Claire nodded, looking down at her boots. “Do you need anything? Food? Clothes, perhaps?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I could maybe—“
“I am fine.”
“Oh.” Claire’s smile faltered quickly.
Mirela sounded annoyed, fidgeting as though agitated, like someone doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
“Right.” She turned toward the stairs. “I should go.”
Mirela’s head snapped up. “You should.”
“I…”
“Go,” Mirela said softer this time, but it still felt like a dismissal.
Claire clutched the drawing to her chest and nodded. “Then…goodnight, Mirela.”
She started down the corridor, but Mirela followed. Her footsteps were so light that Claire wouldn’t have known she was there if not for the warmth of her presence behind her. When they reached the stairs. Claire hurried her step, almost tripping in the process. But Mirela quickly grabbed her hand, helping her down.
The touch was brief but lingered long after Claire’s feet met the final step.
She turned back once, catching the faintest quiver of Mirela’s lips before she slipped into the darkness once more.
Chapter five
Mirela
Patheticandworthless.
That was exactly how Mirela felt after that encounter.
She had no idea that Claire would be anywhere near the cathedral, not at that hour and not in herchamber.
If she had known, she would’ve at least tidied up a bit more, pulled the sketches from the walls, dusted perhaps…
When she saw Claire there, looking at her drawings, she had had no idea what to say or do. And then everything crumbled when she kept walking closer. Of course, Claire was petrified to see her getting so close, but…God she wanted to take in the details she wasn’t able to see from where she hid in the rafters.
Now that she’d seen her up close, Mirela’s mind could focus on nothing butdetails.The way her nose crinkled faintly. The faint scent of roses that clung to her clothes.
Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, shimmered under the faint candlelight. Her tanned skin glowed with a warmth Mirela had never seen among the pale, ghostlike sisters who roamed the church. And her eyes…emerald green, bright and alive…
Mirela had seen paintings of angels before, like the ones of Mary with golden haloes, saints with downcast eyes, Virgins framed in celestial light. They were beautiful, yes, but their beauty was static, distant. They felt cold, and Mirela always used them as practice, nothing more. But Claire’s beauty needed to be framed; it needed to be captured like those other paintings.
No painted Virgin could compare to Claire.
Lying on her straw bed, Mirela stared at the wooden ceiling, her hand pressing to the scarred side of her face. She could still feel where Claire’s gaze had lingered. She wanted wholeheartedly to believe that her gaze was warm and unjudging.
But Mirela knew Claire was wondering what monster hid in the bell tower. Maybe she’d whispered her disgust on the way out. Mirela wouldn’t have blamed her. Who could look upon this face and not recoil?
Ferron never recoils.
Mirela frowned as the thought invaded her mind. Yes, he never recoiled. He had taken her in when no one else would. He had cared for her. Fed her. Protected her.
And yet…
