20. Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty:
~Keida~
It was not a matter of if Melrose St. Augustine would barge in, but when.
I knew she’d only be detained for a sliver of time.
I imagined she would immediately rappel from the ceiling.
When I twisted at the sound of the door opening, I was neither surprised nor disappointed.
I did, however, pray to Avaris for help.
I definitely intended to bend her over my desk and spank her later but…
preferably not in front of her father…and definitely without his knowledge.
“Melrose!” Leonardo barked, standing up from his desk. Prior to my favorite menace barging in, he’d been sitting behind it with Cardinal Janus in one chair, me in the other.
“As I was saying,” Janus growled, pushing to his feet to point at her. Melrose slammed the door behind herself. “She thinks she is above her station.”
“My station is a child of Avaris within her temple, Cardinal Janus. I do not need to be an Order Official to hold a voice in her most holy of temples!” Melrose stomped forward. “And you cannot deflect from what happened. You were behind that attack in the gardens today.”
“Leonardo, please,” Janus sighed, motioning flippantly at His Holiness.
“Melrose,” I murmured. She twisted toward me, fury in her gaze, but immediately halted her tirade as she saw my right brow raised.
Do not make this worse for you. That’s what my face said and all she needed to hear.
She stepped closer to me, rattling fists at her side like tiny rattlesnake tails.
Janus furrowed his brows from over her shoulder.
Leonardo’s eyebrows shot up on his face.
And I took her chin in hand, forcing her to look me in the eye. “Enough.”
“It’s not fair,” she hissed under her breath.
But my attention was at the small collection of baby’s breath, or gypsophila, caught in her hair.
I was no botanist, but even I knew the little white puffs of flowers that I plucked out of Melrose’s mane.
She glanced at it, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar.
I followed her eyes to the long stem that Janus used to weave it into her hair.
The stem, where he carved little runes with his fingernails, I could see the beginning of a powerful enchantment.
While the flower itself could be irritating to skin on its own, bunched together with many other flowers, and the right caster… it could be a paralytic.
An enchantment I witnessed my previous mentor use countless times.
My eyes darted to Janus, who silently shifted, eyes narrowing on me.
“I am taking care of it. Please, take a seat.” I moved away from my chair and motioned for her to take my place.
Melrose sighed with exasperation but sank into the chair with a heavy ‘harrumph’.
I dropped the flower onto Leonardo’s desk.
The first nail in Janus’ coffin, as it immediately turned to dust upon touching a blessed object.
“Cardinal Janus, you’re a practiced botanist. You, His Holiness, Melrose, and I can all agree you know plants better than anyone, correct? ”
“Why does this sound like an accusation, Your Lunarence?” Janus shifted his weight, a hip cocked out with arms crossed over his chest. “We are here to discuss Melrose’s abhorrent behavior.”
“A behavior she only expresses to men who threaten her. As Leonardo and I can attest, most of the time, Melrose is perfectly well behaved. And an upstanding citizen.” I spared Melrose a glance, before continuing back to him, “Which begs the question why she felt the need to slap you? When accosted by a man in the festival grounds, she didn’t even slap him.
And the man was a stranger, and in your eyes, below her station. She did not strike him.”
“Be that as it may.” Janus’ face hardened with fury I’d only ever seen once.
Directed at a man who waltzed into the temple drunk and tried to pee on the pews for malicious delight.
Janus had no mercy for a lost fool who drank too much at a dangerous elevation in the mountains and desecrated a holy site.
However, as he directed that animosity at me, I didn’t fear I was a fool. I knew where I stood, nestled safely in Our Lady Avaris’ hands, doing what she’d asked of me.
“Melrose St. Augustine is a feral creature left to her own devices with no purpose.” Janus jabbed a finger at her and caused Melrose to jerk upright in her seat. I put my hand out at my side, one of my wings flashing out as an extra wall of protection from her and the Cardinal.
