ucien pressed through a dark and clawing wood, fleeing a voice that called his name. Fear filled his veins. His breath, too loud in his throat, would surely betray him.
She came to him tonight, not as the hunted one but as the hunter. He quickened his steps, yet on she came, finding him by scent and not sight.
Now she was behind him, in a clearing. Her gaze prickled on his skin while the moon pulsed overhead.
He turned and saw her slowly approach him, step after step.
She had come to him in a soft robe of black and red. It fell open, and he gazed unwillingly, then willingly, into the whiteness of her breast. Her hair slipped from its confinements and blossomed over her shoulders, her hips, sliding over her face like clouds obscuring the moon.
As her face drew nearer to his, her hair parted, and her red lips opened and reached for his.
She stripped him of whatever possession he could once claim over his own flesh. She robbed him of his vows, his very will. She compelled him to reach forward and kiss and touch.
And in the taste of her kiss was a sweet liqueur. The wine of desire, the elixir of falsehood. This was the spreading of untruth, from lip to loins to heart. A warning.
The devil laughed, but Lucien—the flesh—succumbed.
Lucien woke in the dark on his mat of straw in the monks’ dormitory at the Convent of the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve, drowning. He feared for his soul. He felt he might vomit. What he’d done could never be undone. Once lost, his innocence was lost forever. The shame, the stain—how could he ever look Prior Pons in the face? And what of his holy calling? He’d betrayed Christ’s love for him—Christ, whose all-seeing eye penetrated the heart.
Around him the brothers of the convent of St. Stephen slumbered, some noisily.
Sleep. Oh, praise the bon Dieu. He’d been asleep. None of it had happened.
It was only a dream.
Sweet relief flooded his limbs. He was as pure as ever. No stain could be affixed to him by the phantasms of sleep. He clutched his innocence about him as a cloak.
But that girl, that unholy femna, that cursed heretic who kept slipping through his clutches! Even now, wide awake, he felt her slim, carnal fingers unbutton his cloak of innocence and worm their way inside to the unruly flesh beneath. Their touch burned his skin.
Stop it, he told himself. The dream is only metaphor.
She symbolized all that would ruin Christendom. Ruin him. Consume him. Devour him with her blood-red mouth of lies and lusts and burnings.
He would be clean, even if the struggle killed him. So she must be the one to die.
He breathed deeply to calm his mind. He would remain with the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve until Prior Pons’s letter arrived. Though the trail had all but gone cold—though he’d lost days when that lying Jew had sent him south along the Aude, instead of east—though Satan’s servants thwarted him at every turn—the sea, he felt sure, would lead him to the heretic. But he’d been gone so long, perhaps too long, chasing a bird on the wing, and he needed approval from his prior to continue his search for Dolssa de Stigata. He would wait for it more vigilantly now.
More awake to danger.