Many days had passed since that conversation with Father Leo in this place. My days went on smoothly—books to read, prayers to repeat, chores to do—except for the moments when I met him. Every meeting with Father Leo left a small stone inside my chest. I felt something new when I was with him, and the feeling was dangerous.
I did not come here by choice. I came because my family forced me, because I needed to hide from the world that had wounded me. I wanted revenge in the quietest way I could imagine: to live my life on my own, away from the people who had abandoned me. I promised myself I would take control. I would leave Saint Maria's and be someone else.
But the memory of that night—his voice, the slow way he had circled me, the warmth of his hand when he touched my rosary—had taken root in my mind. A small, forbidden thing was growing there: something that felt like love and like curiosity at the same time. It was a dangerous seed. If it grew, it could ruin everything. If it stayed hidden, it would poison me.
I closed my eyes to end the thought. I would not be distracted. I would leave. I would be free.
I woke earlier than usual. The bell that called the novices to the chapel had not yet rung. The corridors smelled of cold stone and damp, the echoes of the night's rain still clinging to the walls. I dressed slowly, pulling my robe tight as if it could bind my will as well as my body. Determination hummed under my skin like a small, steady drumbeat. Today I would put my plans into motion. I would speak to the steward about travel, I would ask permission to visit the nearby town—anything that could lead me away.
I tried to think of anything but him. I recited a prayer under my breath and pushed my feet across the tiles. Still, his words from the garden that night slipped into my mind: "Trust is the beginning… the beginning of understanding." Understanding of what? I had no patience for secrets anymore. I only wanted a life that belonged to me.
I walked to the refectory for breakfast with the same steady purpose, joining the other novices at the long wooden table. The routine steadied me. The old sisters moved with practiced calm. The food was simple, bread and thin soup, but it tasted like a promise. I forced my hands to work through the motions, to chop and stir and bow when appropriate. I would speak to the steward after morning prayers. I would not hesitate. I would not allow myself to be distracted.
And then I saw him.
He stood by the chapel doorway, alone, watching the morning light fall across the aisle. He did not look surprised to see me. His face was calm, as if he had expected me to arrive like this, with a plan and a stubborn heart. My breath snagged. My chest felt tight, the way it had the night he had walked me through the garden. For a moment I could not think of my plan at all. I pulled myself up straight and walked forward as though nothing had happened.
"Good morning, Sister Donovan." His voice was the same low thing that made the wood in the chapel seem to lean in. He inclines his head slightly, the soft light making the lines of his face sharp. "You look focused."
"Good morning, Father Moretti," I answered, trying to keep my voice even. It sounded small to my own ears. I tried not to show how much I had rehearsed this encounter in my mind. He watched me with eyes that measured more than words, and I felt like a child holding a secret.
"You seemed to be in the garden late the other night," he said, and a small smile touched the corner of his mouth. "Restless."
"I could not sleep," I admitted. "I prayed, but I could not settle."
He came a step closer, tilting his head. "Prayers do not always settle what stirs inside us." His tone was gentle but full of a kind of dangerous patience. "Sometimes we must look at what moves us and understand it."
My hands tightened at my sides. I repeated my plan to myself, like an incantation: speak to the steward, ask for permission to leave, find my own life. I would not allow his words to unsteady me. I would not allow his patience to be a snare.
"Father," I said aloud, and the word felt both formal and impossible. "I need to ask permission—"
"Permission," he repeated, cutting the motion of my words with a soft laugh. "This place runs on rules, Sister. Why would they let you go just because your heart feels cold?" He watched me closely, and I felt the question was not about the rules but about something he wanted to see in me. "What is it you seek? Freedom? Revenge? Or simply an excuse to run?"
My mouth was dry. How could he know? I tried to hide the sharpness in my words. "I seek a life beyond the walls. A chance to be my own person."
His eyes softened a fraction. I saw something like interest cross his face, then vanish. "There is a difference between being your own person and fleeing pain," he said. "Both are valid. But the path you choose matters."
The chapel hummed with a low silence. I wanted to tell him everything—how my father had turned away when I needed him, how my step brother had sold my name to save a debt, how I had begged for a life and been given vows instead. I wanted to tell him that I had stolen away at night to read the travelers' letters, to learn the names of markets and inns, teaching myself names of roads like prayers. But all that would sound like a complaint. My life was small and raw and tied up with shame; saying it aloud would make it heavier.
"You should learn to pray with truth," he said, more softly. "Pray not because you are frightened, but because you mean your words."
I shifted on my feet, flustered. "I try."
He came closer still. Close enough now that I could see the small, faint scar near his temple, a pale line that caught the light when he moved. For reasons I could not name, its presence made him more human and more dangerous at once.
"Do you want me to help?" he asked. "Not with permission or running, but with understanding." The word sounded like an offer and like a test.
My heart tumbled. "Why would you—?"
