Several minutes pass, and she uses them to steel her faith. I wonder if she will pray to her God when I lay hands on her tonight. She does not yet bear my mark, but there is nothing to stop me from sliding open the window between us and forcing my cock down her throat. A taste of things to come. My fingers dig into the edge of the wooden bench beneath me as I close my eyes to imagine it, and the wood groans under the weight of my frustrations.

When my gaze jolts back to the window, I find her wild, startled eyes peering back at me. Only a sliver of light pours in through the narrow gaps in the wood on my side, keeping me hidden within the shadows. I don’t believe she can actually see me, but she can sense me. The predator in the darkness.

She leans closer to the mesh divider, calling out for the priest she thinks I am, and my breath gets caught in my throat. But before she can open it, Abel’s shrill voice interrupts the silence. An angry fist rattles her side of the door, making her jump.

The moment is over too soon, and before Ivy can discover me, he yanks open the door and hauls her out.

11

Ivy

“Five minutes,” Abel says and turns to walk out of the small chapel to the side of the cathedral. It dates back a century before the cathedral was built, and they preserved it during the construction of the cathedral itself.

My classmates and I took first Communion here years ago. As I look down the aisle, I remember walking toward the altar in our pretty white dresses with hands bound by our rosaries. Before the ceremony, we’d made our first confessions. There had been eight of us, and I remember shifting uncomfortably in the pew as I nervously waited my turn.

I remember the creaking door of the confessional, the smell of it as I knelt on the hard wooden kneeler—no cushion for the sinner—and spoke my sins aloud.

The priest’s face was just a profile, barely that in the darkness behind the mesh. I hadn’t had much to confess, so I’d made things up. I thought if I didn’t, he’d think I was lying.

Afterward, I joined the others at the foot of the altar and say my requisite number of Hail Marys and a few more than Father had prescribed because I’d lied to him.

Being in here after all this time takes me back. I shudder and wrap my arms around myself. It’s cold, but it’s not just the cold that has me shivering.