Page 54 of The Savage

The doctor clears his throat, drawing my attention gratefully away from him. ‘Sister, would you be willing to answer a few more questions? We’ll keep to gentle prompts.’

Renzo’s gaze flicks to me – your choice – then back to the doctor with warning etched into the set of his jaw. For once, the warning isn’t for me. It steadies me more than any prayer has in weeks.

‘I’ll try,’ I say.

The doctor slides a card from a folder. A church. Not the convent chapel; this one is bigger, older with vaulted arches and a rose window. My chest tightens. I know this place without knowing it; my heart walks its aisles while my head insists I’ve never crossed the threshold.

He watches my pupils, my breath. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’

‘Light,’ I say, before I can swallow the word. ‘There’s always light here when I see it in my dreams.’ My eyes sting. I blink it away.

‘Good,’ he murmurs, encouragement without pressure.

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s a church. In Manhattan,’ Renzo replies.

A glance at him shows a ferocity that sends shards of alarm through me. But within that ferocity, I catch a fleeting glimpse of something else. Something like sorrow.

I want to ask why. I want to hug him. I want to⁠—

The doctor produces another card. A silver pistol lies on a velvet cloth. ‘And this?’

My mouth goes dry. My palm prickles, like I’ve held something cold for too long. ‘No,’ I say, too quickly. ‘Nothing.’

Renzo’s gaze darkens.

The doctor moves on. Photographs of cities, of faces I don’t know but feel the ache of, like names on the tip of my tongue. He asks about food, and I say fennel and orange in winter, and the taste lands in my mouth like a long-forgotten meal. He asks about smells, and I say petrol and lilies, and Renzo lets out the smallest breath, as if a string inside him has loosened by a hair.

‘I’d like to try a sound prompt,’ the doctor says gently. ‘May I?’

My hands knot. I nod.

He presses a button on a small player. Choir – men’s voices, Latin, the Kyrie – rises, holy and lucid. The notes carve my chest open with the care of a surgeon and the savagery of a thief. I’m on my knees in a cathedral again, or still, and I can feel the cold of the stone and the heat of breath against my ear and the way a heartbeat can drown out God.

I make a small and startled sound. Renzo’s hand grips the sheet so hard his knuckles blanch. ‘Enough,’ he barks at the doctor. It’s not loud, but it ends the hymn like a fired bullet.

The doctor clicks the player off. The silence aches and I breathe in, slow. Out, slower.

‘Thank you,’ he says, writing something I can’t read. ‘That’s enough for now.’

I want to be angry with him for stopping when some part of me wanted more, for pushing when some part of me needed less. Instead I’m angry with God for putting me here in the middle of this man’s gravity, and with my own body for wanting what my vows called ruin.

‘Why do you think you can order everyone around?’ I ask suddenly, voice sharper than I intended. The question bursts out like I’ve been holding my breath for years. ‘Doctors. Soldiers. Me.’

He doesn’t blink. ‘Because it’s my right.’

My mouth falls open. ‘Your what?’

‘Power,’ he says simply, as if he’s defining a word for a child. ‘Mine was forged before you put on that habit. It doesn’t vanish because a man in a lab coat frowns at me.’

‘You can’t talk about people like they’re⁠—’

‘Pawns? Weaponry?’ His eyes glint. ‘You’d be surprised how necessary it is in this life, angel.’ He stops, breath hissing through his teeth as he shifts his leg. Something softer enters his voice, at odds with the arrogance. ‘And don’t mistake me. I’m not proud of what got me here. Well, fuck it, that’s a lie. I am what I am. A Salvatore in blood and bone. But I’ll use it to keep both of us alive.’

The doctor clears his throat again, a diplomat stepping between warring states. I feel the oddest relief that he’s here, that someone exists in this room who isn’t tethered to me by history or feral hunger edged in rage.

‘Later,’ he says to me, lowering his voice. ‘If you wish, we can discuss therapy options… privately.’