Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(85)

“I thought you were used to that,” I said, and went back to feeling for the door.

I hadn’t meant it as an insult, only the truth, but he seemed to take it as one. Steps rang against stone, and a hand closed on my shoulder and yanked me around. Spots floated in front of my vision as he bent to put our faces level. Now that he was closer, I saw that he wasn’t as calm as I had thought. His lips were bloodless, his expression strained, his eyes a wild, vivid emerald even in the murky gloom of the crypt. I remembered what Curist Abelard had said about confessors—that they eventually lost their minds.

“You know about the altar,” he said, his hands gripping my shoulders, twisting up the fabric of my cloak. “Why were you touching it? What are you trying to do?”

I was surprised he had to ask. “To stop you,” I rasped.

He squeezed his eyes shut, looking pained. “Then I was right all along. You aren’t in control of the revenant, not completely. Whatever you are, you aren’t a saint. We’re alike in that, you see.” Something about that seemed to strike him as horribly funny. I thought he might laugh again, or even let out a sob, but instead he gave me a little shake and said, “Artemisia, whatever it’s telling you—whatever it has convinced you is true—you can’t trust it. You need to stop listening to it. It’s a monster.”

Didn’t he understand? The revenant was no longer here. There was a raw, bloody place inside of me where it had been torn away. Through the pain, I focused on Leander’s face, so he would know that when I answered him, I meant it. “I know.”

His eyes widened the instant before my head slammed against his nose with a sickening crunch. I barely felt it—which probably wasn’t a good sign—but he staggered and fell, half-catching himself against a saint’s statue. He touched his lips and looked at his fingers, then back at me.

“You won’t escape from me again,” he said, and brought his bloody hand to his ring.

This time, something happened that I hadn’t seen before. Silvery vapor came pouring out of the relic, boiling upward into a shape. And then I realized I had seen something like it once. This was what Mother Katherine had done in the chapel, when she had summoned her rivener outside of its relic to drive the other spirits back.

I knew I was in trouble even before the spirit finished taking form: a robed figure draped in chains, its broad shoulders bowed beneath their weight. Nothing showed within its hood, not even pinpricks of light for eyes—only darkness. In one gloved hand, it held a bell.

The shadowed hood regarded me, its attention weighted with a sense of somber despair, a silent crushing judgment. I redoubled my efforts to find the door. Without the revenant, I couldn’t fight it; I could only escape.

But it didn’t attack. Instead, it turned, slowly, to look down at Leander.

He had pulled himself up a little, his pallor sickly in the candlelight, sweat shining on his brow. When the hood turned to him, he gazed at it a moment frozen, as though seeing something terrible in its emptiness. Then he seemed to come back to himself. With trembling hands, he fed his censer a fresh cone of incense and held it aloft, shielding himself behind the smoke. And he bared his teeth, which were stained with blood.

“You will obey me,” he said. “Subdue her.”

The penitent turned back to me slowly, as though disappointed by the command. With every sign of great reluctance, it raised its bell.

A surface gave beneath my hand: a latch. I pushed through the door and slammed it shut behind myself just as the bell rang. The sound that reverberated through the wood was not the chime of a small hand-bell, but the deep, melancholy toll of a funeral bell—giant, cast in iron, held aloft with chains. The sound struck me like a physical blow, driving me to my knees. My vision grayed.

An agony of guilt consumed me. I had failed the Lady. I had destroyed the revenant. Without its power, everyone in Roischal would die, and it was my fault. The revenant wasn’t coming back.

“Revenant,” I begged, but still I felt nothing. I knew, somehow, that it wouldn’t have abandoned me like it had after the battle—not now, not like this. Not by choice. It wouldn’t leave me alone again.

As the bell’s echoes faded, a fragment of my wits returned. Knowing the door would earn me only a few seconds, I forced myself to stand. I was in the catacombs now, surrounded by bone-filled niches. I staggered to the nearest one and fumbled through the dry bones, hoping one of the clerics had been interred with their dagger. Nothing. I moved on to the next, feeling the ancient, cobwebby shroud crumble to dust at my touch. Shades flitted away, taking their silvery light with them, making fearful, gape-mouthed faces at me from the ceiling.

The door opened just as my ungloved hand closed on something harder and smoother than bone. The bell tolled again, merciless, fogging my thoughts with misery. I tore the dagger from its niche, barely keeping my grip on it as I sagged against the wall. When I managed to look up, the penitent was advancing, with Leander behind it, censer in one hand, the other clenched in his robes over his heart.

He met my eyes in determined anguish. A tear fell shivering from one eye, and more glistened on his lashes. As much as I hated him, I didn’t envy whatever the penitent was making him feel.

I backed up a scuffling step, bringing the dagger in front of me in defense. Only then did I notice that I had grabbed it by the blade. I clumsily adjusted my grip, feeling as though I had never been trained to wield it.