Author's Note: Welcome to part eleven of "Cross". Honestly, I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for all the wonderful feedback I've received for this story. Thank you FireChildSlytherin5, Pangolin Dreams, ShipsThatFly, saichick, R-Bizzle, Decima Morta, J-lily, Nel, and Inwe[z]247. Also, I'd like to thank the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys are the best! I truly am thankful for your kind comments and support. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part 11 The Secret

Rowan had a secret of her own now, something that she kept within her, pinned to her heart like a badge of honor. It was a thought and a whisper and a doubt, a nightmare that came to her when she slept, trailing wispy shadows of memory across her haunted mind. And when she woke she remembered everything, the words, the glances, the hesitant touches…Priestess standing in the corridor, the dim, flickering light on her scarred face.

It was her secret, what she had witnessed. But it was a secret that also belonged to him. To Priest. That was what she called him now. Her friend. The sad young man with the blue eyes.

A week after Easter he had been taken into the chapel and ordained. None of the other novices were permitted to view the ceremony, but they all eagerly awaited his return outside in the iron-walled courtyard, their excitement hanging on breathless moments of anticipation and wild curiosity. It was some hours before he emerged and when he did, he looked much the same, still the sad young man with the blue eyes…and a cross tattooed on his reddened forehead.

The cross.

It was the color of ashes, running from temple to temple, fading back into the flesh before it reached the bridge of the nose. Rowan thought it was beautiful, a manifestation of the soul imprinted on the skin. But as she watched him leave the chapel, thronged by a group of younger novices, she began to feel sad.

Priest had his cross, but she, as always, had nothing. He was a member of the clergy and she was not. He would be called off to war, but she, yes she, would stay in the city. Alone.

The notion of solitude had never frightened her before, but it taunted her now. It was a promise and a vague threat. It was a hard knot of unfounded fear that formed in her chest, moving and breathing and beating along with her all too fragile heart.

She became aware of the smooth flesh between her eyes, which was bare and unmarked. She became aware of her youth and her weakness, which would keep her from being ordained for at least another few years. But the world was moving without her. Changing. It was a world of secrets and shadowed corridors. A world in which Priest no longer belonged to her, but to someone else, to a shapeless mystery, to a nameless interloper.

And as Rowan watched him move through the courtyard, bypassing the insolent and intrusive questions of the other novices (Marcus in particular wanted to know if it had hurt, he was very much concerned with pain), she thought of reaching out to him. The hem of his tunic brushed past her knees and she even stretched out her fingers, wanting to touch the rough cloth, to catch hold of him and press him close to her, because they were different now. They were divided.

But Rowan knew it would be wrong of her, to touch what should never touched. She let him go instead, remembering the final lesson of her own mother, who had sent her only daughter out into the world without a single tear or regret.

Priest passed from the iron-walled courtyard. The bells were ringing in the chapel belfry and the sound was hard and metallic. Unforgiving. It resonated deep within the soul and throbbed against the heart, where Rowan could already feel several cracks forming. And she thought she might shatter with each great clang. She thought she would fall apart and let her secret out into the world, where it would no longer be hers and it would no longer be Priest's, because it was the only thing they truly shared.

Tears. There were tears in her eyes.

Rowan blinked and turned her gaze away. In the doorway of the chapel, she noticed Priestess standing there with the rest of the ordained clergy. Her bearing was regal yet somehow stiff, her own cross splayed across her pale forehead, the mark of someone blessed, but also damned.

It was then that Rowan realized something she had fought to ignore, something she had hidden in every memory and thought and whispered dream.

The secret belonged to them…but it belonged to her as well. To Priestess.

And the bells kept on ringing.

"No," Rowan said, her hands clenching into determined fists as she looked at the woman, the interloper, the enemy. "No," she said, " no, it's mine."

It wasn't until later that night that Rowan realized she was not half as strong as her mother had been. She could not let Priest pass from her life in quiet dignity, could not quell the sudden pain brought on by the threat of separation. After lights out, when the rest of the novices were ordered to their dormitories, she lingered behind in the washrooms, waiting until she could safely sneak into the men's sleeping quarters. The act itself would have been more daring had Priest still been a novice, but as an ordained member of the clergy, he was granted the privilege of a private cell away from the long, open rooms the initiates slept in. Rowan knew she probably wouldn't be caught. And she also knew that she would probably be alone with Priest. The mere notion thrilled her.

