Chapter Five - Evie
CHAPTER FIVE
Evie
SOMETIME LATER, MAYBE days, He sent in things instead of Himself. It started with books and then paints.
I was on the floor halfway through a stretch, palms planted, breath controlled and measured.
The leathers I’d arrived in creaked with every movement, stiff with old sweat and dried fear, biting at my ribs and thighs like punishment I’d chosen.
I hadn’t dared to take them off. I couldn’t.
Not here. Not where taking them off felt like admitting I was safe.
The light shifted as the curtain stirred, and my spine went rigid on instinct.
A Luminant stepped in, eyes down, holding a single folded silk dress in spun gold and cream, as if it weighed more than it should. The fabric was delicate and beaded with seed pearls. It looked soft like velvet. It made you want to put it on.
“No,” I said immediately, pushing back onto my heels. “I don’t want that.”
She froze.
“I don’t want anything He’s offering,” I added, my irritation snapping because I was tired of being bothered, tired of Him reaching through other people. “I’m not wearing that.”
The Luminant’s throat bobbed. She didn’t look at me, but her voice slipped out in a frightened whisper anyway. “Please,” she said. “Don’t make me take it away.”
That landed like a slap, the meaning snapping into place.
This was no gift. It was a test, wrapped in softness. And if I refused it too loudly, she would pay for it. My jaw clenched. I looked at the dress, then at her trembling hands.
“Fine,” I said tersely. “Leave it, but I won’t wear it.”
Relief flickered across her face so fast it made my stomach turn. She set the dress on the chair with reverent care, as if the fabric could report back, then backed out without turning around.
The curtain breathed closed, and I looked back at the dress as it sat there, untouched, soft and obscene in its beauty. I stared at it for a moment before I went back to my stretch, but my leathers pinched, my muscles shook, and my breath wouldn’t settle.
I forced it anyway, like I could bully my body into obedience. Inhale, hold, exhale. Shoulder roll. Spine long. The motions I’d done a thousand times suddenly felt like a performance for an audience I couldn’t see. Could He see in here?
My leathers creaked when I shifted, sticky and stubborn against my skin. They’d dried days ago in the shape of me. But I finished the stretch anyway. Not because it helped, but because stopping would’ve meant admitting I was rattled.
When I stood, the room swayed, just slightly, like a ship at sea. Nausea rolled through me, and my eyes went to the chair again. That velvet. That careful beauty.
Something hot and small rose in my throat, like a new spark of rage, realizing it had nowhere safe to go.
I walked over, and for a breath, I just looked at it, the way you look at flowers left by someone who once hurt you and expected gratitude for them.
If I’d had a pair of scissors or a knife…
I looked at my nails, wishing they were long and sharp like claws.
Then I grabbed the dress and flung it to the floor. The sound was uselessly soft, the fabric collapsing like it had been waiting to obey. It didn’t crumple the way clothes should. It draped, graceful even in defeat. Of course it fucking did.
I stared down at it, my hands curled into fists at my sides.
“I said I wouldn’t wear it,” I muttered, not to the dress or the empty room, not even to Him.
But to whatever part of me still believed refusal meant something.
And somewhere beneath the anger was something worse, a faint, crawling awareness that this place didn’t punish you with whips or fire.
It punished you with choices that weren’t really choices at all.
I don’t know how long I’d been here, but it stayed on the floor for a very long time. He didn’t show up, and no one who entered picked it up, but their eyes flicked toward it every time.
My despair didn’t drop all at once. It crept, slow like damp plaster, leaving darker stains where it climbed.
It was worse after the dreams, the ones where Luc and I were together like the universe had never touched us, where his callused hand found mine as if it belonged there, where his mouth was warm against mine, and he said my name like it was safe.
I’d wake with his heat still on my skin and nothing but white light staring back.
The room would feel colder, and my chest would ache like I’d been ripped from something mid-breath.
And the hopelessness would settle in patiently, rising a little higher each time until it sat at the base of my throat like a thumb, like it was testing how hard I could swallow before I broke.
I wanted to grab at anything, a sound, a footstep, a change in the light, because hope felt so very thin, and I kept reaching for anything that resembled it.
