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The door slams shut, cutting off the echo of Kane’s laughter, but the sound vibrates in my skull. I stare at the heavy wood table, trying to steady my breath—trying to steady my thoughts.

Does he really think he can convince me the Sacred Light is plotting against me?

It’s nonsense. A last-ditch attempt to rattle me.

Ava

I’m going to be anointed in an hour.

Anointed.

How strange that Damian’s mega-cult borrows the language of my own dear religion. But then again, it also pulls from pagan rites, medieval pageantry, and who knows what else.

It’s all nonsense, but I’m willing to live with it.

I’ll do anything for Damian.

Over the last week, he’s made love to me every night. It was making love, not just sex. I always thought that phrase was corny, but there’s no other way to describe it. He touched me like he was memorizing every inch of my body.

But under all the tenderness, there was something else. A tension I couldn’t quite pinpoint. A sadness almost. His kisses were hungry one moment, then reverent the next, as if he were trying to hold on and let go at the same time.

The library door opens, and I straighten, my fingers tightening around the edges of my book. The one I brought with me for comfort.

Damian told me what to expect from the Sacred Light.

Grave, priestly, serious, and philosophical. But beneath all that, probably just some middle-aged lawyer who got involved with the wrong people. Now, he wears a mask and interprets laws from a doctrine he probably secretly finds insane.

The masked, robed figure walks steadily toward me. He stops. Though I can’t see his expression, something shifts in the air between us. “Mansfield Park,” he says.

Is it just my imagination, or did his modulated voice hitch for a moment?

Maybe this book makes me seem more human to him. If he really is just a normal guy who got caught up with the wrong people, he probably has a heart, or something resembling one.

Maybe he pities me.

I nod. “It’s my favorite.”

He tilts his head. “That’s unusual. It’s not her most popular work.”

He sits down beside me on the couch, and a strange sense of comfort washes over me. This man isn’t scary. He’s not like Damian’s father. Or Gabriel Wolfe.

As much as I hate to admit it, he’s not like Damian either. No, I think he’s much more like me. A normal person who got swept up by forces that couldn’t be stopped.

I smile. “Yes, because the main character is a self-righteous prude.”

He shakes his head. “Righteousness and self-righteousness aren’t the same thing. True righteousness bends where it must, knowing that principle without wisdom is arrogance. But self-righteousness? It would rather break than yield. And what good is that?”

I inhale a quick breath. This is the philosophical aspect Damian warned me about, and yet it hits me as sharply as if it were my own pastor delivering me a prophetic word from God.

He voiced—almost precisely—the inner battle I’ve fought these past few months. What are the odds?

Is he truly magical?

“I imagine you have questions about what’s to come,” he says.

I nod. “What can I expect?”

His gaze drifts to the cackling fire, and the flickering light reflects off his mask. “Tonight, I’ll anoint you. You’ll be brought into the chapel. There will be oaths. Prayers. You’ll be marked as the virgin sacrifice.”