A/N: Warning - this chapter is ultra, ultra nerdy. The inscription Klaus reads at Qetsiyah's statue is a quote from the English translation of Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". And, in case y'all weren't totally tired of me and thefudge constantly blowing smoke up each other's ass, I should also mention this chapter owes a lot of inspiration to her fic "Hell With You".

Thank you for your reviews and for giving this fic a chance. This has taken hold of me like a ghost and so I'm trying to wrap it up so I can update my other fics lol. Do let me know your thoughts!


Chapter 3: a cathedral of bones


Notre-Dame had been retaken by the imprisoned, for the time being. The cathedral hummed with voices and movement, new songs and old prayers, the embattled preparing for daybreak. By sunrise, the Hunters and their militia would be at the doors once more.

He found her, again, at Qetsiyah's feet. She was staring at the plaque where the priests had marred the graven words.

She heard him approach this time. "What did it say...do you remember?"

He gazed up at the crowned figure, remembering gold and lapis and the perfume of prayers. The witch beside him was no towering icon. She was only a candleflame, gaunt as hope.

He recited quietly. "'A woman so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin, and have chosen her for His mother, and have wished to be born of her, if she had been in existence when He was made man.'"

A maiden's smile curved her mouth, but mischief danced in her eyes. "Is that really what it said?"

"Just so," he affirmed, cupping her warm face.

"Such blasphemy. No wonder the priests scratched it out," she teased, resting her cheek into his hand, soft as a dove, before a pensive look stole across her features. "Did he really love her, do you think? Silas, I mean."

"I think Notre-Dame is answer enough."

She frowned, "But he denounced it, gave it over to the Hunters. It was two hundred years before Ayanna and her sisters won it back. And by then, Qetisyah herself was nothing more than bones."

He took her by the hand, led her to the north rose window and pointed. "Look. Silas made that window, sorted each piece of glass in his own hand. When lit by the full sun, even my eyes cannot easily gaze into its brilliance. They say, it is like looking into the eye of God."

She gave him a curious look. "But you do not believe in their God, surely?"

"No," he said, flatly. "I believe in the immortality of truth. I believe that art, true art, is incapable of lying. What did Silas create with that Petrova wife he was cowed into wedding, hmm? A child that died before it could walk? A country estate long since trampled by forest?" He scoffed. "Who remembers their small, daily life? If they smiled or wept or made love, if they wiped each other's tears? Look around you, little witch." He swept an arm at the jeweled window, the arching roof, the pillars and corridors and the stone floor swept by the feet of a thousand years of pilgrims. "Love is what endures."

She came to stand beside him and touch his hand, a soft, searching look her face. The pads of her fingers were light as butterflies, but her eyes weighed on his chest like stones. His lofty proclamations rang hollow, and he swallowed a sudden dryness in his throat.

"Such fine words" she said, quietly. "Is that what you really think?"

He gazed upon her and his voice faltered. The light bathed her in blue and silver and ruby as though it wanted to consume her, make her a part of itself. History was always so hungry for a new saint, a new icon for the hapless to tuck into their bosoms when they are afraid. He wanted her completely, as a prisoner wants his freedom no matter his crime, wordlessly, without reason or recompense.

They deserved her, those meek and superstitious ones. He did not.

Niklaus drew her close, kissing her mouth with as much greed as he'd once taken her blood. Her arms went about his neck and he swallowed her breath. She burned in his embrace like molten glass. He wanted to put his hands beneath her flesh, to calcify there.

"I think I am selfish," he said roughly, his mouth hovering near hers. "I think I am starving. I think, at a single word from you, I would carry you away from here and damn every soul within these walls."

She questioned him no more, like a priest who has obtained the confession they seek. And as he gathered her in his arms, carrying her deeper into the shadows, he thought perhaps there was no difference after all between a pilgrim's and a prisoner's prayer.

An acolyte's and a monster's hunger.


They hid in the bell tower like nesting birds.

He licked ash and sweat from her shoulders, her jaw, the hollow of her throat. Her mouth circled and touched his own, her tongue wet and sweet as a strawberry between his teeth.

Their limbs were tangled tight together, like they were still scaling some treacherous height. His hands fumbled, his hunger all dizzying and desperate, grasping at her. She pushed with her magic, his back hit the stone floor and, like a cage door swinging open, the breath left his lungs. He remembered those nights of agony when the Hunters rang the bells, over and over, until his teeth chattered inside his skull. After a while, you forgot the limits of your skin and flesh, the bells with their deep waves of sound became every knowable thing, and you were only a vessel into which the tides were pouring, pouring, pouring. He lay poured out now, beneath this wisp of a witch. Her hair was tangled dust and blood, her white garment hanging in shreds. She rose above him like a crescent moon. He plunged inside her, panting like a schoolboy, hips uncouth and overeager. There was in her something infinite. Something that drove you to the edge of madness.

Her voice, breathless and plaintive, made a rosary of his name, "Nik... ahh...Nik, Nik, Nik..."

There was no god watching that could deny her. There was only him, shuddering, shuddering with each beaded syllable.


Much later, her head pillowed on his shoulder, she said simply, "I suppose I might die in the morning."

"Never."

There was a smile was in her voice when she asked, "Will you build me a chapel too, then?"

With his fingertips, Niklaus counted the pearls of her spine. He rubbed each one like a talisman.

"A cathedral, little witch. You will live, and I will build you a cathedral of their bones."