Prologue

Three Nights Before the Blood Moon

My father sells me before the mountain gates finish opening.

“A tithe for the sanctum,” he calls into the blizzard, one hand locked around my wrist and the other extended toward the masked monk waiting beneath the portcullis. “For the grace of the High Priest. For our salvation.”

The monk does not look at him. He looks at me.

Snow needles my face and melts against my lips. I taste salt, blood, and the copper coin hidden beneath my tongue. The coin is the last thing I own. I stole it from my father’s table before he dragged me out of our cottage, and I have been holding it there for six hours, afraid the men of San Severo will strip even that small defiance from me.

Behind the monk, the sanctum rises from the cliff like a black tooth. Narrow windows burn red through the storm. Bells hang silent in the highest tower, rimed with ice, while carved saints watch the gate with their stone eyes chiseled away.

I am twenty-four years old. Old enough to know that no god lives in a place that blinds its saints.

The monk finally raises a gloved hand. My father releases me so quickly I stagger.

For one foolish heartbeat, I think shame has reached him. Then a second acolyte emerges carrying a leather purse. It lands in my father’s palm with the soft, intimate clink of silver.

He weighs it.

He smiles.

Something inside me goes still.

“You said they needed grain,” I tell him. My voice barely survives the wind. “You said we were bringing grain.”

His gaze slides past my shoulder. “Your brothers need to eat.”

“So do I.”

The monk closes his fingers around my upper arm. My father turns downhill.

I do not beg. Begging would let him imagine he still has the power to grant mercy. Instead, I bite down on the copper coin until its edge cuts my tongue, and I watch him descend through the snow with his purse tucked safely beneath his coat.

When the portcullis drops, its iron teeth strike stone between us.

The sound is final.

The monk takes my jaw in one hand and forces my face toward the torchlight. His mask is hammered silver, featureless except for two narrow eyeholes. “Name.”

I let the blood from my tongue gather before I answer. “Inés Solano.”

He opens his other palm beneath my mouth. “Spit out what you are hiding.”

I could swallow the coin. I could keep one thing from them.

Instead, I spit it into his glove with a bright bead of blood.

His fingers twitch.

“Payment for my own body,” I say. “It appears my father undercharged you.”

The blow comes hard enough to turn the gates sideways. My knees hit the flagstones, but I do not fall completely. A man who strikes for an insult has already confessed where he is weakest.

I lift my head and memorize the monk’s height, the narrowness of his shoulders, the ring of three keys at his belt.

Not strong. Left-handed. Easily angered.

Useful.

He drags me across the lower courtyard. Wind claws at my thin dress, plastering the linen to my skin. Dark-robed figures line the covered walkways, their heads bowed as if I am already a corpse passing through them. Red candles gutter in niches along the walls. Their wax runs down the stone in thick streams that look black in the failing light.

At the center of the courtyard, a man in white waits beside an iron basin.

Abbot Valerius is smaller than the legends make him. Age has folded him inward, and something sweetly rotten rides beneath the perfume of his incense. Gold rings crowd his fingers. When he smiles, his gums are the gray-pink of spoiled meat.

“The tenth,” he murmurs.

The acolyte shoves me to my knees.

Valerius dips two fingers into the basin and paints a cold red line from my forehead to the hollow of my throat. It smells like wine until the warmth reaches my skin.

Blood.

“Untouched,” he says. “Unblemished. Freely returned to the mountain.”

I laugh.

It slips out before caution can stop it—a single cracked sound, sharp as breaking ice.

Valerius’s smile thins. “Do you find salvation amusing?”

“I find the word freely confusing.” I glance at the locked gates. “Perhaps the mountain has a different language.”

The acolyte raises his hand again.

“Enough.”

The voice comes from the archway behind the Abbot.

It is low, rough, and quiet enough that every person in the courtyard obeys it.

Tadeo Escalante steps into the snow.

He is not masked. He needs no silver face to make him frightening. Black clerical robes broaden his already massive frame, their hems untouched by slush. His features are all severe angles: hard mouth, straight nose, a jaw shadowed by the end of a long day. He looks to be in his early thirties, but his eyes are older—dark, emptied rooms where something terrible once happened.

At his hip hangs a blade carved from black jade.

The acolyte releases me at once.

So this is the executioner.

Tadeo’s gaze moves over the blood on my face, the bruise rising along my cheek, and the monk’s still-lifted hand. Nothing changes in his expression. Only the leather of his gloves creaks as his fingers close.

“The vessel fell,” the monk says.

“Did she?” Tadeo asks.

The lie hovers between them, visible as breath.

Valerius turns with a paternal smile. “Our lamb has arrived spirited. You will teach her the peace of obedience before the moon rises.”

Tadeo looks at me then—not at my torn dress or bleeding mouth, but directly into my eyes. The force of it pins me more effectively than the monk’s hand. I expect hunger. Pity. Religious fever.

I find recognition.

It vanishes so quickly I almost doubt it existed.

“The lower cell,” Tadeo says.

The acolyte hesitates. “Holy Father ordered the preparation chamber.”

“The lower cell has one entrance.” Tadeo’s voice remains flat. “If she is as spirited as you claim, I will not risk the sanctum’s tithe.”

Valerius studies him. For a moment, the blizzard seems to hold its breath with me.

Then the Abbot waves one jeweled hand. “As you wish. Keep her pure, Escalante. Heaven has waited ten years for this offering.”

Ten years.

Tadeo’s face becomes stone, but his eyes cut to mine again.

This time, I am certain.

He knows something about me.

He takes the chain the acolyte offers him and fastens it around my throat. His gloved knuckles brush my pulse. The touch is controlled, almost careful, while the collar is cold enough to burn.

“Walk,” he orders.

I rise. As he leads me beneath the archway, I close my fist around the object he pressed into my palm while securing the chain.

My copper coin.

Tadeo does not look back. He guides me down a spiral stair, away from the red candles and the Abbot’s rotting smile, into a darkness that smells of myrrh, wet iron, and old graves.

At the bottom waits an oak door banded in black steel.

He unlocks it with a key kept apart from all the others.

Before he pushes me inside, I lean close enough for only him to hear.

“If you mean to kill me, priest, you should not have returned my weapon.”

His gaze drops to the coin cutting into my palm.

“If I meant to kill you,” he says, “you would never have crossed the gate.”

Then he closes the door, and I understand that the most dangerous man in San Severo has just lied to his god for me.