by Riley Pine
I swing my gaze to X. “You know a great deal about The Order.”
“Like I said, I wasn’t entirely truthful in your library the night we discovered the map.” X closes his eyes a moment before removing his suit jacket and placing it neatly on the closest chair. “I couldn’t tell you about my membership without securing permission from our leader.” Then he rolls up his shirtsleeve and there, on his bicep, over the defined ridge of flexed muscle, is a tattooed crow’s feather.
Evangeline
I hold in my surprise. “Jasper and my father always maintained the crow tattoo was a Vernazza family symbol. I never questioned it as all the men in my family bore the mark.”
X nods. “Some women as well, but never both spouses. Dedication to The Order is an honor and a privilege—but the dangers are also quite great. To allow a husband and a wife to serve together—”
“Could mean leaving your children orphans,” I interrupt as my throat feels like it’s closing in. “Yet here I am an orphan anyway. My brother and his family are all I have.”
Benedict pulls me to him and buries his face in my hair. “I’m so sorry, angel. We will get your brother back. I’m not sure how, but it will happen.”
I let out a shaky breath against his strong chest. I know how to get him back. By betraying that which Jasper almost gave his life to protect.
“Members are gathering,” X says. “I assure you we will bring him to safety. And we will ensure the Spring’s protection, as well.”
I pull away from Benedict and nod. “I’m tired,” I lie, trying to keep my voice steady. “I think I’d like to lie down.”
X bows his head. “Of course. This is a lot to take in. There is more to show you about the map, but it can wait for now. We will make our move when the nearest members of my brethren arrive. It will not be long.”
Benedict helps me out of the library and up the spiral staircase to his apartment.
“Too much has been thrown at you today,” he says as we make our way to his bedroom. “I will leave you to rest while X and I figure out what’s next.”
“Stay with me?” I ask, voice trembling now. It is too early to say goodbye, and I need to take my fill of him before I leave.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and he settles next to me.
“Anything, angel. Anything you need.”
I can hear a similar sorrow in his own words, one that says he knows we will be parted all too soon. But he believes we have weeks left, while I know this night will be our last.
“Make love to me,” I say, a simple plea, and he does not hesitate before kissing me.
His lips are soft and gentle, as if he understands we need to savor this experience. He undresses me, his movements slow and deliberate, kissing every inch of my skin as he bares my body to his loving gaze.
He lays me on my back and runs a finger from my chest to my stomach, and then down between my legs, entering me with one soft glide.
“I could touch you like this every minute of every hour of the day,” he says, his voice rough as gravel.
“And I would let you,” I tell him, my words barely heard. He slips another finger inside me and dips between my bent knees. His tongue is warm as it expertly swirls around my swollen center, like he’s done this a hundred times. But my body is the only one he’s ever truly known, and it is as if he was born to touch me like this.
I let out a whimper, and Benedict responds with a savage groan.
“To taste you,” he says, peering up to look at me, “is second only to breathing.”
His fingers pump inside me, and I arch. My fingers curl into his sheets, but I feel like I cannot get any purchase. He will send me over the edge in mere seconds, and I am powerless to stop him.
“Benedict,” I cry. “I don’t want to do this alone.”
He pulls his hand free, only long enough to remove his own clothing. And then without another word, he sinks into me, and my heart threatens to explode.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull his lips to mine, the taste of him and of me mingled as one.
Deep as he is, every inch buried to the hilt, it’s like I cannot get enough.
“More, Benedict,” I say. “I need more.”
He lifts his head and then dips it toward my breasts, where he licks and nips at my sensitive peaks, all the while pounding himself straight through to my core. I arch into him, raking my fingernails down his no-longer-welted back, though I’m sure I now draw blood.
A thunderous roar rips from his chest as his arms snake under my back. He lifts me to him, our bodies slick with sweat, and I truly do not know where I end and he begins.
“Come for me, angel,” he says against my lips, and then his hand slides to the place where we’re joined, his thumb against my swollen clit, and he takes me to the brink and straight over the edge with him.
Tears stream as wave after wave of ecstasy takes over me.
We collapse onto the bed, Benedict still inside me, as my muscles contract around him.
“I love you,” I say as we lie there entwined, our limbs exquisitely tangled.
“And I will never know love such as this again,” he says. “You are my world, Evangeline. I would trade my soul not to leave you—if I could.”
And I would give my life for him—for all those I love. And soon that is exactly what I will do.
I’m not sure how long we stay that way, but eventually Benedict nods off, and I am forced to leave the love of my life.
* * *
When I have dressed and put myself together as best I can, he is still in the deepest of sleep. So I kiss his forehead—one final connection—grabbing the supplies I need and taking my leave.
In the library I do what is necessary before I roll up the map and tuck it under my arm. Then I do the best to explain myself, to pray that the man who nearly gave his soul to love me will someday also grant me forgiveness. Someday—when I can tell him everything. But I have to save his and Jasper’s lives first.
