Instead, I focus on the job I was sent here for. Reconnaissance. First, to get to the bottom of her role in her father’s business, and then, to get as much information as I can on the reliquaries housed here. I’m running through the remaining list of archives I need to cover.
I’ve been photographing pages whenever I can get a moment alone and sending them back to Charlotte, the art and archives expert on our team, for translation and dictation. She's been doing her best to make sense of the piecemeal bits I’m able to give her. It’s rare that I’m left completely alone. If I’m lucky, I have the company of the redheaded sinner from a few moments before, and if I'm unlucky, I have one of the older German nuns who glares at me from across the room and shushes me in broken Bavarian. The kind I’m half-sure are curses. At least, that’s what I have to assume they are given the harsh inflection. Either way, I wasn’t about to test my luck. It means that this is all taking much longer than planned, and my brother and his associates are growing impatient with my progress.
I press the light on my watch and check the clock. Five more minutes, and then I can go back to my room and fire off a text message to my brother about the irony of me handing out penances and absolution. I’m sure it’ll give him a much-needed laugh.
I could tell him about her confession. I should tell him. It means my plan is working. She’s falling for my act and growing more vulnerable by the day. But I’d rather have her little secret all to myself for a little while longer. At least until I can get her to act on her desires.
I step out of the confessional a few moments later, trying not to groan as I stretch my legs. These things were built for much shorter men, not my six-feet-four frame, and the tips of my shoes had been shoved against the door, with my knees folded at an awkward angle just to try to keep myself inside.
I take in the detailed woodwork of the door—appreciating the craftsman’s work from hundreds of years beyond his grave. There’s a scene of a conscience-stricken man on bended knee in the forest, hands clasped as he begs for a chance at salvation. We all could use some right now. I turn the latch, locking the secrets within, and step back into the vestibule.
The wind sweeps through, stirring the hem of my robes, as someone opens one of the massive abbey doors. It catches for a second too long, slamming shut. The sound echoes through the church, and the nun at the door gives me a sheepish look of apology before she proceeds toward the altar, carrying a fresh armful of ivory-colored candles to replace the ones that are rapidly approaching their end. I follow her movements down the aisle only to catch another set of eyes. Bright blues that are locked on me. Ones that belong to Sister Mary Anthony, previously and much better known as Zephyrine Schaefer, the penitent I just absolved, and the governor of Colorado’s daughter.
Her full, rosy lips are parted, and her eyes are wide. Even from across the room, I can see the pink flush racing up her neck at her realization that I’d been the voice on the other side of the confessional. Her head swivels back toward the crucifix before she presses her forehead to her folded hands. Her knuckles whiten as she grips the rosary beads, while her lips try to keep pace as she prays faster, like it’s an incantation that might rid her of the demon at the center of her wicked dreams.
I can’t say I blame her for them. She’s been at the center of mine for the last few weeks. Ones where I get revenge for allthe hell her family has put mine through, and ones where she’s on her knees just like this, her hand gripping just as tightly as she works toward a different sort of absolution. They’re just that though—fantasies. The reality is grim. If she knew just how much torment I intend to rain down on her loved ones, she might be saying a different prayer altogether.
TWO
Zephyrine
My heart has barely settledin my chest when I collapse onto the bench in the garden next to the closest friends I have on this island, Sister Ulrika and Sister Teresa. When we’re alone, though, I still call them by their given names, Aria and Tamara. To me, that’s who they are. We’re all here out of necessity rather than some sort of calling, and while I do my best to follow all the convent’s rules, sometimes old habits die hard. I miss hearing people calling me by my old name instead of Sister Mary Anthony, and we still talk in English when no one else is around.
They’re taking a short break from cleaning up the weeds and pulling in some of the fresh veggies and fruit from the walled plot. It’s a sort of potager’s garden for the convent’s kitchen, which serves the residents and the relic seekers all the same. This time of year, we always have a flurry of new guests, and we’re kept extra busy keeping food on the table and fresh sheets on the dorm beds as the tourists make their way through.
The relics are the convent's biggest draw. Thousands of years of saints’ bones, blood, and tears are locked up in beautifullyornate reliquaries that are as stunning as they are grotesque. We have a series of small museum halls and shrines that wind through the convent’s ancient corridors. Places where relic seekers spend hours visiting and praying as they learn about the saints’ lives and the miracles they’re purported to have worked in their lifetimes. Some come just to take in the view, a quick stop on their way to the grand palace across the lake, but others come in the hopes of cures for rare illnesses and the end of personal misfortune by touching a miraculous piece of the past. The abbey serves as a kind of last resort for people desperate for one final chance at a different sort of life. One better than what they’ve had, and the three of us are no exception to that rule.
“Something wrong?” Aria squints into the sun and shifts the fresh basket of basil leaves in her lap to the side as she studies me.
“He took confession today.” I let out a soft sigh of frustrated embarrassment. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize his voice beyond the divider.
“He?” Tamara’s nose scrunches up in confusion as she stands and brushes the garden dirt from her knees.
“Father Levi.”
“Still struggling with the near occasion of sin?” Aria does her best not to smirk as she asks.
“I just wish he’d go home. He has to be close to finishing his research, right?” Father Levi reminds me too much of things I can't have. Ones I'm desperately trying to come to terms with giving up forever. If I were ever going to settle in here—really make this place my home—I need to let go of the hope right along with the vice.
“He’s too pretty to be a priest.” Tamara gives her thoughts on the matter. We were all in agreement on that at least.
“And too young,” Aria adds. “What happened to them all being old and gnarled? A mess of liver spots and patchy gray hair? I liked it better like that.”
“And I personally can’t trust a man, priest or no, who wears long sleeves all the time. It was 25°C the other day. You can’t tell me he wasn’t melting in that black shirt out in the sun.” Tamara raises a brow.
“Oh yes. That tight black shirt.” Aria raises a brow at me, and I close my eyes, trying not to imagine it. This is what happens when you spend so much time hiding away from the rest of the world. Long-sleeved black shirts suddenly become too sexy for your imagination to handle.
“Nowyouneed to go to confession.” I match her raised brow with my own.
“I’m tired of confession.” She sighs. “It’s not like we can get into real trouble here. I’m always confessing the same three things. Jealousy of people who get to leave this place at the end of the week. Anger at Abbess Frances for always giving us more chores in a few days than I think she’s ever done in her life. And laziness for not wanting to go to church twice on Sundays.” Aria pouts a little.
“Well, you can add being tired of confession to the list next week,” Tamara teases her.
“At least it’ll add some variety.” She huffs.
“We’re probably the world’s worst novices.” Tamara reflects on our lack of composure.
“I’m sure there were others. King’s discarded daughters. Mistresses. Revolutionaries. The archives are full of mentions of them.” I feel the need to defend us. There were plenty of interesting women who ended up here just like we did—compelled against our will or for lack of better options.
