Beneath the habit

Beata’s POV

The bells sound like cages tonight. Not the holy kind. Not a call to worship. Their echo slips cold through the convent halls like iron bars slamming shut, one after another, as if to remind me—I’m still here. Locked in walls that were never really mine.

I rest my forehead against the stone window ledge and stare past the gates, where the forest crouches in shadow. My breath fogs the glass. The other sisters are already on their knees for evening prayers. I should be with them too.

But I can’t breathe in there.

It’s the eve of my vows. Tomorrow, if I say yes, I’ll never leave these walls again. Never look beyond the chapels and gardens and crumbling bricks until my body is laid beneath them. Forever tied to God.

That word—forever—should be comforting. But when I turn it over in my mouth, it tastes like suffocation. My chest rattles with the flutter of a bird desperate to escape.

And I don’t know if that makes me unholy. Or just human.

“Beata.”

The sound of my name, sharp and scolding, slices through the air. Sister Miriam’s voice. Always solemn, always watching.

I keep my eyes on the forest. “Coming.” I’m always coming. Always obedient. Just never quite on time.

The chapel is heavy with wax and smoke. Saints glare down from their icons as my knees hit the wooden pew beside the others. My lips move. My voice whispers prayers I memorized before I could even write my own name.

But my mind isn’t here. My hands twitch. My chest aches with something I can’t smother anymore.

I used to love the stillness here. The quiet. I used to find peace in prayers that rolled endlessly like waves on a shore.

Now it feels like the silence is closing in around me, pressing against my throat until I can barely swallow.

Tomorrow I take the final vows. Forever.

I wonder if the saints ever felt caged in their holiness. If they ever ached for more. If they ever wished God had asked less of them.

By the time dusk falls, I’m trembling with the weight of it all. Not conviction. Not certainty. Just pressure.

So I do what I’ve done in secret more nights than anyone knows.

I slip into the gardens, my habit brushing dew-slick leaves, and stop behind the old brick shed. My fingers find the hollow stone. The little silver key still waits inside, cool and perfect against my palm. I tuck it into my boot when daylight hours pass. Tonight, it slides into the lock with ease.

The gate creaks. Just enough space for me to slip through.

And then—I’m outside.

Every time I step through this crack in the world, I swear I can feel my lungs doubling in size. Like the air out here is real in a way it isn’t behind those walls.

The forest meets me with open arms: the crunch of frost beneath my boots, the spindly branches reaching overhead like cathedral arches. The smell of cold earth and damp leaves.

I keep walking, deeper, farther, until the weight on my chest lightens. Until the silence in my head matches the soft whisper of the trees.

Here, I’m not Sister Beata. Not God’s nearly bride. I’m just… me. The girl who wonders. The girl who wanders.

Then the wind changes.

I catch it instantly—sharp, metallic, wrong. Blood.

The copper tang slices through the crisp air, and suddenly every hair on my body stands.

I freeze. Heart kicking—once, twice, all the way up into my throat.

The convent is just a short walk behind me. I can turn back. Pretend I smelled nothing. Pretend sin and danger don’t lurk this close to holy ground.

But something pulls me forward.

Branches snap under my boots as I veer off the path, crouching low, scanning the dark. My breath puffs white in the dead hush. No crickets chirp. No owls cry. The forest holds its breath too.

And then—I see him.

At first just shadow against the trunk of a leaning oak. A slumped figure, barely upright. Then the moon bleeds across his body, revealing more.

Blood. So much of it. His shirt is ripped in jagged shreds, chest slick red. One leg canted strangely. There’s a knife cut deep along his ribs, still leaking dark.

My stomach twists—but my eyes can’t look away.

Because beneath all the ruin l see something that l have never before seen a man carved of something… dangerous.

Tattoo ink sprawls across his chest: dark symbols, lines of scripture, faded scars layered under the new. But there’s one marking, curled behind his collarbone—a dark ouroboros snake circling a skull, with a crown on its head. It pulses with wrongness, though I don’t yet know why.

His face—swollen, bloodied—still manages to look devastatingly handsome. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. Black lashes. The kind of beauty that doesn’t soothe. The kind that warns.

He looks like sin in a broken body.

And for one wild second, I want to touch him just to know if he’s real.

He groans. And his eyes flicker but remain closed.

My heart thunders so hard I think the trees must hear it. I step closer, heart still thundering in my throat.

“Hey,” I whisper. “Can you hear me?”

He groans again, only more deeply this time. His head turns slowly. Eyes Finally flutter open—dark, feral things, rimmed in pain.

I crouch beside him, forcing my breath to steady. The gash across his ribs is deep. Too deep. My fingers hover over the wound.

He mutters something in Italian. Then louder, “Don’t—touch—me.”

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I say quickly. “But you’re bleeding. A lot.”

He turns his head to look at me fully, his gaze slow and deliberate. “You… a nun?”

I hesitate. “Not yet.”

His mouth twitches into something that might be a smile. “Figures,” he rasps. “The one time I try to die quietly… and God sends me you.”

A breath catches in my throat.

“My angel,” he rasps. His lips split on the words, blood slick at the corner of his mouth. A smirk ghosts through the ruin even now.