“She is a person owed your most basic respect, and you will show it, or your welcome will be most overstayed, Cardinal Janus.” My voice was clipped.
Despite the fact he was insulting my beloved Melrose, he was wrong.
I did not spend the last six years loving Melrose St. Augustine from afar, to be na?ve to her personality.
Melrose was many things, but feral creature was far from the flirty, fun woman that held my heart.
His eyes narrowed on me sharply, and I felt the irritation of the flower’s dust bite into my fingertips.
Without another word, I dusted my fingers against my robes, inflicting my own digits with frost instead to cleanse me of his poison, before tucking my hands behind me.
His body swayed backward in confusion, realizing his powers… were not as strong as they once were.
It was said Cardinal Janus, once upon a time, could call forth a garden of stinging nettles with a single look.
Those nettles could kill a horde of bandits or an army of heretics, their poison sinking into the skin within moments.
Within a few breaths, those who opposed him would be choking on their own lungs, unable to do more than fidget and scratch at their itching skin.
That was back when he still held the All-Mother’s blessing. When he’d not gone against his word as her cleric.
“What’s the matter, Janus?” Leonardo asked, head cocked to the side.
“Nothing, Your Holiness.”
“Oh, do not get sheepish on our accord, Your Eminence, please, tell us what seems to be the matter?” I stepped closer, the frost growing in my palms.
“There is nothing to discuss,” he huffed.
“Other than my lack of marital status, it seems,” Melrose grumbled from behind me. I stopped, twisting to stare at her in disbelief. She scowled petulantly but glanced away, knowing better. When I returned my attention to Janus again, I found my previous mentor staring at me with fury in his eyes.
“Did you or did you not conspire to have Melrose St. Augustine kidnapped in order to force the Hierophant Rex to excommunicate himself from the Order?”
Janus balked. “I have done no such thing.”
Frustration flared within me and frost bit into my palm.
Just admit it! Finally just admit you’ve been behind this the whole time!
Leonardo stood and all the light in the room was snuffed out.
I shifted, making sure my back stayed to Melrose.
Her hands wrapped around my robes, and I felt her warmth seeping in.
My gaze lingered where Janus once stood as a small candle was lit on the desk.
The flame grew steadily, illuminating Janus shrinking down into his seat.
“When did you stop walking in the darkness with me, my old friend?” Leonardo whispered as several other candles hissed to life.
Light blue flames danced in the room, ghostly visages of clerics filling an endless oblivion.
Their candles were carved much like the one on the desk…
much like the ones I made for the ceremony of Wintersdark.
Faces, most of whom I didn’t know, stared at Janus with hollowed expressions.
One I did know, however, was Cardinal Porter.
He stood to Leonardo’s right with a long, jagged wound in bright red along his throat.
Another cleric stepped forward from the candle on the desk, bearing marks of someone who was riddled with stinging nestles.
“Leonardo, please, old friend, this is not what it looks like!” Janus exhaled heavily, hands up.
“I was sent a vision, from Our Lady, urging me on a quest to a small temple just beyond the castle walls. It was maintained by a singular cleric. It was meant as a waystation for weary travelers on the way to the castle. You knew if the cleric were to die or go missing, that we would be forced to investigate. I confided in you, that since Porter, I did not trust any others to investigate. You knew the guilt that filled me from his death. That would leave my Cathedral in the care of my Lunar Cleric. Do you deny this, Janus?”
“I-I-It is not as it seems, Leonardo, you have to see this from my point of view!” Janus’ voice wobbled with panic as the endless darkness around us filled with more souls.
No longer just clerics, but random citizens, some I recognized from the temple.
Lost souls who needed guidance, those who sought out the pools for their healing abilities, not all of whom were dead.
They were wronged, by Janus. I furrowed my brow, twisting around in confusion.
Peony Bernstein’s vision loomed behind Janus, stone faced in all her armor with a rope dangling from her throat.