Page 14 of Honey Cut
Although I think back to three years ago, the way Mark had spread me open to take my virginity. How he held me in my bed after and called me his honeysuckle queen. For a brief moment, I’d thought that he’d felt…something. For me. If not love or obsession, then possession.
And I’d drunk it down like communion wine.
Of course, it had vanished in the dark. I’d woken up to find him dressed and ready to leave, declaring that we’d done enough to seal the engagement and we wouldn’t need to see each other again.
I have played this game a lot longer than you and with people far more dangerous than you, and I will win every match, little wife, every bout, and I won’t even need to try when I do it.
No, my best chance is the server room. I still hope to crack him open, to become his honeysuckle queen and gain his trust, but that will take time.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way for you,” Uncle Mortimer says after a long moment. “Nothing is abhorrent in the service of God, and yet I cannot help but be grateful it is not me.”
“I know.”
It’s not something we’ve discussed at length given that I’m his niece, but I know enough from the other saints who work for him—from the people I’ve tortured and from the secrets I’ve stolen—to know that my uncle finds sex distasteful. Like money or luxury, sex only exists as weakness to be exploited in others.
I think power is the only thing my uncle has ever wanted, honestly—which is strange because as a cardinal he could hardly have more of it, but perhaps I don’t understand the appeal of power in the same way that he doesn’t understand the appeal of sex.
Well, maybe I do understand the appeal of power. But wielded against me, wielded by someone who would bite me before a party just to mark me as his.
“You remember what I told you in Rome that day?” Uncle Mortimer asks.
That day. My first day as a saint. First, I’d killed Stitt, who’d covered up sexual abuse committed by a priest in the Midwest, and then I’d killed a deacon for a similar crime after. I’d stabbed the deacon in an alley, a robbery gone wrong, or so it had looked. It had been the first time I’d used my new honeysuckle knife, and there’d been so much blood. So much more than I ever could have imagined one body could hold.
“You said you were proud,” I say, recalling the holy card he’d given me while gore had still streaked my face and my hair. The card was of St. Julian the Hospitaller, patron saint of many things, including murderers.
Tu me superbushad been scrawled on the back.
“Before I said that, before I gave you the card,” he clarifies. “I told you that you were to be a whole sacrifice. A burnt offering. That the pain you felt over your sins to save God’s kingdom would be sweeter than incense.”
I swallow, looking down with a tight jaw. My engagement ring winks in the light, and on my left thigh, hidden by layers of silk and chiffon, is the small knife that I’ve used like an ancient priest, like an angel of death. But even though it has been three years of blood, secrets, and knowing I’ll be the devil’s bride, I still feel like I’m burning on the altar, the smoke billowing high.
I know it’s my path. I know I’m doing what God has meant for me to do.
But it burns yet.
“Your sins to save God’s kingdom,” my uncle repeats. “My chosen saint. Learn what you can about Ys, win Mark’s trust. You will do more as his wife than any of us could do with years of blood and shadows. And you will be holy throughout it all.”
six
ISOLDE
A weekafter the engagement party, I’m in the dojo after work, practicing a sword kata. Years of empty-handed fighting and knives have ruined me for fighting with any kind of range, and it’s not like swords pop up a lot in my line of work. I’ve ended up fighting with chairs, splintered boards, and, once in Bucharest, a potted plant. But never a sword.
It’s less about the weapon itself and more about pushing myself into every possible corner of readiness. I don’t know when I’ll be needed as a saint again, and I don’t want to become soft—and anyway, softness at Lyonesse wouldn’t be wise. The man behind Mark’s stabbing is still in the wind, and who knows how many other people want to kill my future husband. And now I’ll be a target too, merely by virtue of the ring on my left hand.
I don’t havetimeto be anyone’s target.
I spin and thrust, and my balance is steady, the point of the sword is steady—but my wrist is turned wrong.
With a sigh, I lower the sword and go back to the center of the room, preparing to start over. Which is when the bell above the door rings.
I’ve grown up hearing that bell every day since I was twelve, barring the weeks my father and I spent in London and the tasks my uncle set me to. The bell is the sound of my teenage years, more so even than the sound of my best friend Bryn’s laughter or the murmuring crush of the hallways between classes at my Manhattan prep.
But it shouldn’t be ringing now—not when I’d told Sister Mary Alice that I’d lock up tonight. Not when I’m the only one here.
I turn and see Tristan step through the door, his eyes making a quick, efficient sweep of the space before landing on me. Even from here, they are green enough to stop my heart.
“Hi,” he says. And clears his throat. He’s in his usual uniform of a black suit and earpiece, the jacket tailored for movement, although there’s no avoiding the cling to his shoulders and upper arms. When he walks toward me, I see the beautiful, painting-like features that first arrested me on a sunny Irish day—the dark, enviable lashes, the delicate but full mouth. The straight nose and perfect jaw. He doesn’t even look real, and if it weren’t for the freckles he’d acquired while on the yacht with me, I’d believe him inhuman. Some kind of angel sent to regard my failures with sorrowful-eyed pulchritude.
