Chapter One
“Honestly, Helena, is that the best you can do? Why do you persist in being so lazy? Cleanliness is next to godliness, don’t you know?” Sister Frances’s grating voice made Helena bite her lower lip in an effort not to respond.
Footsteps echoed in the empty hall as the nun approached, coming to a stop close by.
Helena stopped her humming as she scrubbed at the already spotless abbey floor. The stones were cold under her knees, and she hadn’t eaten yet today. She was resigned to it, though.
This was her life.
She began scrubbing harder, which was quite the feat, considering her hand was trembling from the cold and weakness.
Sister Frances huffed irritably. “Your attempt at pretense is fooling no one,” she snapped. “Certainly not God. He is watching over you, judging your actions and finding you wanting. Recite theAdoro te Devoteprayer as you work to remind you of the reason for your punishment. God does not like a willful child.”
“Yes, Sister Frances,” Helena said, keeping her head down.
She was quite sure that God was nowhere near this convent. Not with their tendency towards cruelty as punishment. Not with how they kept the girls half-starved in an effort to curb their ‘innate wickedness.’
Even with the diligent supervision of St. Margaret’s abbess, Sister Frances still ruled with an iron fist, managing to slip past the abbess’s watchful eye.
Sister Frances huffed and breathed in as if to say something else. To prevent her from doing that, Helena began to recite the prayer very loudly, her arms burning with exhaustion.
“Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio; Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beátus tuæ gloriæ. Amen.”
From the corner of her eye, she could see Sister Frances’s face, getting very red with annoyance. The nun huffed one more time before marching away.
Helena watched her go, still reciting the prayer as loudly as she could while scrubbing at the floor.
Sister Frances slammed the door to the hall behind her and immediately Helena collapsed to the ground, breathing hard.
She was so tired. And she’d been tired for a long, long time.
Helena felt too fatigued to sleep. Her darkened room gave no indication of what time it might be.
She got up slowly, feeling along the stone floor for her slippers, bare toes curling from the cold. The side of her foot brushed against the shoe she was looking for, and she reached down to grasp them.
Feeling along her bed until she reached the end, she plucked her dressing gown from where she’d draped it earlier and pulled it on, tying the belt as tight as it would go—anything to offer a semblance of warmth in her damp, chilly cell.
She padded to the door and opened it, peering out into the darkened corridor.
The moon was full, shining through the slats of the abbey corridor and providing light.
She stepped out, looking first one way then the other, for any approaching nuns; there was always one sitting vigil in the chapel at all hours, so it was not unusual to encounter a sister heading to, or returning from, watch at any hour of the day or night.
Helena squinted at the moon. One of the other girls at the convent had tried to teach her how to tell time simply by looking at the sky, but she had never managed to grasp it fully.
Half the problem, of course, was that she did not want to be here at all. It made engaging with anything the abbey cared to impart next to impossible.
All she could think about was her family. She’d mapped her way out of the abbey so many times in her mind. She could have left years ago… were it not for Uncle James and his threats.
If you ever mention anything about your father’s death to anyone, little Charlie will pay the price. You want to protect your brother, don’t you?
It was just the twist that had made her settle, stop struggling, stop fighting so hard not to be left in this godforsaken place.
Uncle James, and possibly her mother, had killed her father.
Helena didn’t want to imagine what they might do to poor innocent Charlie.
And yet, it still was a struggle. Every day that she stayed was like holding onto the side of a sinking ship with just her fingernails. It was lying still while rats gnawed at her toes. It was a noose, getting tighter and tighter around her neck while she swung in the breeze, unable to stop it.
