“Perhaps I should accept your offer,” I say in a weak voice, fervently telling myself it is simply the best option and has nothing to do with the perverse desire to feel her fingers on my bare skin. I could hardly ask a guard—a man who is not my betrothed—to do such a thing, and even if I could, I don’t want anyone seeing what I’ve been forced to do to myself.
Leaning so hard on my cane that I fear the wood may crack down the middle, I take the final steps toward the Lupa Nox. Then, without another word, I turn and offer up my body to the Sepulchyre knight.
It is a thing of madness, but the endless pain wracking my body is madder, much madder, with teeth so sharp her storied skill with a blade pales in comparison. Besides—the worst thing that could happen is she kills me. Death does not seem a particularly terrible option, not any longer. Better her than the stake.
I’ve barely prepared myself for anything at all, too lost in the pain and the guilt, when fingertips brush the nape of my neck. Shivers break out like a trail of butterflies across my shoulders as the knight gently gathers my long waves and brushes them aside. Her shackles clink as I pull the tin of salve from my pocket with shaking fingers, holding it out at my side. The restraints prevent her from bringing her hands together, so I hold my position, allowing her to gather up a scoop of the green-tinged jelly substance.
“Some of these need bandages,” she murmurs, her breath ghosting the delicate skin below my ear.
To my mortification, I shiver, the movement traveling down my entire body like a monument to my sinful inclinations. I freeze, shame heating my face.
At my back, the knight lets out a low laugh, the sound hoarse around the edges. “No need to fret, little dove,” the Lupa Nox says, her voice like black silk. “You’re hardly the first woman to tremble under my touch.”
Fire scorches me, the tips of my ears burning. “Speak no more of your blasphemy,” I manage, fisting my free hand into my skirts. “I accepted your offer of help because I was foolish enough to think it was in good faith.” Tears bristle in my eyes. I am a worn-out husk of a person, more corn dolly than woman, trembling in the faintest of breezes. The pain is devouring me whole, gnawing at my bones, and whatever scraps it leaves behind, surely the shame and humiliation will gobble up in their endless jaws.
“I’m sorry,” the Sepulchyre knight replies. “A bit of flirtation always helps take my mind off the pain, but I shouldn’t have assumed it was the same for you. Now—I’m going to start at the top of your back and work my way down, all right?”
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth, sweat dripping down from my hairline. For a heartbeat, I think I am about to faint, to befound crumpled in a lascivious heap at the knight’s feet by the Holy Guard or, worse, my betrothed. Instead, cool relief spreads wings across my skin. I let out a ragged gasp as the Lupa Nox skillfully packs the salve into my open wounds instead of just smearing it on top. The relief is immediate, and my knees wobble, all my weight held up by the slim length of my cane. My mind goes soft and hazy.
“Why did you do this to yourself?” the knight inquires, reaching to dig more salve from the tin in my outstretched hand. Any resistance I harbored falls away beneath the siege of her help and the smell of asphodels and the feeling of her breath on the back of my neck.
“I needed to purify myself of unclean thoughts,” I reply without thinking, so at ease I could probably curl up on the dirt floor and drift to sleep without a second thought.
“Oh,” is all she offers, making her way to my mid-back. “I see.”
“My betrothed guided me, of course,” I add, my tongue loose with the sheer euphoria of fading pain.
“He told you to do this to yourself?” the knight asks, her tone short and clipped.
I stare at the far wall, at one chipped stone in the cell’s hulking construction. That is me, I suppose—the one flawed thing in a city of orderly, proper people, my sin so obvious when lined up beside my congregation. “Yes,” I reply. “He guided me through my wickedness.”
The Lupa Nox’s fingers reach the small of my back, the effect of the potent salve intensifying the longer it sits on my broken skin. “So he watched while you did this to yourself?” she asks, a catch in her voice I cannot identify.
“Typically we take the purification alone,” I tell her. “But he remained, generously, to guide me.” Memories dig claws into my mind—my humiliation, my scorned modesty, my vast sorrow.
“And he did what, exactly?” she asks.
I hesitate for some reason, even though I am here to speak to her of the Host, am I not? And what is more convincing than my betrothed’s ceaseless love?
“He stayed with me in my darkest moment,” I answer, though the words sound overly saccharine. The only reason I can reply to her at all, I think, is because I am turned away from those thunderstorm eyes, that cunning mouth. Renault was harsh with me, yes—but of course he was. He’s been my friend all these anni, and now he’s preparing to be my husband. An entirely different role with many more burdens to bear.
“Of course,” she murmurs, covering the final flog marks.
“Though there was a strange thing,” I admit, the intimacy of this act, of someone providing care to me, bringing all my defenses crumbling down.
I explain the odd straining near his core, how he stripped me bare, the way he touched me as I thought he only should after our nuptials, not before, to the Lupa Nox. For a moment, her fingers freeze, and a charge runs through the air, thick and foreboding.
But then she’s rebuttoning my linen shift—one-handed, at that—and pulling my bodice back over my shoulder, utterly silent. I step away from her, lacing my corset back up before setting my jaw. Then I turn, meeting her gaze, words of gratitude prepared.
“What is your name?” the Lupa Nox asks. Her eyes burn with something I do not understand, her features gone feral, the muscles in her forearms flexed, hands turned to fists. She asked me before, and I refused her. But that was before—before she put herself between the High Ecclesia and me, before she dressed my wounds and listened to me without a single interruption.
“Ophelia,” I say on an exhale, my heart hammering at the inside of my chest. I’m standing just close enough that the knight can take my hand in one of her larger ones, bringing my fingers to her mouth for the barest ghost of a kiss. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Lady Ophelia,” she murmurs. “The pleasure is entirely mine.”
Chapter 18
My sin lashes at the bars of its cage, claws unsheathed. Longing uncoils low in my belly, my breath caught somewhere in my throat. The Lupa Nox’s lips barely brush my skin and yet I tremble anyway, the wickedness of my soul reflected in the weakness of my flesh. The knight releases me and shifts her weight away, her expression devoid of humor. Instead, she is examining me so intently that, for a moment, I fear she may possess the ability to peer right into my mind.