My Dearest Benedict,
Please know that I have no choice. The last thing I want to do is betray your trust, but this is the only way to save the one other person I love most—my brother. They will kill him if I don’t deliver the map. They may kill him anyway, and me, but at least I’ll know I tried. And I’ll know that you are safe from this mess I’ve dragged you into. Be sure of one thing, though. I love you to the depths of my soul. Whether my time on this earth ends tonight or several years from now, it will be you who lives within my heart until the very end.
I love you. Always.
Evangeline
It takes me nearly thirty minutes to limp to the cottage in my condition, but I make it just before midnight. When I enter, I see my time with Benedict in flashes of scenery—trying on beautiful dresses, teasing him at the game table, watching him watch me in the bedroom.
I sit in my chair at the game table, imagining Benedict sitting across from me. I reach underneath, feeling for what I know is there, the one pullout compartment that was empty of game pieces. In it I leave my gift to Benedict. Then I retreat to my bedroom and wait.
My body convulses with a shudder. This man trusted me with everything, and I have kept him in the dark when I need him most. At least he has X and The Order to keep him safe.
X.
The Madam couldn’t possibly know about X being a member. There’s no way she would have let me stay here if she knew I was under the protection of The Order. She threatened Benedict’s safety if I told him what was happening tonight. But maybe he and X can help.
I sit on the bed and pull out my phone. For so long I’ve felt the burden of protecting those I love. Perhaps it’s time I lean on someone else for a change.
I dial the number X gave me in case of emergency, but just as I hit Send, the floorboard creaks behind me.
I gasp as an arm sn
akes around my waist, then drop the phone when a hand covers my mouth.
“No time for second thoughts, dearie,” a gruff female voice says. “Looks like we can’t trust you to keep quiet after all.”
I don’t have a chance to protest as she drags me and the map toward the trapdoor. I scrape my hand against the floor, snagging my phone and shoving it in my pocket before we slip down, down, down below the surface.
When we reach solid ground, she throws me to the dirt floor, my head landing at a steel-toed boot. I look up to see the Madam, dressed in all black, a thief who blends into the night. All that lights my vision is a torch she holds in her right hand.
She nudges my injured knee with her boot, then presses her toe into it until I cry out.
“Welcome to the catacombs,” she says. “Now let’s go find us a magic spring.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Benedict
MY ENTIRE BODY is slick with sweat. A nightmare. I’ve had a nightmare. One where Evangeline was lost in the dark, afraid, in danger, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find her. I roll over to gather her close, steady myself with the rhythm of her breath. But her spot in the bed is empty. My stomach muscles contract in time with my jaw. The sheets are cool as well as the goose-down pillow, no lingering trace of body heat. She’s been gone for some time. I sit and rake a hand through my hair.
“Angel?”
No soft, lilting voice answers.
I rise from my bed, tug on my black boxer briefs, a pair of gray sweats and a white T-shirt. The clock reads just after midnight. Where are you, Evangeline? I walk through my apartment and find no sign of her. I freeze as I open the door and gaze at the staircase.
The library. The map.
Hairs bristle on my nape. Every step down to the second floor heightens the strange, foreboding sensation in my soul. When I enter the library, it is empty. A faint smell of perfume wafts through the air beneath the dusty scent of ancient books. Slowly, as if caught by a magnetic force, my gaze swings to a small envelope on the center table.
Benedict. My name is written in a small neat script.
I bite on the inside of my cheek, a metallic taste flooding my mouth as I take the envelope in hand. Letters left in the dark of night seldom contain good news.
I read her hastily written farewell, and her betrayal. The words lance me like a hundred knives. Joy can fill the deepest caverns of one’s heart and soul, but that is also how great the sorrow is when that joy is gone.
I am alone in an abyss. Forsaken by love.
She has left and taken the map to make a devil’s bargain.
“No!” I sweep my hand across the closest shelf. Glass baubles and trinkets fly to the floor and shatter into a million pieces, impossible to put back together, just like my heart. “No.”
Metal grinds and creaks behind me. I whirl around to see one of the bookcases swing open. X emerges from the shadows dressed head to toe in black tactical gear.
“Angel...” It is all I can say.
Evangeline has betrayed me, X, this kingdom. But I cannot bring myself to hate her for a decision made out of love for her brother, her only living family.
“I will go into the catacombs to get her. Alone,” X says. “She has her phone with her.” He lifts his own and the Find My Phone app shows a small dot on the move.
“The fuck you will,” I growl. “As if I’d allow you to leave me behind.”
“I know you want answers as to her choices.” He shoves a hand in his pocket. “I also know you wouldn’t want to see her hurt, or worse, but remember. You’re determined to enter the priesthood. This is a way to let me get Evangeline out of your life—safely, of course. Once gone, she will tempt you no more.”
