Chapter 48 Ares
ARES
Candle flames spit as beads of wax run like sweat down onto the stone floor.
The light is dull, but it's enough to read by.
I'm accustomed to the electricity failing down here, leaving me in the dark.
The power in the crypt always goes down first, followed by the church, then the rest of the convent, as the mainland rations electricity and then cuts it completely.
Cold air chases the silt dust out of the crypt tonight.
It's probably the door to the shuttered narthex on the west side of the building blown open in the storm.
It only ever opens when there's a delivery or a squall out of the Atlantic making landfall.
I like it, though. It cleanses the stale air of the crypt.
I lie on my bed, a plain, narrow slab, and read the book in the low candlelight. Georgina would say it's bad for my eyes, but I'm accustomed to the dark. I have lived among the old bones deposited in enclaves around the walls for years.
The book rests on my chest as I read, the pages yellowed and frayed.
I've read the damn thing a dozen times, but I've pilfered every book from the library at least once.
Well, the interesting ones, at least. Tonight, my attention drifts away from it, catching on the slow drip of water in the northern tunnels and the screech of unforgiving wind.
I sigh and give up, discarding the book on the bed beside me.
I blink up at the ceiling, watching as my breath steams like smoke in the cold.
Cracks spiderweb through the old stone above me, and my fingertips twitch against the thin wool blanket.
I could go to the room Reverend Mother keeps for me in the abandoned east wing.
At least the electricity is probably still on.
But the truth is, even if I didn't have to stay hidden, I prefer it down here. It is mine and mine alone.
My fingers feather the bed as I frown at the ceiling, the candles playing shadow puppets above me. I shouldn't even be here, trying to distract myself from my thoughts.
Ezra made me stay behind this time.
Again.
He and Reverend Mother say it's to protect me.
I'm not supposed to exist, after all. Any record of me died years ago.
I'm growing impatient of living on the fringe, though, not allowed out when the nuns could see, never permitted to venture off-island.
Ezra says it will be safe soon. It had better be because I'm done living in the shadows.
The Pope's visit is coming. Ten cities across the continental United States in ten days. They say I'll be allowed into the open then. Truth and a decade's worth of patience are on our side. One public revelation and the whole stained-glass empire will crumble.
We didn't begin with such a lofty goal. Years ago, we just wanted justice for Johnathan and the orphanage closed. We were kids with no idea what we were up against.
But what is the worth of one life saved when you leave thousands of others to suffer?
After the truth is out there and exposed, I will be able to confront her.
The Abbess is a thief of innocence and the Devil incarnate if it ever walked the earth.
The sisters of the convent may call me the Devil of Saint Margaret's, the specter that haunts these hallowed grounds, but she is true evil. She's the one who …
The colors around me start to fade. Dissociation creeps in. The world desaturates at the edges, churning into a gray haze. I shouldn't have thought about her. It was foolish. I suck in a deep breath through my nose and focus.
Find the ground, Ares.
Feel. See. Smell. Hear. Taste.
The wool blanket itches my fingertips.
Candlelight stretches shadows across stone.
The crisp bite of a winter storm nips at my nostrils, and the wind whistles far above me.
Dying smoke clings to my tongue.
The ground solidifies beneath me, and the encroaching monochrome walls dissipate.
Blindly, I reach for the bone beside my cot, sharpened to a vicious point.
It's one of a thousand, at least, maybe more.
I've whittled so many of them to pass the time.
Mother hates it—she says the dead should be left just as God intended for the coming Resurrection, undisturbed—but she hates everything including when I call her that.
My fingertips find the metacarpal, and I roll it across the floor, stretching until, finally, I can pick it up.
Beneath the candlelight, it's amber, not pale.
I examine it a moment before I scrape it beneath my nails, cleaning dark flecks of wax and dirt from beneath them.
The shit must be ingrained in me from the orphanage because I hate the feeling of unclean hands.
At the home, dirty fingers would have earned me a second serving of a leather belt and extra chores.
Fourteen years have passed since Georgina found me there and dragged me out of the hellscape.
Ezra got a bargain when she took him, helping him into the priesthood.
I got sent to the shadows and left for dead by the world.
Still, only one of us could join the priesthood, and it was never going to be me.
Ezra truly believes. My faith, though, is based on superstition and fear of the unknown because the one time I forgot to pray, it cost me dearly.
My chest pulls tight at the thought, and the air thins to nothing.
Find the ground, Ares!
Fuck this.
I rise. I need air. I need a distraction. I need … my angel in white.
I toss the bone pick on my bed and start through the maze of intersecting corridors like they belong to me, probably because for the last thirteen years, they have. I don't need to take a candle with me. The crypt is my home.
My hand skims the damp walls as I take the turns.
I step over the threshold, marking the entry to the chamber, and take the stone steps up to the chapel floor.
On the top step, just outside the door that leads to the church, I press my hand to the wall.
Cold, damp stone greets me as I blink into the darkness and listen.
Down here, I can hear the convent breathe, slow and labored.
When I open the door, the chapel welcomes me like a waiting tomb.
I enter the hall at the back, giving myself a moment for my eyes to adjust to the low light.
It's not much, just a few emergency lights and a peek of lightning through the traverse windows at the top of the exterior wall.
It's a hell of a lot more than pitch black, though.
When my eyes adjust, I walk through the church, taking the door to enter the chapel.
Then I take a seat in the front pew, just as I always do when I can.
I'm just to the left of the son of God, and I look up past the pulpit at the crucifix looming above the altar.
