We reach the steps. My legs buckle, but Antonio holds me like a macabre dance partner. He forces me down, his hand a heavy weight on my shoulder, pressing me to my knees on the cold bottom step.
A sob finally breaks free, a raw, broken sound that echoes too loudly in the silent cathedral.
Antonio kneels beside me, the picture of devout reverence. He leans in, his lips brushing my ear. His breath is warm, his words ice-cold.
“Accept your fate, Grace. It is done. We are already married in the eyes of God anyway. This…” he gestures slightly with his chin, “…this is merely a formality. A way to give you a bit of honour. You should be grateful I’m bestowing this upon you, after all your betrayals.”
The whisper is for me alone, but it feels like he’s shouting it from the rafters.
Grateful.
Honour.
Betrayal.
The words are poison twisting around my already broken heart.
The fog recedes another inch, burned away by a pure, undiluted hatred. I turn my head, and for the first time, I meet his gaze directly. “I hate you,” I snarl, my voice trembling with the force of my conviction. “I will always hate you.”
He tuts softly, as if chastising a stubborn child. He actually rolls his eyes, a gesture so casually cruel it steals my breath.
“I don’t need your love, my darling wife. You see, I’ve realised I have enough love for both of us.”
Konstantine’s voice booms out, a sonorous ritual chant in Latin that reverberates through the stones. It’s a perversion of prayer, a dark sacrament. He holds up a ceremonial dagger, its blade catching the red light from the phoenix window. He takes Antonio’s hand first, slicing a quick, clean line across his palm. Antonio doesn’t flinch, his face a mask of fervent devotion.
Then he turns to me. I try to curl my hand into a fist, but Antonio is faster. He uncurls my fingers, pinning my hand flat, offering it up. The cold edge of the blade bites into my palm and I gasp at the sharp, bright pain. Blood wells, a dark, vivid red against my pale skin.
Konstantine produces a length of crimson silk ribbon. He wraps it around our bleeding hands, binding us together. Antonio’s blood is warm and slick against mine. It feels like poison, more poison slipping into my veins. The ribbon pulls tight in a brutal knot, and we are tethered. Manacled.
But the physical tether is nothing compared to the metaphysical horror of it. With every word Konstantine speaks I feel a part of my soul being shackled, claimed. Sealed away in this terrible, beautiful place.
Konstantine’s empty eyes settle on Antonio. “Do you wish to consummate the union? To seal this covenant before God and this assembly?”
A slow, terrifying smile spreads across Antonio’s face. A smile of pure, unadulterated possession.
And it hits me then, why he hasn’t fucked me yet. Why he passed that deadline the doctors gave him.Oh god, he has been waiting for this. Planning it.
“I do,” he says, and his voice is thick with anticipation.
My heart stops. “No,” I whisper, the word a dry leaf rustling in the wind. “No, Antonio, please…”
He ignores me, his eyes blazing with awful triumph. He gets to his feet, and with our hands still bound, he hauls me up beside him. The world tilts, the drug and the dread making my head spin.
“No,” I say again, louder, pulling back against the ribbon but it only cuts deeper into the wound on my palm.
He leans close, his voice dropping to an intimate, vicious whisper meant only for me. “Be the good whore I know you are.”
With a sudden, brutal movement he sweeps my legs out from under me and lifts me, dumping me onto the cold, hard surface of the black marble altar. The impact jars my bones, making my cry even louder, even more desperate.
It feels like the masked audience leans forward in unison, like one single multi-headed beast.
I am a sacrifice laid bare before them.
A whore to be used at their bloody altar.
He doesn’t bother with tenderness. His hands fist in the delicate silk at my neckline and he rips. The sound is obscenely loud, a scream of tearing fabric. The fine white dress is shredded, peeled away from my skin until I am exposed from the waist up, shivering on the cold stone. A collective, hushed sigh ripples through the crowd.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to disappear, to will myself into the sweet nothingness I discovered during my kidnapping. Only, it doesn’t work. I feel his weight as he leans over me, I hear the unmistakable sound of his belt buckle clinking, the rasp of his zipper.