The sound of his voice crawls under my skin. Rough. Dangerous. Like gravel on fire.

“You’re hurt,” I say stupidly.

He huffs something sharp, almost a laugh. “No shit, dolcezza.”

He sways, falling forward—and instinct overruns fear. I drop to my knees, catching him under his shoulders. His blood soaks the sleeve of my habit. My body screams to let go, to run before it’s too late.

But I don’t. My hands grip tighter.

Up close, he’s even worse—chest rising in shallow breaths, skin clammy beneath cold night air. But he’s still alive. Still fighting.

“You’ll bleed out,” I whisper. “I need to stop it.”

His arm snaps up, faster than I expect. A hand closes around my wrist—strong, iron-hard despite the weakness dragging him down.

For a moment, the world goes silent. His palm branding my skin. His thumb dragging slow over the race of my pulse. A silent warning: You don’t want me touching you. You don’t know what I am.

I feel the heat of him like a brand. My pulse jackhammers.

And for just a breathless second, I wonder, Is this the last thing I’ll ever feel?

Then he speaks, voice low, splintering with steel: “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t touch me.”

My lips tremble. My throat clogs with the truth I can’t stop. “If I don’t, you’ll die.”

His lashes lower, his head tipping back. A broken smirk curves his bloodied mouth. “Then maybe you’re mine already.”

The ground tilts beneath me. My chest is a storm. Nothing makes sense except the pulse hammering between us, as if he poured his darkness straight into my veins.

And I can’t pull away.

Instead, my hand braces firmer, stopping the bleed. Instead, my eyes stay locked on him—stranger, sinner, danger incarnate.

Instead, I let the unholy thought come: Maybe I don’t want to be saved.

And when I press harder to slow the bleeding, my thoughts betray me again.

He’s carved like the saints. But none of them ever made my hands tremble.

I don’t remember how long the forest breathes around us, but at some point his body slackens, heavy. His eyes roll back.

Panic slams me. “No—no, don’t you dare—” My hands scramble uselessly across his chest, trying to press harder, trying to hold back the tide of blood leaving him.

Think. Think.

I shouldn’t know what to do. But some stubborn spark in me does.

I hook his arms over my shoulders. Dig my heels into frozen soil. Drag.

Each step is agony. His body is dead weight, his blood streaking across my habit, sinking into the earth behind me. The cold burns my lungs, my muscles tear, my knees buckle. But I don’t stop.

Because leaving him behind means death. And I don’t want that on my hands.

But strangely, deep within me—I don’t want him gone.

There’s an abandoned storm shelter not far—a half-buried shack I stumbled into last spring. Forgotten. Hidden. I’ve kept its secret like a talisman, never daring to imagine I’d use it for this.

Now, its door groans open beneath my weight.

I all but collapse, hauling his body inside. A small cot sits dust-laden against the wall. Somehow, I get him onto it. My arms shake so violently I almost fall when I let go.

The lantern light paints him gold. He looks even more ruinous here—tattoos cutting sharp around blood and bruises. A dagger ink climbs up his ribs beside the words: Miserere mei, Deus.

Have mercy on me, O God.

The irony twists through me until I almost laugh—or sob.

Because mercy is exactly what I’ve already given him. Mercy that will damn me.

I tear at the torn fabric of his shirt, pressing hard against the wound. His face jerks, a sound torn from his throat. His hand latches onto mine again—reflexive, punishing, strong.

“You don’t have to die,” I whisper, desperate, steadying my voice even as my heart scatters.

He blinks, dazed, the smirk gone now. Only fire left—or something deeper I can’t understand.

“Why?” His voice cracks, rough. “Why are you helping me?”

I should tell him the truth: because I was raised to help those in need. Because I chose compassion before obedience. Because I don’t know how to walk away.

Instead, my voice comes out raw, no filters: “Because I can’t let you go.”

He stares at me like he wants to devour me whole.

“You’ll regret this,” he murmurs. Eyes heavy, closing. His body goes slack beneath my hands.

Then silence. His chest stills.

I hold my breath until—there. A flutter beneath my palm. His pulse, faint but steady.

My whole body collapses forward, trembling, sweat slicking my skin despite the cold.

I know for certain that this man is danger. Death. Violence written all over his body. He doesn’t belong in this world of prayer and purity.

And yet somehow, I can’t help but want to stay close to him and make sure he is well.

I sit beside him in the shadowy dark, my hands smeared in his blood, my thoughts soaked in thunder.

If Mother Superior finds out, I’ll be exiled. My vows will be stripped. My future burned before it even begins.

And I’ve seen it before—what they do to girls who stray. The last sister who disobeyed vanished overnight. No goodbye. No name ever spoken again.

But none of that matters here. Not with him just inches away—breathing, alive, a sinner carved in beautiful ruin, a stranger already tangled into my veins.

I brush hair from his temple with shaking fingers. His heat sears me. His lips move faintly, forming a word I can’t catch.

It doesn’t matter.

Because I feel it anyway—the pull. The tether. The warning. The promise.

I close my eyes, whispering the only prayer I have left. Forgive me, Father. I was ready to give you my soul tomorrow. But tonight, he just stole my breath.