The monastery was quiet that night, as it was almost every night and she had no trouble navigating the narrow passages that snaked through the dormitories. And Priest himself was easy to find, because he wasn't asleep but standing in the doorway of his small room.

The cell was bare, as Rowan had expected it to be. Priest had his back turned when she came to the open door and he was arranging a few prayer books on the shelf over the bed. His silver rosary, a gift from the Monsignors to all the newly ordained, swung by his belt as he moved.

Rowan hesitated on the threshold. She was bathed in the glow from the lone light bulb affixed to the ceiling and the shadows of the long corridor were at her back, whispering harsh admonitions and hidden threats that she readily took to heart. She wasn't supposed to be there, in the men's dormitories. It was gross misconduct. It was wrong. And the punishment for such a trespass, she knew, would be cruel.

But it was worth it, maybe, to see Priest, to catch a tiny glimpse of his private life which she so desperately wanted to be a part of. Rowan loved the way his hands moved methodically over his books, the way he straightened them on the shelf and let his fingers brush over the cracked spines. For a wild, unrestrained instant, she imagined what it would be like if those hands touched her just as tenderly….

The thought troubled her though, and Rowan was immediately disgusted by it. Moving her feet, she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, hoping to shake loose the wicked temptation that was spreading through her mind like an inkblot. But it was Priest, with his discerning ears, who heard her shuffling about in the corridor behind him. He turned around, dropping a thin book of novenas onto his narrow bed.

Rowan's flesh burned when his gaze fall upon her. She was ashamed.

"You shouldn't be here," Priest said, but surprisingly, there was no reproach in his voice, only frank curiosity. "What are you doing?" His words broke off into a faint whisper and he quickly stuck his head through the door, glancing down the hall to see if anyone might be lingering in the deep shadows.

Rowan felt dizzy with heat. The skin on the back of her neck was clammy and she cracked her knuckles, folding her fingers against her sweaty palms. She knew she should apologize to him. She knew she should plead forgiveness for such a wrongful intrusion, but for some reason, her visit felt justified.

It had been Priest, after all, whom she had caught in the women's dormitories only a few short weeks ago. And he certainly wasn't allowed there. He certainly was trespassing.

"I didn't have a chance," she began by way of explanation, "to talk to you after you left the chapel this morning. And I didn't know if I'd have the chance…I didn't know if they'd make you leave," she finished lamely, trying to get her point across but failing miserably.

Rowan looked at Priest and silently begged him to understand. The new cross on his forehead, his crowning glory, stared back at her and she realized it really was ugly, really was wretched, because it would bring so many terrible things. Priest was a Priest now, and ordained members of the clergy didn't stay in the city for long. They became soldiers. They fought vampires. They went to war.

And if Priest went to war tomorrow, if he left in the early hours of the grey morning before the bell for matins could sound and before Rowan could catch a glimpse of him, she knew she might never see him again.

There were tears in her eyes. Tears.

Don't leave, she thought. Please, please don't leave me.

Priest sighed. He picked up his book of novenas and shoved it carelessly on the shelf. But he wasn't angry, she realized. Just exhausted. His spirit had been whittled down and resurrected. Rowan knew that the preparations for ordination were arduous, to put it kindly. All candidates spent three days in pray and fasting, only to culminate their spiritual journey with a long ceremony and the oft times painful bestowing of the cross.

She noticed now how thin Priest looked in his long black tunic. His flesh was pulled close to the bone and his eyes, his sad blue eyes, were streaked with traces of blood.

And this is only the beginning, she mused. This is only the beginning…for all of us.

Suddenly, she found she wasn't too eager to be ordained.

Priest sighed again and sank onto the edge of his bed, which was only a straw pallet with a moldy looking brown blanket. "Something is troubling you," he said, ever astute to the pain of others, although his own agony was surely considerable.

Rowan felt very selfish then for having disturbed him during his one moment of peace. But she was selfish when it came to him, wishing to keep him for herself, keep him away from Priestess, who had stood in the hall with him outside the woman's dormitories and pressed her body to his until Rowan thought they were going to kiss…

She had been absolutely certain they were going to kiss.

