Chapter 6

Agnes POV

Hey, young priest, I have kept secrets in these stones for forty-three years. Nothing has ever happened here without my knowledge.

I watched him from the shadows of the abandoned chapel doorway. He looks young in the lightning flashes, way too young for the weight he is about to carry. Too much like his father.

“You and the novice…,” I said again, stepping fully into the ruined chapel. My lantern casts long shadows across the dusty pews and the altar where I know they sinned only hours ago. “I know, and I’ve known for days.”

Jordan rises slowly, his face guarded. Good. At least he isn’t a complete fool. 

He doesn’t flinch, and that surprised me. Most men do when I look at them this way.

I have served St. Eudoxia since I was seventeen. I was pretty then. The kind of pretty that drew the wrong kind of attention from priests who should have known better. I learned quickly that holiness is a costume. Beneath it, we are all flesh and hunger and fear.

Tonight, the hunger in Jordan’s eyes when he looks toward the corridor where Caterina disappeared tells me he is learning the same lesson.

“Come,” I say. “Walk with me. There are things you need to hear before the others start dying in earnest.”

He follows me out of the chapel and into the storm-lashed cloister. Rain soaks my habit instantly, but I welcome the cold. It keeps me sharp. We move toward the belltower—my domain. The ancient wooden stairs creak under our weight as we climb. The bell hangs silent above us, a massive bronze witness to every sin committed here for centuries.

When we reach the small room at the top where I keep my few possessions, I bar the door and light another lantern. The space is sparse: a cot, a desk, shelves of hidden ledgers that no one else knows exist.

“Ask your questions, Father,” I say, sitting heavily on the cot. My bones ache tonight. “But know that once you hear the answers, you cannot unhear them.”

Jordan stands near the narrow window, rain streaking the glass beside his face. “Perpetua said the saint beneath us isn’t a saint. What did she mean?”

I smile without humor. “She meant exactly what she said. The man buried in the foundation vault was no holy martyr. He was a heretic named Brother Lucian, a scholar who discovered that several key Church doctrines were… fabrications. He threatened to expose it all. So they killed him and built this place on top of his body. They called him a saint to sanctify the crime. Every bishop since has sworn to protect the lie.”

Jordan’s hands clench at his sides. “And the miracles?”

“Staged,” I confirm. “Vittorio funds the mechanisms. The weeping statues, the glowing relics. It brings in money and power. The bishop “Augustus Hale” has spent his life perfecting the deception.”

I watched him carefully now; this next part will hurt.

“And you, Jordan Brick… You are part of that deception whether you want to be or not.”

His head snaps toward me. “What are you talking about?”

I pull a thin ledger from beneath my cot and open it to a page I marked decades ago. “Your mother was a novice here. A beautiful, devout girl named Elise. The bishop—then a young, ambitious priest—took advantage of her. And you are the result. He sent you away as a child but brought you back now because he is dying and needs an heir who carries the bloodline to continue guarding the secret.”

Jordan stares at me. For a moment I see the boy; he must have been lost, angry, and searching. Then the priest’s mask slams back into place.

“You’re lying.”

“I wish I were,” I reply softly. “I helped deliver you in secret. I was the one who took you to the orphanage when Hale decided a bastard child was too dangerous. Caterina is searching for the truth about her own father—another priest who got too close to the archive. You two are drawn together because you are both pieces of the same broken puzzle.”

Thunder crashes overhead. The bell above us vibrates with the sound.

I continued relentlessly. “There is an archive beneath the lowest tunnels. Every confession of every powerful man and woman who has passed through here for sixty years, including politicians, cardinals, and businessmen. It is the real power of this place. Vittorio wants it for blackmail, the bishop wants it protected, and someone—perhaps me, perhaps another—has been using the recent deaths to search for it.”

Jordan paces the small room. “Thomas. Lucia. They’re dead because of this?”

“Likely… Or do I say to keep them quiet? " I stand and grip his arm with what strength remains in my old hands. “Listen to me, Jordan. You still have a choice; you can help me burn the archive and end this cycle, or you can become like Hale—another keeper of lies, sleeping with a woman half your age while the stones drink more blood.”

He pulls away, eyes haunted. “Caterina…”

"It is in danger because of you,” I finish. “And because of what she is. She is the rightful heir to the fortune hidden with Lucian’s body, land, gold, and documents that could destroy the Church’s foundations. Her father discovered the truth before he was killed.”

I see the conflict tearing at him. The priest, the man, the son, the lover. All of them fighting inside of his exhausted body.

“Choose carefully, Father Brick,” I say as I unbar the door. “The monastery doesn’t allow neutral ground. You are either the predator or the prey here.”

He leaves without another word. I watch him descend the stairs, shoulders rigid against the rain.

When he is gone, I sit back down and open another ledger—the one that contains my own confessions, which I've written in secret for decades.

I dip my pen and begin a new entry.

"Tonight I told theson the truth. May God forgive me for what comes next."

The bell tolls once above me, low and mournful. It always tolls for someone.