The Council Chamber of the Diocese was a room designed to crush the spirit. Its walls were draped in heavy crimson tapestries, and the only light came from narrow, slit-like windows high above, casting bars of dusty light onto the long, oak table where the inquisitors sat.
Jeremiah stood in the center of the room. He had been stripped of his outer cassock, wearing only his simple white linen tunic. He felt exposed, not just physically, but spiritually. To his left, behind a heavy iron gate, Celestine sat on a wooden bench. They were forbidden from speaking, but her eyes never left him. They were no longer the eyes of a predator; they were wide with a burgeoning, terrifying grief.
"Father Jeremiah," Bishop Malachi began, his voice echoing like a gavel. "You stand accused of spiritual negligence, the harbouring of illicit affections, and the possible succumbence to witchcraft. How do you plead?"
Jeremiah took a breath. The air felt thin, and a strange, metallic taste lingered in the back of his throat. "I plead... that I am a man, Excellency. A man who has found a truth more profound than the texts I have studied."
A murmur of scandalized whispers erupted from the seated elders.
"Truth?" Malachi sneered. "You call a woman who dabbles in the dark arts 'truth'? You have been seduced, boy. Your mind is clouded by a snare of her making. We have found the vials in her home. We know of the spell."
Jeremiah turned his head slightly toward Celestine. "She told me. She confessed the spell to me in the house of God."
"And yet you remain?" Malachi demanded. "If you know it is a fabrication of magic, why do you not cast her out?"
"Because," Jeremiah said, his voice gaining a sudden, terrifying clarity, "the spell is gone. I can feel the difference. The 'snare' was a pull, a forced gravity. What I feel now is... a choice. I choose her. Even if the magic is dead, my heart is not."
The deliberation lasted hours. Celestine watched from behind the bars, her hands gripping the iron so hard her knuckles turned white. She could feel the curse pulsing in her veins—a cold, rhythmic throb. She had fallen for him. Truly, deeply, and without the aid of alchemy. And now, she watched the man she loved sacrifice everything for a woman who had originally intended to ruin him.
When the Bishop finally stood, the room went ice-cold.
"Jeremiah of St. Jude," Malachi declared. "By your own admission, you have placed a mortal woman above your Creator. You are hereby suspended from all priestly duties. Your vows are considered fractured beyond repair. You have forty-eight hours to vacate the rectory. You are to have no contact with this woman, or excommunication will follow."
He turned his gaze to Celestine. "And you. If you are seen within a mile of a holy site again, you will be turned over to the civil authorities for trial. Begone from this place."
The guards opened the iron gate. Celestine rushed toward Jeremiah, but the Bishop's men stepped between them with unsheathed hostility.
"Jeremiah!" she cried out.
Jeremiah reached for her, his face pale. But as he strained against the guards, a sudden, violent fit of coughing seized him. He doubled over, his chest heaving as if he were trying to breathe underwater.
When he pulled his hand away from his mouth, it wasn't the red of a common cold or the bright scarlet of consumption. His palm was stained with a dark, oily fluid—a blackness that seemed to shimmer with an unnatural light.
Celestine froze. Her breath hitched in her throat. She knew that color. It was the mark of the Tenebris Cor—the Dark Heart. The curse of her bloodline had been triggered. By loving him, she had inadvertently signed his death warrant.
"Don't touch me," Jeremiah gasped, not out of fear, but because he was struggling to stand.
"Jeremiah, I'm so sorry," Celestine whispered, the tears finally breaking. "I've killed you. My love is a plague."
"No," Jeremiah wheezed, looking at her with a defiant, feverish light in his eyes. "If this is the price for loving you... it is the first bargain I have ever made that felt honest."
The guards dragged him away toward the holding cells, leaving Celestine alone in the center of the room. Above her, the great crucifix on the wall seemed to loom with an ominous weight. She had won his heart, and in doing so, she had doomed him to a sickness for which there was no prayer, no medicine, and no mercy.