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Propped up on the massive bed, the bindings dig deeply into the skin of Feyre’s arms. Holding still, muscles burning, she’s competing with her body to see what gives out first.
The priest sits across from her, his back to her plight, writing at his desk as if he didn’t just catch her rifling through it twenty minutes ago.
The bindings are not made of rope.
“You’ll never get away with this,” she whispers fiercely, more out of anger than any confidence in her plans.
The man is unphased. Still in his grand, embroidered vestments, the scratch of quill on paper doesn’t even pause at her words.
“Get away with what?” he asks, still turned away.
The devil wears many faces, her mother had once told the girls. Some friendly, some familiar, but always evil underneath.
Feyre clamps her mouth shut. Her mother had another invective: your temper will be the death of you. Still, it served to keep her above her fear so far, every moment he’s left her bound on his bed. Ignoring her.
If only she had told Nesta where she was going.
Three months ago, Elain had burst into their dreary tenement apartment, her face glowing, her arms full of bread. Exclaiming over the new priest at the parish, who preached fire and brimstone from the pulpit but gave soft smiles and generous offerings after mass. He’s so kind - high-minded, but fair, she had told her sisters, skeptical but with mouths full of fresh bread.
One week ago, Elain had disappeared.
And Feyre had entered the grand cathedral for the first time since their mother died.
When she first laid eyes on him - Father Rhys - stepping onto the pulpit, something had filled her - a stillness, a dread, something other inside her body. Her muscles went rigid as she had stared up - at his impossible beauty, the heavy cloaks draped around him like armor. Feyre had felt dizzy until the first words of prayer spilled from his mouth, and she finally took a breath.
Afterwards it had seemed so easy - to follow him down the busy, dark halls, to note which foreboding wooden door he went into. When he left for the evening meal, he didn’t even lock it behind him.
In retrospect, she has been a perfect fool.
Blinking out of her reverie, Feyre jolts to see him turned around, watching her. An amused smile alights his face.
“Where is my sister?” she demands.
A mischievous glint is in his eye. But there’s something else - some predatory darkness that keeps her muscles trembling. Deep down she has memories - nightmares - of when her mother forced them all to weekly mass, and she’d be taken out crying when the father had preached of fire-born demons coming for her soul.
The memory has her pulling at her restraints again, the motions useless. They’re so cold they burn against her skin. He hadn’t even touched her - one look at her in his room and he had simply closed the door, and then she was bound with nothing more than the flick of his fingers and a gust of wind flickering the candles. With the click of the door she was trapped with the inevitability of her fate - he is not human.
“Are you a believer, darling? Somehow I don’t think so. I would have noticed someone like you in the pews.”
“I know enough to know you blaspheme.”
He laughs, the rich sound filling the small, dark room. The words he spoke from the pulpit still echo in her mind - the sneer on his face, the way his fists pounded the pulpit as he told the story of their collective fates - bound to a distant, careless God.
“Has God provided for you and your sister? What has he done that was more generous than the loaves of bread I give from my kitchens? I see you - your face is sunken with hunger. Your clothes are worn and threadbare. And you came here alone to find her - knowing full well the polizia care nothing about missing urchins from the street. God has given you nothing. So why do you defend him?”
As he speaks, something changes in his face. The insouciant charm makes way to anger, a flicker of flame in his dark, amethyst eyes. Perhaps it is the light but she thinks his teeth grow longer, that his form expands as his chest heaves.
“Who are you?” she whispers, anger ebbing further away into fear.
Rhysand stands. His eyes are far away. On the bed her muscles ache, her thighs burning as she kneels on the soft mattress.
Walking to his closet, he takes his time undoing the buttons and ties of his grand vestments, heavy and curved over his shoulders. They hang on a hook in the shadows, looming like a sleeping winged creature. Next are his robes, embroidered and fine with red and gold threaded through black. The fire crackles in the corner. Heavy perfumes of frankincense and myrrh tickle her nose. Underneath his robes he wears plain clothes: wide black trousers, a buttoned tunic that hugs his shoulders. Simple, but finely tailored. Almost in the shape of a man.
Feyre wonders if he’s going to answer her at all when he finally returns to the foot of the bed. She has not yet cried out. She imagines it’s futile. He watches her with a fearful intensity. Flickering, the fire casts light upon his face - dark smudges under his eyes, his cheekbones sharp, his lips plush and sinful. A shadow dances, tethered behind him, wild as the flames.
“I was devout, once. I believed with a fervor to make the saints take notice. This was long ago, an age before your time. But God was still the same. Mysterious. Quiet. And he was never quieter than when my family - my mother and sister, were slaughtered without mercy.”
Feyre’s pulse pounds in her throat.
“I was the one who found their heads severed from their bodies. They were innocent - not that it mattered in the end. I fell to my knees in the cold mud and wept. My cries should have raised the angels. I offered him anything - everything - to bring them back. To ease my pain. And what was his answer? Only more blood. My father was dead the next night, chasing revenge. Chasing justice. Which God had failed to provide.”
Feyre keeps her heart from softness. “You haven’t answered my question.”
The priest smiles. His teeth are sharp. Absently, he pulls at his shirt cuff, rolling them higher as if he has work to do.
“God didn’t answer me that day, or any that followed. But someone else did. And they offered me the means for my revenge.”
In an instant, they unfurl - with a leathery rustling and the flames bursting high in the grate. A pair of dark bat-like wings spreading wide, wider, each tipped with a sharp talon at the joint.
Her breath wooshes from her lungs. Feyre screams, and writhes in her bindings, and falls back onto the bed.
She can't even catch her breath until he’s over her - wings broad, his eyes black as tar.
“Isn’t this what you came to see?”
Her whole body trembles, her knees pressing up against his ribs in her last line of defense. His body is fever-hot. His breath is sweet like incense. When he smiles, she sees two sharp fangs glisten in what’s left of the candlelight.
Is this the last thing Elain saw? Feyre chokes back a sob, and prays that Nesta doesn’t follow them both.
Instead of descending upon her, he pauses, his head cocked as if hearing some far off sound.
“Your sister isn’t dead.”
“What?” Her voice is a shaken rasp from her throat.
“She yet lives. She’s sleeping soundly, under the stones of this very church. But I have need of her.”
The words are out of her mouth before she can think. “Take me instead.”
She doesn’t miss the heat in his eyes as he looks at her, covetous and hungry.
“You don’t know what I need her for.”
It doesn’t matter. If Feyre can spare her sister this fate, torn apart at the hands of this demon, then she’ll do it.
She does not remember her prayers. Instead she has only a single plea on her tongue - “Please.”
A fingernail, sharp as a claw, scrapes down her cheek and she shivers.
“I’m not like him, you know. I do not demand sacrifice without thanks, or take what is not offered.” With a snap, the scent of ozone in the air, her arms are suddenly free. Feyre scrambles and braces her hands against his chest, the weight of him still bearing down.
She cannot trust a word he says. And yet - her heart still beats. He looks upon her strangely.
“Wh-what do you need me for?”
He smiles. Takes her hand. She waits to feel the scrape of his teeth but instead he presses a kiss upon her palm, soft and lingering.
“Oh, darling. A great many things.”