The corridor beyond the sanctuary was black as pitch, and Lucan moved through it without a torch, without a sound, tracking the faint scent of fear-sweat and stale incense that clung to anyone foolish enough to spend hours crouched in cold rafters spying on their betters.
He found the man three passages down, still hurrying, robes hitched up to keep from tripping on the uneven stone — a lower clergyman, young, the kind of ambitious fool who thought proximity to High Bishop Malachi meant proximity to power instead of proximity to a blade.
“Going somewhere?”
The man spun so fast he nearly fell, face draining white in the dark.
“G-Grand Inquisitor. I was simply—”
“Simply what?” Lucan stepped closer, unhurried, letting the shadows pool thicker around his boots, letting his eyes catch just enough candlelight from a distant sconce to glow faint and terrible.
“Simply climbing through the sanctuary rafters at midnight? A strange hobby for a priest.”
“I was lost, my lord, I swear it—”
“You’re a poor liar.” Lucan’s voice stayed level, almost gentle, which was somehow worse than shouting.
“Who sent you?”
The man’s mouth worked soundlessly, torn between two fears — the Inquisitor standing in front of him, and whatever punishment waited if he confessed to serving Malachi.
“I can’t say, my lord.”
“You can.” Lucan closed the last of the distance between them in a single stride, gripping the front of the man’s robes and hauling him up onto his toes with terrifying ease.
“You will. The only question is how much of you I leave intact when you do.”
“Please—” The word cracked into a sob.
“High Bishop Malachi. He suspects — he suspects the Saintess isn’t what she claims to be. He wanted proof. Anything unusual. Anything that could be used—”
“Used for what?”
“To move against her.” The man’s eyes were wide with terror now, words spilling faster, desperate to buy himself mercy that Lucan had no intention of granting.
“He believes she’s hiding something. He wants leverage. He said if the Grand Inquisitor has grown too — too *attached* to her to see clearly, then the Council would need proof to force your hand—”
Lucan’s grip tightened, dark ash magic curling hungry and visible around his knuckles, seeping into the fabric he held fisted in his hand.
“And what did you see tonight? Exactly?”
“Only — only an embrace, my lord. A kiss. Nothing more, I swear it on the Light itself—”
“Look at me when you swear something.” Lucan’s eyes had gone fully red now, pupils drowned entirely in that burning ember glow, and the man in his grip whimpered like a cornered animal.
“You saw nothing beyond a kiss. Say it again.”
“N-nothing beyond a kiss, my lord. I swear.”
Lucan studied him for a long, silent moment, weighing truth against desperation, and found — as he usually could, with the particular clarity his ash-corrupted senses granted him for detecting lies — that the man was telling the truth.
He’d seen only the performance, not the substance beneath it.
That should have felt like relief.
Instead, something colder and far more absolute settled over Lucan’s mind.
This man would report back to Malachi regardless of what he’d actually witnessed.
He’d confirm the scandal, feed Malachi’s suspicion, hand the High Bishop exactly the ammunition he needed to justify further inquiry into a Saintess candidate the church had already begun to distrust.
There was only one way to ensure that report never reached its intended ears.
“You’ve been very honest with me,” Lucan said quietly.
“I appreciate honesty.”
Hope flickered across the man’s face.
“Then you’ll let me go, my lord? I’ll say nothing, I swear—”
“No,” Lucan said, almost gently.
“I don’t think you will say anything. Not because I trust your discretion. Because you won’t have the chance.”
The man’s scream never fully formed.
Lucan’s ash magic surged forward in a black, corrosive wave, wrapping around the spy’s entire body in the space of a single heartbeat, decaying flesh and bone and robe alike into fine gray dust that scattered soundlessly across the stone floor.
It was quick — quicker than most of the executions he presided over in the public square, quicker than the man deserved, if Lucan were being honest with himself about the danger he’d represented.
He stood alone in the corridor a moment longer, staring down at the small drift of ash where a person had been standing seconds before, and felt nothing but cold satisfaction where guilt should have lived.
*Five years ago, that would have troubled me.*
Now it barely registered beyond simple, practical relief.
One threat removed.
One report that would never reach Malachi’s ears.
He returned to the sanctuary to find Caelia exactly where he’d left her, arms wrapped around herself against the cold, silver hair catching the last of the guttering candlelight like something spun from moonlight.
“It’s done,” he said simply.
“Done how?”
“He won’t be reporting anything to Malachi. Ever.” Lucan crossed the room toward her, and something in his expression must have given away exactly how absolute that statement was, because instead of flinching away, instead of recoiling in the horror a proper Saintess candidate should feel at casual murder, Caelia simply watched him with a strange, unreadable calm.
“How did you do it?” she asked.
“Ash magic. Direct exposure.” He studied her face, searching for the disgust he expected, the fear, anything close to what a sheltered noble girl should feel learning her lover had just disintegrated a man in cold blood.
“You should be horrified.”
“Most people would be.”
“I’m not most people.” Something flickered at the corner of her mouth, not quite a smile, cold and sharp in a way that made his pulse quicken instead of recoil.
“He was going to report us. Get us both burned at the stake, most likely, if Malachi decided we were worth the political cost of exposing.”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t see the tragedy in his ash decorating your sanctuary floor.” She said it flatly, without a trace of performance in her voice, and Lucan felt something dark and possessive twist tighter in his chest at the utter absence of pretense in her expression.
He’d expected fear.
He’d expected the fragile Saintess mask to crack under the weight of witnessing what he truly was.
Instead she stood there, watching a drift of human ash settle across cold stone with the same cool detachment she might have shown watching rain fall, and something about that absolute lack of horror felt more intimate than anything they’d shared on that altar days before.
“You didn’t even flinch,” he said quietly.
“Why would I? He was a threat. You removed it.” She met his eyes directly, unashamed.
“That’s not something to mourn, Grand Inquisitor. That’s simply survival.”
Lucan crossed the last of the distance between them, cupping her face in both hands, searching her expression with an intensity that made her breath catch.
“What are you?” he murmured, echoing the question that had haunted him since the moment he’d first scented that bitter, grave-cold trace beneath her divine light.
“A Saintess wouldn’t watch a man turn to ash without so much as a tremor. A Saintess wouldn’t have hidden a dagger under her mattress, or picked the lock on my private study, or tested a blade against her own palm without hesitation.”
“Maybe I’m simply stronger than everyone assumed.”
“Maybe.” His thumb traced her cheekbone, and something in his eyes had shifted — suspicion tangled now with a darker, more possessive fascination.
“Or maybe you’re far darker than you’ve let anyone see. And I find I don’t mind that possibility nearly as much as I should.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“No.” He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing her in, dark ash magic still curling faint and satisfied around his own hands from the kill moments before.
“It makes me want you more than I already did, which I hadn’t thought possible until tonight.”
Ren said nothing, only let herself lean into his touch, though privately, behind the calm mask she’d perfected over years of survival, something cold and calculating turned over in her mind.
*He’s starting to suspect.
Not the truth.
Not yet.
But close enough that it’s only a matter of time.*
And when that time came — when Lucan Vane finally connected every scattered thread and understood exactly who he’d fallen for — she still had no idea whether the monster currently pressing gentle kisses to her forehead would choose to burn her for it, or burn the entire Empire down to keep her instead.