"Because you are an interesting contradiction," he said simply. "Fragile and fierce. Shy and brave. A person who keeps promises to those who have hurt her and yet dares to dream of running free. Those people rarely end up where they intend; they become something else." He smiled, not cruelly, but with the kind of confidence that made me want to both push him away and cling to him.
There was a warmth to his hand when he reached out and touched the rosary at my waist. He did not take it. He only let his fingers close around a bead, a brief contact that sent a current through me so strong I had to steady myself on the pew. His thumb brushed the worn wood where I had worn my name into the beads with secrets and silent prayers.
"Sit with me," he said. "We will talk. Tell me about the life you want."
My resolve wavered. It felt wrong to sit with him like that, to let him ask questions that slipped under my vows and touched parts of me that should remain closed. But I found myself moving to the seat beside him. The wood was cold beneath me. He sat near, but not too near. He watched me with that same stillness that had a way of making me speak truths I had been hiding even from myself.
"I want to leave and be someone else," I said finally, the admission small and rough. "I want to earn my own bread. I want to choose who I am."
He nodded slowly. "That is a good wish. I do not think the world will be kind. But you would be alive, and sometimes alive is the only prayer that matters." He lowered his voice, "Many things will try to bind you again. People will call you foolish. People will try to decide for you. But if you go, go with eyes open."
"Why are you—" The question fell apart. The thought that he wanted to help seemed strange. It felt too generous and too purposeful at once. "Why would you care?"
He studied my face like someone reading a delicate map. "Because you make me curious," he said, and the word landed like a stone. He paused, and then, softer, "Because you are a small thing with a large will. The world crushes such things quickly. I like to see what resists."
I did not know how to answer that. Curiosity was an odd reason for a priest to care, and even odder for someone like him. But his words were honest as far as I could tell. There was no promise in them, no oath. Just an observation and a strange offer—not of love, but of attention.
"So tell me," he urged gently, and I felt that if I did not say it, the ache would sink deeper. "Where would you go?"
I named a nearby town, a market by the river, the inn with yellow curtains I had noticed from the road. My voice grew steadier as I imagined it, the sound of the river in my mind like a small hymn. The more I spoke, the more the plan felt real, and with it, my fear shrank. I believed for a moment that I would do it. I believed I could choose a life.
As I spoke, his hand moved—just a little—so that his fingers covered mine: warm, sure, and steady. The contact was not accidental. It was deliberate and close, and the heat of his skin seemed to pull the breath out of me. I looked down at our joined hands. The rosary wound between our fingers felt like a thin rope connecting us.
"Be brave," he said softly. "But be careful with trust. People like me are not gentle always. We take what we want, and sometimes we break things to get it."
His voice was a warning and a promise. My chest tightened with the truth of it. I wanted to ask what he meant. I wanted to scream, "What are you?" I wanted to know why he watched me with such interest and tenderness and with that cautious edge. But the words lodged in my throat.
"I will remember this," I said instead, pulling my hand back in a small, shy movement. I felt foolish for letting him see so much. I felt foolish for letting him touch me and for letting the warmth of his skin settle into something dangerous inside me.
He rose then, graceful and slow. "Think on it, Aria. Decide what you will choose. Life is not a prayer to be asked of someone else. It is a path you must walk." He paused in the doorway, adding in a sharply softer voice, "And if you take that path, do not let the past be the only thing that guides you."
When he left, the chapel felt suddenly empty and louder. The words he had offered clung to me: be brave… be careful. I went to the small window above my bed and watched the road in the distance, where the world I longed for lay like a bright thread.
That evening, as I lay awake again, the rosary in my hand, his words came back unbidden: People like me are not gentle always. I thought of his touch, warm and firm, and a coil of ice settled in the base of my throat. There was no longer only the small, bright idea of escaping. There was also the knowledge of what I might be escaping into: the hands of a man who tasted danger like a spice and who had been born of that world.
I did not know whether he would help me leave or whether he would be the thing that bound me tighter. The two possibilities stood like two doors in my mind—both frightening, both impossible to ignore.
I prayed, though the words felt thin. I asked for courage and for guidance. I asked for an answer to the question that had grown like a weed in me: who would I be if I left? The candle beside my bed guttered low as if the air in the room had given up a breath. Outside, a distant carriage clattered along the road, and I imagined the wheels taking me away.
The next morning, I walked with a small, secret plan tucked like a pebble inside my palm. I would speak to the steward after prayers. I would ask for a day to fetch supplies in the town and I would never return. My feet moved like someone carrying a small, dangerous thing—both heavy with resolve and light with the trembling hope of freedom.
But there was another thought I could not silence: the memory of his hand, the reminder that people like him were not always kind. In the quiet of my room, with the rosary burning like a small, watchful flame, I realized the truth: I would have to choose not only whether to leave, but whom to trust on the way out.
And trust, I had learned, could be as sharp as a blade.