Chapter 3

Cynthia

My father had locked me inside my own room.

"Father." I pressed my palm to the door. "You cannot mean this. You made me swear myself to Her."

Nothing. Then, through the panels, his voice, high and thinning. "You don't understand what he is. Go back to bed. You will marry him, and you will live."

I pounded the door until my palm went hot. I could hear him on the other side, moving away, keeping to the wall as if the daylight might reach him too.

The light was climbing. The rite would begin at the bell ring, and the Abbott and the old Crescent Sister would already be waiting in the chapel. This was the only morning I had.

I had never considered any road but the one set at my feet. But my father had taken the door. There was only the window left.

*

I had never climbed in my life.

The sill came to my waist. I tucked the white fabric between my knees and put my hands on the wood. My palms slid. No foothold, and my first attempt ended with me scrabbling against the wall, my robe snagging, my heart in my throat. I got my knee up on the second try, kicked, and then I was out, falling the last distance onto the grass in a tangle of white cloth.

I scrambled up without brushing the dirt off.

The robe gave me away. An old man with a cart stopped. Two women at their front step kept turning their heads as I passed. I felt every stare on my back, on the pale skin I had not fully covered, on my mother's blood in my veins—the thing I was meant to wash away with my whole life.

I kept running.

Goddess, forgive me. The prayer ran under my breath. Forgive me for disobeying my father, for running from what You set before me. This will be the last time.

I did not look back. I ran until I saw the monastery through the trees.

The bell rang and I pushed through the chapel door.

The Abbott and the old Crescent Sister stood in the middle of the worn stone room, watching me arrive.

I bowed, breathing too hard, my robe rumpled and stained with grass. "Forgive me—"

"Late." The Abbott's voice fell across mine. "And look at you. Careless. Disheveled. Did staying home one day make you forget every lesson the Goddess has ever given you?"

The old fear settled in.

I had feared him since I was small. He was a hard man. When I was little he had taken a cane to my calf for sneaking food to a friend in the cells, and I limped for a day.

But he had told me: for us, hardship is a kind of cultivation. My father had told me that only this way could the sin in my blood be washed away. So I bore it.

But this time the fear held me up. The Abbott was scolding me the way he had every morning of my life, and that meant I was back. The church was still the church. The Goddess was still there.

"You will be punished," the Abbott said. "Now. Before the rite. Because once you are a Crescent Sister you no longer answer to me, and there will be no correcting you after." He gestured to the floor before the statue. "Kneel."

I knelt.

The leather came down across my back, sharp. I did not cry out. I understood now: the punishment was to empty me of the wrong things before I was filled with the right ones. I confessed in the pain, one for each lash.

"Forgive me—" crack. "— for resisting my father's will."

"Forgive me for the deception. For climbing out the window, for stealing away."

Crack.

"Forgive me my carelessness. For running to the chapel with no dignity."

Crack.

I had been whipped before, but never like this. I had never felt the specific way my own blood smelled. It rose off me, warm and sharp.

And then I said the truest thing I knew.

"And forgive me." The leather hung in the air. "Forgive me that my wish to be a Crescent Sister is no longer pure. That some part of me wants to live—and is not doing this only for You." The statue blurred behind the wet in my eyes. "Please still want me."

The leather came down once more. Then stopped.

The Abbott set it aside. His voice had gone quiet, like a gate opening. "You have confessed. You have borne it. You have said the one true thing." He nodded to the old Crescent Sister. "She is qualified. Begin."

The old Crescent Sister stepped forward. She was the only one in the town, her face all soft lines, and she had taught me the prayers and the handling of the dead since I was fourteen.

"Say after me," she said. "I give my body to the Goddess, untouched, for as long as I live."

"I give my body to the Goddess," I repeated, "untouched, for as long as I live."

"I give my voice to the Goddess, to speak only truth and prayer."

"I give my voice to the Goddess, to speak only truth and prayer."

Something gathered around me as I spoke, warm and gentle, wrapping the raw places on my back like a hand that did not want to hurt. I recognized it. He had not left me.

"I give my soul to the Goddess," the old woman said, "to guide the dead into Her kingdom, from this day until my last."

"I give my soul to the Goddess," I repeated, "to guide the—"

The words died in my throat.

The door slammed against the wall, and I flinched like a bird startled off a wire, my head snapping toward the sound before I understood why.

He stood in the threshold, the morning light behind him in a bright line, and my blood went to ice.

I knew him. My neck remembered his breath.

I tried to back away. My hands went out behind me, flat on the stone, and found nothing. He came in slowly, unhurried, his dark eyes moving over the chapel and then settling on me — on the white robe, on the blood soaked through the back of it.

Then he looked up and smiled, politely.

"I apologize for interrupting," he said. His voice carried across the quiet chapel. "But our games are over."

The Abbott was already moving. He stepped in front of me, his hands up, his face gone red. "Who are you? How dare you come into a sacred rite—this is the Moon Goddess's own house, and you will answer for this blasphemy—"

A gunshot cracked through the chapel.

I did not understand, not right away. My ears rang, a high thin hum swallowing every other sound, and something warm splattered across my face.