My whole body stills. X offers me two distinct paths for the rest of my life. If I take the former, then I will not let my father down. I will be the good bastard who atones for the sins of the mother. I will be the dutiful second son who doesn’t rock the boat. Who accepts the destiny mapped out for me. If I let him seek Evangeline alone, I will be able to consecrate my life to good works. No one will know what happened. How I gave my heart—and so much more—realizing what can take place between a man and a woman is more than mere lust, but a holy act of union.
But it all feels like a choice offered to another. Not me.
Because it isn’t a choice at all.
You can’t choose to breathe. Or have your heart beat. And that’s how loving Evangeline feels to me. It is a basic, primal part of who I am. And if she has truly betrayed me, I need to hear her explanation with my gaze fastened on her face.
“Let’s go. We don’t have a second to lose.”
X nods. “Follow me.” He leads me out of the tower and across the grounds, through the maze to the gardener’s cottage. There are signs of struggle in the bedroom, fingernail marks on the old wooden floor. Rage rises within me, red-hot. When I get to the people who took Evangeline, they will see no mercy from me. I will be an avenging angel raining fire and brimstone. Even if she stole from and lied to me, I can’t cut off my feelings.
The door in the floor is still open, and we enter the catacombs, trading the world of the living for that of the dead.
X lights a torch I didn’t know he had with him, but then again he never ceases to surprise me. The air down here is strange, dense. Our footsteps make no echo. We occasionally have to duck and weave around thick roots, and every once in a while there is a sound of dripping water or a rodent scurrying from our approach.
I try not to look upon the walls, lined with skulls, the hollow eyes and gaping teeth seeming to mock my intentions.
We reach a T-junction.
“Left or right?” I mutter.
X checks his phone. “Right.”
I turn to go when something stills my step.
“Your mother’s tomb,” X says in a reverential tone.
A weight presses on my chest as I stare at the marble-faced statue of a woman in front of a large sarcophagus covered in fresh flowers. The crypt is candlelit but cold, a lonely place to spend eternity.
“What kind of man would she have wanted me to be?” I ask, my throat tight.
X regards me with eyes that are twin pools of black ink. I cannot read what is written there.
“One who was happy,” he says curtly.
Then a memory slams me with the force of a bullet. A kiss on the forehead in the middle of the night. A whisper in my ear, a voice I haven’t heard in over two decades but know to my bones is that of my mother.
Be brave in the days ahead. And above all else in your life, find joy—and do good. You can have everything if you choose wisely.
My eyes burn as I stare at her statue. She said I had a choice. But the choice ahead? My joy lies not in consecrating life to God. It is to live to the end of my days beside the woman I seek. To her I shall consecrate everything, my days, my life, my soul.
Perhaps I’ve known this for some time, even if I couldn’t fully articulate the thought. My heart pounds. “How can I abandon the woman that I...love for the church? It’s an impossible choice for me to make. I might let down the king, but I would be honoring the wishes of my queen, and in that I find strength.”
“Your mother loved you very much, Benedict. More than you can possibly imagine.”
I want to ask more, ask how he knows, but now is not the time.
We set off again, this time in a dead run. Sweat slicks my back, my T-shirt clinging to my skin. Each gasp shreds my lungs. I lose track of the minutes as my legs pump in a sprint. How long have we been here? Five minutes? Five hours?
Then in the distance, I hear a sound that isn’t water or rats. A sound that turns my veins to ice.
Evangeline’s scream.
Evangeline
I taste blood, coppery and warm, before I spit and see crimson spray across the ston
e floor of some chamber they’ve dragged me to beneath the palace grounds.
“You already know what the map says,” I growl. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
She clucks her tongue. “Ah, ah, ah, my dear Evangeline,” she lilts. “You’re holding out on me. What I seek is down here. Yes. But only the map’s hidden text can tell us exactly where.” She nods to a slab of rock where the map is laid out for her to study. “You’ve found what I seek—you and your precious prince. Surely you’ve deciphered it, as well.”
I’m hauled to my feet now by my old friend the warden while the Madam says, “Again, Gideon.”
Gideon, the third member of our party, is the soldier with the strawberry birthmark on his cheek who’d been assigned to guard my cottage in the maze. If I had to guess his age from his eyes, I’d say he’d lived several lifetimes, and none of them good. But his features are that of a young man, possibly even younger than me.
His lips curl into a sneer before his stony hand makes contact with my face once more. I shriek as my head snaps back, and I see stars. And though I stumble, ready to welcome hard, unforgiving ground, my captor doesn’t let me fall. Instead, she pulls me tight against her as my knees buckle, forcing me to stare straight ahead with an eye that is quickly swelling shut—into Gideon’s lifeless gaze.
“Perhaps that jogged your memory?” the Madam says with the demeanor of one enjoying her afternoon tea.
She steps forward, an ominous laugh dribbling off her lips. She swipes a thumb under my swollen eye, and I draw in a sharp breath. Her skin comes away slick with my blood. She stares at it before wiping it clean on her black pants.