So the day when the veil shifted as the Luminant was leaving after bringing another meal, and the hallway opened for a heartbeat, I didn’t trust my eyes, but I couldn’t stop looking.
Lilith.
She stood at the far end of the hall, half in shadow, half in that warm light that bent itself for Him.
She was dressed in red again, the same deep, sensual shade as the night we met, like the color had chosen her and never let go.
She walked the corridor as if it opened for her, like it recognized her and stepped aside.
For a heartbeat, I was sure she was coming toward me. My pulse raced.
Her gaze was steady, unreadable. Her mouth curved softly, almost kind. And just before the light shifted, her smile sharpened, and I saw it, the quick, clean flash of a fang. A dark smear glinted at the corner of her mouth, fresh enough to look wet, like she didn’t care who noticed.
I whispered to myself, “Was that… blood?”
Then the light changed, and the hall rippled, just enough to break the picture apart. And she was just… gone.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her because if she could walk these halls with blood on her mouth, what did that mean exactly? Was she… feeding on people? Here? Was it not just Him? Were there others too? Did He not control her the way He controlled everyone else?
My eyes slid to the dress on the floor, the soft velvet pooling like liquid. I kicked it under the bed, and then—
The hall filled up with sound, and my breath caught. I could hear a steady clack-clack that echoed down the corridor, hooves on marble that grew louder.
My curtain swished open. Two Votaries stepped inside.
Lean and graceful, golden horns curling back from their temples like polished crowns, hooves gleaming as if someone had buffed and waxed them.
Their robes were pale and clean, moving like poured milk when they walked.
They didn’t smile or hesitate. They came right to me.
Dread slid up my spine, quiet and precise. They were the ones who prepared bodies when He was coming, the ones who washed and dressed His collection in their alcoves like dolls set out for display. I’d watched through the opaque curtain as they prepared the woman across me days ago.
He’d left me alone for awhile now, maybe days, maybe even weeks. Long enough that a stupid part of me had started to believe it meant something. I braced for what was coming next.
But the Votaries didn’t reach for me. They just stopped, one on either side of the curtain, framing the space like bookends, their golden eyes flicking over me with a calm, practiced assessment. The one on the right glanced down at the dress half under the bed and went to pick it up.
The one on the left tipped her head, voice soft, each word shaped carefully. “Will you receive the cleansing? We must go to the bathes.”
The bathes? I’d never seen anyone leave an alcove before.
My mouth opened around a refusal. I almost said no. But my clothes were stiff against my skin, the leathers were darkened with sweat, creased and unforgiving. They felt like armor now, stuck to my skin, and I was more afraid of what would happen if I took them off.
“Okay,” I said, my voice hoarse from disuse. “But I’d like to undress myself.”
They didn’t answer. They stepped forward gently but without hesitation, and began unfastening the buckles anyway. I froze. My heart slammed hard enough to make me dizzy. Fear rose up, and I felt like I might pass out.
“Please allow us,” one of them murmured, like they were calming a skittish animal. “We’ll take care of you.”
Their hands were careful and practiced. They moved like they’d done this a thousand times, and never bothered to learn anyone’s name. They didn’t look at me the way He did, like I was something to be admired or consumed. They barely looked at me at all.
Still, shame burned hot under my skin as the leathers slid away.
They came off heavy and damp, sticking in places before peeling free, dropping to the floor with a soft, humiliating thud.
Air touched parts of me that hadn’t felt air in…
I didn’t know how long. Dirt was creased into my skin, trapped in the folds at my elbows, the bend of my knees.
Redness banded my ribs and thighs where the leathers had bitten tight.
I watched it happen, like it was someone else.
Like my body was a thing laid out on a table and I was standing three feet above it, floating near the ceiling, looking down with mild interest and no right to intervene.
That trick had kept me alive before, the old instinct to leave my own skin the moment it became unsafe to occupy.
Afterwards, they wrapped me in a robe that smelled like clean linen and something faintly floral. The silk was incredibly soft, and they tied it closed with the same careful precision they used for everything else.
One of them tipped her head toward the curtain. “Come.”