Author's Note: Hello and welcome to chapter nine of "Cross". I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to read the last chapter and those that reviewed, FireChildSlytherin5, Beautiful Liar Please Save Me, Faith-Catherine, ShipsThatFly, saichick, xevanescentstar, VoloDiNotte, the anonymous reviewer and CxXxDarkWolf5xXxD. Also, as always, I'd like to thank everyone who added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys all made my week. Thanks a million! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part 9 The Lesson

Rowan was fifteen when she first began to learn about love. And with the knowledge of love came the knowledge of secrets, small, nervous things kept locked away in darkened hearts. She herself did not have any secrets and for a long time, she never imagined that her friend, the sad young man with the blue eyes, could have any of his own. But that was before her girlishness began to grow into tentative womanhood. Before she was shocked out of her naivety. Before her friend, her beloved idol, wavered on his pedestal.

It all happened when she was only fifteen.

Fifteen was an otherwise conflicted age for Rowan, who had no mother to guide her through the trials of approaching maturity. And her first lesson of love wasn't gleaned from a book or heard preached from the pulpit. It was something that happened to her. Something she unintentionally stumbled upon. Something she witnessed one day and would not forget.

Rowan would never forget. Not when she was fifteen. Not in the years to come, when the memory would bother her at odd hours of unnatural weakness. Rowan would never forget what she saw. And she would never forget that shadow in her mind. That menacing threat of doubt.

Doubt in him. In the sad young man with the blues eyes. Her idol. Her very life.

But she had doubted him, for an instant on a single day, when she was coming up from the training grounds, moving along the dimly lit corridor between the women's dormitories and the washrooms. She was alone and she hadn't been looking for her friend, although he had been conspicuously absent from their afternoon lessons. But she had found him nonetheless, run into him quite unexpectedly in that small, cramped hallway that only the female novices were allowed to traverse and the men were forbidden from even glimpsing.

She was halfway up the labyrinth passage, which always seemed to curve inward towards the bowels of the building when she heard his voice. Rowan stopped. She pulled herself close to the wall. She watched and she listened. And she saw him, the sad young man with the blue eyes. She saw him with Priestess.

They were standing close together. Or maybe, Rowan reasoned, it was Priestess who was standing close to him, drawing nearer and nearer in that narrow corner of the hall, where the shadows spread out in dark stains along the floor.

And she noticed, much to her surprise, that her friend seemed wary. On edge. His head was turned to the side and he held himself all tight and tense, his arms crossed at the waist. That bothered Rowan, planted a little seed of unease in her mind. She had never seem him look nervous before. No, he was strong. He was resilient. He was the one who could stand before that cruel woman, unbowed, undefeated, uncompromising. He was the one who had knocked her to the ground and told her to get up, get up. He was the only one who wasn't frightened of Priestess.

Or so Rowan had thought. Or so she had fervently believed.

Curiosity kept her there and she pressed herself against the damp wall, wondering just why the whole scene seemed so terribly wrong to her. A bell was going off in her mind, much like the bell in the chapel that sounded the hours. It was a warning and she listened to it, placing her faith in the instinct that told her something horrible was about to happen. But even the warning was hopeless, for Rowan realized that she there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was powerless. She was weak.

And he was strong. Or at least, she thought he had been.

Not now, though. Now he was weak.

Priestess seemed to realize this and she herself didn't look quite so imposing in the soft light. Her reddish hair was spilling out of her braids and in the gloom, her scarred nose was disguised, giving her a look a subtle femininity. When she spoke, her voice was low.

"I think you are ready," she said. Her boots shifted on the sticky floor as she tried to get closer to him.

The muscles in his jaw pulled tight, the veins by his temples bulging till they looked like stretched cords. "I am honored that you find such promise in me," he answered. As he spoke, he raised a hand, covering his lips until his voice was a mild echo, like water dripping into some dark cistern. "I have been in training for-"

"Five years," Priestess lisped. "That is enough…for someone like you. I have told the Monsignors. I have told them of your talent and skill. We've agreed upon it. You will be ordained as soon as Lent is over. You will take the cross."

Rowan drew back, her stomach squirming with daunted delight. Her friend was going to be ordained. He was going to be a made a Priest. She felt proud and she felt happy and she felt just a little bit of a hope, just a little bit of hope that she too would join him some day. She too would be like him.

Not like Priestess. Like him.

Rowan gave into the fantasy. She imagined him with the cross on his forehead and she imagined herself looking the same way, being joined together in a way that was deep and profound and unbreakable. It would be a realization of all that she had worked for. A reward for her faith. And it would all be worth it, all the pain and deprivation and loneliness, just to see him succeed and to know that someday, yes, someday, she would too….

Because he was strong and she was going to be like him. She was going to-

"Do you think you are ready?" Priestess asked suddenly, although there was no real question in her tone. She was leaning against the wall, one knee bent, her posture casual, informal.

