I smile faintly. “And I’m not?”
She glances over her shoulder, eyes a colder blue in the gray light. “You look like a man who only talks when he’s trying to convince himself he’s not damned.”
There’s something cruelly accurate about that.
I fall into step beside her, the crunch of gravel beneath our feet the only sound for a while. The air smells faintly of rosemary and rust. The gardeners haven’t been here in weeks, but the wild suits her. She belongs in places that refuse to be tamed.
“You’ve been patient,” I say. “Most people would have tested the locks by now.”
“Maybe I already did.”
I glance at her, and she gives me that smirk — the kind that’s part defense, part confession.
“I would’ve noticed,” I say.
She shrugs. “Maybe you did. Maybe you let me.”
There’s a strange quiet between us after that. She’s testing me, of course. Everything she says is a blade pressed just deep enough to see if I bleed.
“You think I’m naive,” she says finally.
“I think you’re restless.”
“Restless people are dangerous, Father.”
The word breaks like old glass underfoot.
“Don’t call me that.”
She grins. “Touchy.”
“I left the cloth behind.”
“Not from what I’ve heard,” she murmurs. “You still keep the confessions, don’t you?”
That makes me stop walking.
She keeps going a few paces before turning to face me. There’s no mockery in her expression now — only curiosity, sharp and searching.
“Who told you that?” I ask.
Her smile tilts. “No one. You just did.”
Clever girl.
The wind stirs, carrying the faint sound of city traffic from beyond the walls. She pushes a strand of copper hair from her face, eyes glinting with something I can’t name. Not defiance. Not fear. Understanding, maybe.
I take a slow step forward. “You like provoking me.”
“I like seeing what’s real,” she says. “You all wear masks, Saint. Mine’s just easier to take off.”
“You shouldn’t call me that, either.”
“But you like it.”
I don’t deny it.
She studies me — long enough that I feel the weight of her gaze like heat under my collar. Then she looks away, walking toward the iron gate at the back of the garden. It’s locked, of course, butshe touches it anyway, her fingers tracing the rusted bars like she could will them open.