Lightning splits the skies outside, flooding the chamber in prisms of stained-glass light.
The light catches on Christ's thorny crown and the profile of his face, igniting his mouth frozen mid-anguish.
I hate looking at him. I don't want to look. Still, I do.
Just as I don't want to be here in this church, and I don't want to pray. Yet I do. The words come easily as I clasp my hands in front of me and eye the one who supposedly saves us from our sins.
First, I pray in the old language of the Church, Latin. “Protegat Deus iustos.”
Next, I repeat the prayer in the language spoken by the son of God, Aramaic. “???? ??????? ????????????.”
Then I repeat the prayer in the Holy Tongue, Hebrew, “?' ????? ?? ???????,” and in the language of the Qur’an, Arabic, “????? ???? ????????.”
My ritual ends when I say the prayer a fifth time in English. “May God protect the righteous.”
I look up from my clasped hands at the son of God, and the ache between my ribs eases.
I don't pray because I want to. I pray because I must. Because the night I didn't, she came for me.
Flash grenades of memories detonate.
Deep in the wrinkled matter of my hippocampus, a woman in a black nun's habit rises from the pit in which I buried her, a wooden crucifix clasped between her spindly fingers.
Another flash detonates, and there's the taste of blood when I fought back and the violent impact of my head against stone.
Men laugh in a faraway memory, and I feel the runes drawn across my naked flesh.
Fuck. It's coming—the fog, the float, and that sick slide into the hollow dark. Dissociation slinks forward. It wants to unmake me.
I try to find the ground, but I can't, not when it's so close.
I bolt from the pew, the wood creaking beneath me.
I need her.
My angel.
She tethers me to the now.
I rush through the chapel, pushing the door open, and bolt toward the main building of the convent.
Forked lightning fractures through a dazzling gray-and-white sky.
It's forbidden. The sisters can't see me, but the risk is minimal.
The rest of the convent is asleep. I pull my hood over my head, shielding my face from the pelting ice and snow and barrel ahead into the building.
A flash of white tears through the Heavens again.
Thundersnow.
A phenomenon reserved primarily for this hellscape.
Ezra hates it when it comes, sleet, snow, and lightning all churning together in one furious gale.
Not me, though. The violence is palpable. It thunders between my ears, pelts my flesh, and makes me feel.
The windows of Saint Margaret's rattle in their dark iron frames as sleet and rain ping my skin.
The night air tastes like snow and salt as an upcoming winter stretches into the mainland.
I inhale the frigid air and hold my breath until my lungs feel like they will burst. Only then, on a slow exhale, do I move.
It comes easily. I've done it so often, finding the handholds and juts of stone is second nature.
Even beneath the lashing waves of sleet, I traverse the wall quickly.
My boots grip the stone as I climb to the second floor and reach the window to her room.
It opens with a hand crank that she never locks, and tonight is no exception.
I push the window open and slip inside. I am careful, my movements soft and quiet to not wake the sleeping sisters.
My boots land on the floor as sleet and snow drips from my clothes to melt on the stone.
In the darkness, I cross the expanse to her bed, but I find it empty.
Her sweet scent clings to the crisp sheets, and I run my hand across her pillowcase and draw in a deep breath.
I imagine the weight of her body beneath the blanket, her breath rising and falling as her dreams carry her away from here. Her lips are parted in sleep. She's safe.
I've watched her, standing at the foot of the bed as she sleeps. I know the sight, but disappointment is my only companion as my eyes open again.
Because she's not here.
She's with Thatcher. Again.
For the past ten days, from the moment she first snuck into his quarters, they've spent nearly every waking minute together.
Ezra intentionally ignores it. Georgina is too preoccupied to notice it. But I see it all—the lingering looks, the rushed kisses, and the shared moments hidden in the dark.
My angel loves him.
The thought scrapes something raw inside me, and my vision goes to static. My body almost … floats.
No!
I flee, back out the window, my boots easily find the ledge as I inch the distance to Thatcher's quarters. The sky drills ice daggers from above, but my fingers easily find the crags in the wall. One look through his window is all it takes me.
Empty.
If she's not here and not in her quarters, then at this time of night, there's only one other place she would likely be.
The library.
I scale the wall like a shadow. My fingers scrabble for the weathered cornice, and I stretch on my toes and find it before heaving myself up.
I'm accustomed to the path. It's one I took long before my angel ever arrived.
I climb past another floor, pulling and scraping until finally, I find the fascia.
Sleet stings my eyes as I pull myself up, finally landing on the roof.
Thunder rumbles the ground and shakes the building as I heave for breath.
I take a moment to just breathe before I climb to my feet and traverse the roof, up and over the inclines and around the spires until I'm there, looking down through the glass dome on top of the library.
The glass is dirty, obscured by snow and rain, but I spot her.
My angel.
Her white habit glows golden under the low amber glow of the ensconced lights. She sits in a chair at a desk between the stacks, her head bowed over open books. Her lips move, no doubt reading to herself as her fingers curl around a pen. She tosses it across her desk unceremoniously.
My hands clasped between my legs, I kneel, watching her and drinking in every detail.
I am not beside her, but I imagine I am. In my dreams, I smell the decaying acid of old paper and see the crisp starched fabric of her habit. I hear the wet slap of sleet on glass and the rustle of her turning a page.
She is my anchor to this world, my tether.
The fog pulls back.
The black-and-white recedes.
Through her, I feel myself again.