Rowan decided she didn't like the way the woman looked. It was unnatural. It was wrong. Her skin started to creep as she stared at the two of them and she felt as though spiders, with their gossamer legs, were running up and down her arms. She had an awful chill, watching Priestess talk to her friend. And the chill, which started along her spine, finally reached her gut, dropping a hard, cold stone into her stomach.

Rowan shivered. She was cold, but for some reason, she knew that they were warm, standing there under the gentle electric light bulbs that hummed like insects.

The sweat gleamed on his forehead. Rowan saw him raise his arm and wipe the side of his face with his sleeve. "If you say I am," he grated noncommittally, his bluff very obvious.

And Priestess, who was wretchedly astute, caught his hesitance. "That is an unfair answer," she said. "You either are or you aren't. Which one is it?"

She had suddenly become very demanding and there was an urgency in her tone and her body language. Her fingers were knotted together and her whole body, long, elegant limbs, lean torso, angular face, seemed to bristle. Her warrior's roughness had been replaced with a sleekness, giving her the appearance of a wily, wicked cat. But Rowan realized that she too was on edge. Very, very on edge.

And there was tension in the air. An indefinable atmosphere that colored the quiet conversation and made Rowan's heart thump loudly in her chest. She knew she was seeing something odd here, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. In a way, it seemed both horrible and attractive. Repulsive and…tempting.

She flicked her tongue along her lips, wetting them. Perhaps I shouldn't be watching this, she thought, but continued to gawk anyway.

Priestess had advanced on him again and there was only a breath of space between them. She could see her friend's chest heaving, could see that he was trapped. Cornered. The poor hunted mouse.

And there was nothing she could do to help him.

"I am," he said, clenching his calloused fingers into fists. "I am…ready."

Priestess half-turned. For an instant, Rowan caught sight of her jagged nostril. It occurred to her then that she might have been beautiful, if it hadn't been for her scars. There was a certain stateliness about her, a certain womanliness. Rowan recognized it. She wondered if he did too.

"Poverty," Priestess said slowly, the word dripping from her lips like honey. But the sweetness didn't suit her acidic tone and she only ended up sounding forbidding. "Obedience. And chastity. Do you think you can manage it? Celibacy, I mean."

He was really sweating now, the droplets of moisture trailing down his cheeks, his eyes darting around the tight corner as if in search of escape. "I…"

"It can be difficult. And it can be lonely. Are you lonely?"

He did not have time to respond. She was close to him, closer than she had been before. At any moment, her breasts, concealed beneath her smooth black tunic, would be pressed against his chest and they would be touching each other. It was something Rowan didn't want to see, something that made her angry and, if she was being honest with herself, jealous.

What Priestess was doing, she knew, was wrong. Very wrong. But just why exactly was she doing it?

"I am lonely sometimes," the woman said, a certain tremor making her words almost inaudible over the humming light bulbs. "The Church took me when I was very young. I do not remember my life before. I do not think I even had one. I was one of the first, of course. The first of the Priests. I have known nothing else, but I am lonely. Do you think that is wicked? Do you think it is wrong for me to be lonely?"

A pause. A precious, breathless pause. Priestess seemed to be waiting for him to say something and when he didn't, a look of wild abandon swept over her, consuming her countenance until her former self, her rigidity and restraint, was cast off in favor of luxurious indulgence.

"I remember," she said, "those times when we would spar in the arena. And you…you would lay your body on top of mine…It was what I wanted…"

And then she did touch him. Or at least, she tried to. Rowan saw her raise her hand, saw it hover over his chest, over his heart. Her hands were shaking. She had never seen Priestess tremble like that before.

Rowan's eyes burned. She felt like her skin was being pricked by the tiny needles her mother had once used to darn socks and old clothing. She felt like that cold stone was rattling around in her stomach, ready to tear apart her insides.

She wanted to look away. She couldn't see this. He was going to kiss her…

But her friend was strong. Resilient. Uncompromising. He did touch Priestess. He took her hand and thrust it away roughly, threw her off balance and sent her reeling back against the wall.

"You should not say such things," he admonished. "We give words power when we speak them."

He whirled away, putting his back to her as he strode down the hall.

Priestess was on her feet in an instant, though and Rowan thought that if she wasn't so unbending herself, she might have gone after him.

"You used to tell me," she said, her voice no longer repressed, but echoing with a terrible threat. "When you first came here, you used to tell me that I reminded you of your wife!"

And even though he didn't slow his step, Rowan did not fail to notice the slight hitch in his gait.

His face was of thunder as he walked away.

Author's Note: Hmm, I think it's safe to say that this other Priestess has some major issues, haha.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. Feedback always makes me smile. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly a week. Until then, take care and be well!