Her thoughts were spiraling out of control and she had to lean against the open door for support, the steel jamb pressing into her shoulder until her arm went numb. Rowan wanted to unburden herself. She wanted to tell him of that secret fear she had, which was still nameless even to her. She wanted to tell him that she thought about him and Priestess and that she was angry. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to tell him that…

"I heard," Rowan said at length. "I heard that you have a wife."

She had expected more of a reaction from him. Priest was aloof, but not cold. His emotions were easy to pick apart and Rowan herself had learned to look for the signs of his personal distress, the quiet clenching of a fist, the furrowing of a brow, the twitch of a vein in his temple.

But Priest kept his head bowed and she couldn't see his face. His hands, however, rested quietly on his knees and he looked calm, almost. He looked…relieved.

"Who told you?" he asked impassively.

"Marcus," Rowan replied, inventing a lie. She didn't want him to know that she had seen him with Priestess and it was easy to pin the blame on Marcus. Priestess often called the boy an instigator and he had a habit of taking pleasure in rumor or whatever gossip he could scrape together. If anything, Rowan thought Marcus would be proud to have his name attached to such a weighty secret, considering that he delighted in the sins of others.

"Marcus," Priest echoed. "That boy is already lost."

Rowan didn't know what he meant and she didn't bother to question him. Purpose had narrowed her mind. The truth, she felt, must be close at hand. Feeling bold, she took another cautious step inside the cell. It would be too much, she realized, to sit on the bed next to Priest, but she wanted to be close to him anyway, as close as she possibly could.

She could see his chest rising and falling beneath his black tunic and she imagined what his heart would sound like if she could hear it beating. Steady, probably. Calm. As measured as a slow rainfall on a tin roof.

The light bulb blared overhead, showing all the tiny nicks and abrasions on Priest's scalp where his razor had shaved too close. The skin around that ugly cross was a sickly red and Rowan wondered how much it had hurt him…how much it would hurt her.

And she was standing so close to him, close enough to touch his shoulder.

But Priest looked up at her then, his expression open and honest, yet surprisingly hollow. Numb, Rowan decided. He seemed numb.

"It is true," he told her in a quiet voice. "I had a wife."

"Had?" Rowan picked up on the insinuation at once. "Is she dead?"

"No, but she is not my wife anymore."

Rowan knew her curiosity was wrong. Indecent, even. But the blood had rushed to her cheeks and was pounding in her ears and she felt that she had to know everything, that she had to know it all or she would be nothing. It was like a wound, a festering sore within her and she had to bleed first, she had to let the pain and the shock overwhelm her before she could be whole again.

Priest had a wife. He had been married. He had…loved.

She wasn't sure how that made her feel. Sad, perhaps. Or maybe she was…maybe she was just jealous.

Jealous as she had been when she saw him standing with Priestess. Jealous as she had been when she thought they would kiss. Oh God, no.

Rowan's teeth clicked together as she clenched her jaw, biting down hard on her rising torment. It was coming, she had to say it. "Did you love her?"

It was a terrible question, one that Priest didn't deserve. But he accepted the burden laid upon him, his back curving a little as he took the added weight onto his shoulders.

"Yes," he said, "but I love God more."

Rowan thought that was the best answer she could have possibly hoped for. Her idol was restored to his pedestal and she could continue worshipping him, could allow herself to be blinded by his beauty and his strength and all the things she loved, yes loved, about him.

"When the Churchmen came, she didn't want me to leave," Priest said. He had squeezed his hands into fists. "But I went with them. There would be nothing, there would be no hope in this world if I hadn't." He paused, he swallowed. "She is not my wife anymore."

It was the first hint of sadness Rowan could detect in his voice. The sorrow, which always seemed to fill his eyes now seeped into his words and she thought, for a moment, that he might cry.

And she didn't want to see him cry. It was enough. Enough.

She had what she came for.

"I'm sorry," Rowan said, turning away from him and back towards the door, "for everything."

She was already in the corridor when she heard him. He was speaking to her and he was crying at the same time, the tears in his voice creating a dreadful echo that followed her out into the shadows.

"My wife's name was Shannon," Priest called after her. "And my daughter's name was Lucy."

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! Part Twelve is in the works and should be posted in roughly a week. Until then, take care and be well!