The Vampire & Her Witch

”Your life as a Confessor ended the moment you chose to side with demons plotting against the Marquis,” Percivus said, his voice cold and clinical as he began to cut through the laces that held her vestments closed. ”Why else would the Holy Lord of Light have punished you so severely for attempting to use his power for a healing miracle?”

He gestured to her gaunt features and withered hands with the point of the knife, the blade hovering dangerously close to her throat.

”My faith is still pure,” Eleanor insisted, staring defiantly into the flame-haired Inquisitor’s merciless hazel eyes even as fear made her voice tremble. ”The Holy Lord of Light demands a price for his miracles, and I paid the price willingly to protect Lady Jocelynn. If I served demons, he would have withheld his miracle from me, and if Lady Jocelynn was a heretic then the miracle would never have saved her life.”

”You know this to be true,” she said, forcing what little strength she still possessed into her voice. ”You cannot expel me from the church without a trial. So unless you’re willing to bring me before a High Priest with proof of my crimes, then I am still your ’Sister’ and you are still ’Brother Percivus’ to me.”

She had little hope that he would listen to her words, but she had to try. She had to believe that somewhere, somehow, the truth still mattered. If not to him, than to the Acolytes behind him. If they were as devout as he claimed, if they abhorred wickedness as much as men who had suffered such tragedies must, then surely they could see that Percivus was deviating from the path of justice in his quest to unearth a conspiracy where none existed.

”You truly are a Blackwell under those robes, aren’t you?” Percivus said, his voice dripping with scorn as the knife sliced through another set of laces with a sharp tug. ”Jocelynn tried the same thing, demanding to be brought before a tribunal to prove her innocence as soon as I stepped into her cell yesterday. Only I haven’t charged her with any crimes yet, and it’s the same with you. Right now, I’m only asking questions and searching for the truth.”

He shook his head as if he’d witnessed something truly pathetic.

”But a woman who hasn’t renounced her noble lineage has no right to wear these robes,” Percivus continued, his movements methodical and unhurried. ”So let’s both stop pretending you ever took your oaths seriously, Lady. Eleanor. Blackwell,” he said, pronouncing each word slowly, as if it were an accusation of a crime worse than heresy.

As he spoke, the knife continued its work, cutting through lace after lace with surgical precision. There was no anger in Percivus’s movements, no rage or heat. His expression remained calm, almost serene, as he systematically dismantled the vestments that had defined her life for years.

”No, no, you can’t,” Eleanor said, her hands fumbling desperately to stop him from cutting away the robes that had meant more to her than anything else in her life. The combination of the chains binding her wrists and the bar that stopped her from bringing her hands within a foot of each other made her incredibly clumsy as she struggled against the inevitable.

It was true that the Blackwell name still meant something to her. She still acknowledged Rhys as her cousin, even if they were separated by several generations, and by extension, she acknowledged Jocelynn as well. She’d never denied those relationships, never pretended her family didn’t exist.

But she had renounced her claim to the family name and its titles when she took her oath as a Confessor. She’d chosen to become a beacon in the darkness, a woman who could walk among the wicked and the lost to offer them a path to salvation.

Confession was only the beginning of a journey back to the light, after all, but she’d pledged to listen without judging, offering only solace and guidance to those who had gone astray so they could find a way to atone, taking up the struggle to redeem themselves in this life or the next.

The golden robes were a manifestation of her pledge to bring light into the darkness, and the crimson hood was a sign that she would spill her own blood before she would divulge the things that had been confessed to her.

-RIIIIIP-

Percivus pulled the front of her vestments open, the cut laces no longer able to hold the heavy fabric closed. He pressed her firmly against the cold stone wall with one hand while he used the knife to slice through the sleeves that couldn’t be removed properly without releasing her from the shackles.

Eleanor struggled, but her weakened body could do nothing against his strength. Perhaps if she hadn’t given so much of herself to heal Jocelynn, her resistance would have amounted to something more than the frantic pawing of a scruffed kitten. As it was, she was helpless to stop him.

Throughout it all, Percivus’s face remained impassive. There was no lust in his hazel eyes, no hunger or desire as he worked to remove her vestments. He showed no interest whatsoever in the woman beneath the robes. His focus was entirely on the fabric itself, on the symbols of her place in the Church and the authority and protection that went with them as he slowly, methodically, cut them away from her.

As he worked, he was careful to ensure her thin shift remained in place beneath the heavy robes. When the sleeves resisted, he adjusted his grip to pull them down without displacing the simple undergarment. When the last section of fabric threatened to take the shift with it, he paused to make sure it stayed where it was.

It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t even basic decency.

It was worse than any of those things.

Percivus didn’t see her as a woman at all. He saw her only as a covetous noblewoman, play acting at joining the faithful to enjoy a life of power and luxury that had been denied to her because she hadn’t been born into the branch of her family that inherited the throne of Blackwell County. She had profaned the robes she wore, betraying the Church to demons and witches, and he was correcting that error with the same dispassionate efficiency he might bring to removing a stain from an altar cloth.

The robes weren’t protecting her modesty, he seemed to say with every clinical movement. They were shielding her from the cold harshness of the world she deserved to experience. They were giving her a warmth and dignity she had no right to claim, along with the respect and admiration of the common people that she couldn’t possibly have earned if she’d faced the same struggles that common folk did.

And now he was taking that protection away.

”Please, don’t,” Eleanor pleaded one final time as he worked the last section of sleeve free from her shackled arms. ”You know that I’ve never betrayed my oath. This isn’t right.”

”This isn’t right...” she repeated softly, but the simple statement did nothing to stop the inevitably of the tragedy that she was trapped in.