It took everything in her not to glance nervously over her shoulder.
The haze of lust that had robbed her of what little good sense she had left had evaporated as soon as she left her suite. Now all she felt was the anticipation of prey about to be eaten.
Not that she believed Silas wanted to hurt her, necessarily, but she probably should have found some other way to savor her last taste of life. Petra’s mind was a chaotic swirl of regret and panic as she stepped through the door and slammed it shut behind her.
I should have taken myself out for a really nice dinner. Maybe gone to the beach. I haven’t gotten a chance to go to the Fairmont and see that new exhibit yet. I could have done that instead of basically taunting an amoral demon into?—
What, exactly? Petra’s core tightened at the kaleidoscope of possibilities. She had no doubt that Silas could get awfully creative in the bedroom.
She normally enjoyed the solemn silence of the empty cathedral on Saturdays. Glory’s presence felt nearer when she was alone, surrounded by towering columns and shafts of light painted bright colors by the two-story stained-glass windows. The rhythm of her heel strikes on the marble floor were normally even, a metronome for her strained mind to drift to as she did the small tasks around the altar and Glory’s statue that needed doing.
But at that moment, her heels clicking on the floor sounded as loud as bolt gun shots. Her breathing was raspy. Her mind was a whirlwind unable to settle on one worry for more than a moment before it screamed to the next. It took everything she had to keep an even, steady pace down the center of the cathedral.
At the last minute, she swerved away from the high altar and the statue. She was torn between hiding away in the columbarium, which she normally tended after cleaning the altar, and hiding away in the sanctuary.
Both were out of the way, but the columbarium was part of her regular routine, which meant that Silas would probably look there first.Sanctuary it is.
She didn’t have any hope that hewouldn’tfind her, but she wanted to buy herself a little bit of time before the reckoning came down on her like Tempest’s wrath.
The decision was reinforced by the fact that the sanctuary boasted a wrought iron gate and lock.
Petra took a hard left at the altar and slipped through the shadowed gap between a towering column and the decorative ones that framed the high altar’s niche. A few brisk strides brought her to the massive iron gate that guarded the sanctuary. Though the beautifully designed scroll work filled the entrance from floor to ceiling, most worshippers didn’t even know the sanctuary was there. They rarely ventured so far past the high altar, preferring to bask in the light of the windows or kneel before Glory’s statue.
Not that they would have been able to get in even if they knew it was there. The sanctuary was open by appointment only, due to the value of the relics held within it. Day to day it was used by Temple staff for personal worship and religious instruction, but its most important role was in prestige.
Goosebumps erupted across her body as she stood before the gate, her palm pressed to the scanner designed to hide amongst the wrought iron filigree. She stood in the dimmest part of the main cathedral floor, where not even the light from the windows reached. Only soft ambient light got that far past the high altar, though there were normally many racks of candles lit — each one a blessing or a prayer left by a worshipper.
On Saturdays, there were no candles lit. The small cups were dark, their pretty glass turned dark violet without the glow of a candle to illuminate them from within.
As she waited for the scanner to recognize her, Petra realized she’d made a miscalculation. While the sanctuary was the most secure place she could hide without drawing Antonin’sattention, it was also a perfect playground for a man who thrived in shadow.
Her stomach sank as she quickly glanced from side to side, eyeing the shadows that never quite looked right since she met Silas. Even when he wasn’t around, they appeared more alive than they had before.
She regretted not taking the time to learn more about how demons interacted with shadows. Everyone knew they controlled their own, but what could a man like Silas do with natural darkness?
The scanner vibrated beneath her palm. Half a second later the lock clicked, allowing her to hastily push the well-oiled gate open and step inside. She wasn’t foolish enough to breathe a sigh of relief as she closed it behind her, but she did feel a bit better when the lock clicked again.
Petra walked past the four rows of mahogany benches, much more elaborately carved than the pews in the main part of the cathedral and approximately three hundred years older, to the alcove at the far end of the room. All around her were relics of Glory’s worship from across the world — bargained for, traded, donated, and stolen a thousand times by too many people to count.
Each one cost a fortune, but the centerpiece was the fifteenth-century solid wood and gold altar on the dais. Worship had evolved since its creation, making its design outdated, but the beauty of the piece couldn’t be understated. Unlike the altar she used every day, which was essentially a very fancy fire retardant table, the antique was more like a massive, semi-enclosed cabinet at which one was meant to kneel.
Services could be performed in front of it, but it also acted as a private worship space for whatever extremely wealthy person commissioned it. Wooden screens could be extended out across the open end, allowing a worshipper to kneel in the small,enclosed space before the elaborate altar and its gold-plated statue of the goddess.
Petra didn’t dare touch the screens, worried about the great age of the piece, but she did tuck herself close to the altar. This deep into the sanctuary, no one peering through the gate would be able to see her anyway.
Ridiculous.She shook her head. How long could she hide there before she either tipped off Antonin’s men that she was acting strange or Silas found a way to get her out?
The fact that she was hiding from him at all made her cringe. Not only would it not work, but it would only make her seem weak. The right thing to do would have been to either follow through with her destructive impulse or eat crow and explain that she’d temporarily lost her mind.
But she’d done neither of those things and instead knelt on an embroidered cushion within a priceless fifteenth-century altar cabinet, staring up into the sightless eyes of her goddess.
“Don’t give me that look,” she muttered, reaching out to light the incense at the goddess’s feet. “Like you’ve never gotten in too deep with a demon? I need support here, not judgment.”
“Your goddess didn’t fuck a demon. She fucked our father.”
Petra swallowed a scream. Whirling around on her knees, she found Silas — or whatmostlylooked like Silas — grasping the two sides of the folded wooden screens and fearlessly dragging them across the floor. She could only watch, horrified, as he latched them together, completely enclosing them in the shadowy altar cabinet.
And then he turned to face her.
