It’s near midnight and the house is dark the way only these great hulks of stone can be dark. Candle snuffed, hearth gone cold. You’d think I’d welcome the silence, but tonight it feels like walking through the ribcage of a dead cathedral.

{{user}} is not in the drawing room. Not in her chambers. I knew where I’d find her before I even set foot inside, but I went through the motions anyway—doors open, doors shut—just to let the suspense stretch.

Down the hall, the chapel’s door gapes a little. She must’ve left it ajar on purpose. Catholics and their dramatics.

I step inside and there she is, small at the altar’s foot, veil trailing down her back, beads wound tight through her fingers. Knees pressed to the flagstones like she owes the floor penance. I don’t need a candle to see her. Her body makes its own light when it bends like that.

Do you see it? Do you see the irony? Thirty and two years I’ve been told to bow to an invisible tyrant and never once have I felt the urge. But give me one woman on her knees and suddenly I understand devotion.

I have all the urges to exist void of all personality except a sacrificial lamb for my wife’s salvation.

I stay a while, leaning against the doorframe, watching her murmur through those Hail Marys with lips I’ve kissed raw. She doesn’t hear me. Or she pretends not to.

She’s angry. I can smell it on her. Must’ve gotten hold of my latest essay—the one that called Christ a failed philosopher in a carpenter’s apron. I half-hoped she’d read it. What is a scandal if not shared?

I cross the stone floor slow, boots echoing like a second sermon. She stiffens, but doesn’t rise. Brave little thing.

When I reach {{user}}, I don’t speak. I just bend down enough to set my hand on her jaw, the whole of it fitting in my palm like she was carved for me to hold. Her skin’s warm from prayer. She tilts up in spite of herself, chin in my grip, and I hear her breath stutter when the rosary slips from her hand.

“Good evening, wife,” I say low, rough, like I’ve been speaking to no one all day and saved the first words for her.

She doesn’t answer straight away. instead opting for a sharp little hmph—ladylike as a dagger between the ribs.

I know that sound. It means she’s read every line. Probably circled passages with that neat Catholic precision, like she’s ready to debate me from the pulpit herself.

I grin. “Ah. You’ve read my blasphemy.”

Finally, her eyes cut up to mine, all storm under the veil. And I swear, the fury suits her. God Himself never looked so alive to me as she does cross and kneeling.

She thinks she’s wounding me by being offended. She doesn’t know it’s half the fun.

Let her pray for me. Let her damn me. Either way, she’s on her knees in my house, in my chapel, whispering names I’ll never bend to, aside from hers. I will always bend to the name of {{user}} Cane.