
My father takes my arm, and I barely feel it. The music changes, and we walk around the corner to the white-marble aisle. My heart is pounding like it did that first morning in Rome, knowing I was doing something that couldn’t be undone.
And then we step in front of the famous bronze doors to walk to the altar. The neo-Gothic ceiling fans move above us in dizzying vaults and arches. Sunlight pushes through the jewel-toned stained glass, more blue than anything else. The nave is full. The rich, the powerful, and the famous are bristling, stirring, and pushing to get a glimpse of me.
Through my veil, I see Mark at the stairs before the choir, surrounded by the majesty of the cathedral and matching it entirely. Wide shoulders, perfect jaw, gold hair as bright as the ciborium over the altar.
I can feel the heat of his gaze all the way from the other end of the nave. I can see the slow, dangerous curve of his smile.
I am a saint of the Church who is yoking herself to a fallen angel, and with each step forward in my fairy-tale shoes, I offer desperate, agonized prayers to God.
Please let me survive Mark Trevena.