Page 18 of Bitter Burn
Below us in the park, I see a red bicycle light moving down the trail, away from us, but it reminds me of how conspicuous we are, standing here, touching neck wounds. I take Tristan’s hand and guide him to a low concrete wall facing the valley, both veiled in near darkness. He lets me lead him there, like we’re boyfriends out enjoying the clear, empty night.
“Ys and the saints are two different things, or at least they were before Cashel, I think. The saints are like…like the CIA or MI6, except much older, I suppose. I’ve heard people say they’re as old as the Church itself. I don’t know how true that is, but they’re certainly medieval at least. They’re abided by other intelligence communities, since their concerns only rarely intersect with secular governments—Carpathia aside. They gather intelligence pertinent to the Church, and they act on it and occasionally they kill, which you’ve already guessed, even if you’ve been too shy to ask Isolde directly.”
A drop of his gaze tells me I’m right. He hasn’t asked her directly. Maybe he’s afraid of the answers he’ll hear and that he’ll learn for certain he’s a dove in a nest of kites.
“Unlike the saints, Ys hasn’t been known to anyone in the intelligence community until the last decade or two. Even then, it was still mostly a rumor—that it had been around for centuries, that it could claim among its members the most powerful people in the world, et cetera, et cetera. The usual things claimed about secret societies, except Ys is supposed to be like some kind of ur-Illuminati. Cashel’s involvement, however, seems to be barely known, never spoken of, something I had to dig and dig and dig to find. Which I find extremely interesting. Because how secret is your secret web of warmongering and influence if it’s on the lips of low-level arms dealers, and—I’m sorry to speak this way of Aaron Sims, Tristan—in the phone calls of soldiers vulnerable enough to get blackmailed into butchering children? It’s not that secret at all, not as secret as everyone will swear up and down it is. But its leader…now that is quite secret. Quite difficult to piece together. Even for me, and I’ve dedicated my life to finding out.”
We’re sitting on the wall now, facing the valley and the walled-off Vatican on the other side, its glow interrupted by tall, graceful trees and even more graceful rooftops. I’ve relinquished his hand, but I can feel it building in me, that shadow inside, and it won’t be long before I’m taking his hand again, claiming a thigh to caress, or sliding my fingers into his mouth.
“So why have you dedicated your life to this?” he asks finally, and it is an important question, possibly the most important question, yet I think answering it honestly might eviscerate me.
Answering it and having to explain all the plans I once made in a seething, bleeding fury.
But he should know this much: “Because Ys killed Eliot. Cashel killed Eliot.”
“You said Eliot died in a friendly fire accident. In Košice.” His voice is careful.
“I did say that. Both things are true.” The last sentence is a lie, but it can’t be helped. The truth is too costly right now.
Tristan turns to face me. “Why? Why would a cardinal want a CIA officer dead?”
“Eliot, I believe, was very close to learning Cashel’s identity, had been for weeks, and Mortimer knew it. So he had the Scales go through John Lackland before it could get any further.”
“John Lackland. You killed him.” He doesn’t say it with disgust or surprise; he says it like it’s something he already knew. “That night in Singapore. With the shower running and the room service you didn’t eat.”
“Yes.” Killing the deputy director of the NSA took considerably more care than killing a random saint on the street, but believe me when I say I didn’t mind at all. For John Lackland to die alone and screaming, I’d been willing to take all the care in the world.
“And the Scales,” Tristan says slowly. “That would be Mortimer’s second-in-command?”
“That is my best guess,” I reply. “At first, I thought the Scales was a middle manager, and then maybe a consigliere, but now, I don’t know. I don’t even know if the Scales is one person or many. I don’t know if it’s a title that’s passed on. I don’t know if they’re inside the Church or outside. Even the saints don’t know. All I know is that the Scales seems to be part of the saints and a part of Ys and essential to the function of both.”
Tristan passes a hand over his face. “Okay. So Ys killed Eliot,” he says. “And you have been searching for revenge ever since.”
I don’t need to answer that, so I don’t.
“And you started Lyonesse because of that, didn’t you? To gather the information you needed to hurt everyone who’d hurt the man you loved.”
“Yes.”
“You learned that Mortimer was ultimately responsible for Ys, and then you realized his niece was being trained as a saint, so she would be doubly useful to you. Leverage against Mortimer and possibly even a source of information at the same time. Except he was leveraging her back, which you also knew. You knew and you still married her.”
“Yes.”
“And now what, sir?” Tristan asks, and it gives me a little curl of satisfaction to hear that sir. It always does. “What is the end of this? What happens to Isolde?”
It’s nearly the same question as everyone else asks—What happens next? Where does your retribution end and the normal course of the world begin?—but of course, Tristan’s chief concern is Isolde. I’d even planned it that way.
“She will be safe. You will be safe. I promise that to you.” I pivot so that I’m straddling the wall, facing him directly, and I move close enough that my legs frame his knee on one side and his ass on the other. I take the bag from his hand and set it aside, and he pulls in a breath as my hands find his waist under his hoodie. Goose bumps spring up on his otherwise warm skin as I stroke his spine on one side and his stomach on the other.
“How can you know that, sir?” he murmurs. “It’s a promise you can’t make.”
“Watch me.”
“It feels like that’s all I can do sometimes,” he answers helplessly, and then he shudders as the hand on his stomach drops to the button of his jeans and then to the zipper. “Sir…”
“Yes?”
“I—we shouldn’t?—”
