She held the dagger which stole his life,

And all she could do was wail and weep to the saddest poem.

A hooded figure, the sinful Priest, leads the shivering prisoner down a cobblestone path, and not one soul dares to stop them, no soldier with lips stained with wine from a drunken night orders them to halt, and no curious eyes peer through dark windows. They are completely graced by the shadows of the night.

"Thou art safe with me," says the Priest, leading her into a dark shadow, a crooked building. "Thou shall never fear death again."

"Nay, I fear something far worse," she says, tremulous and frightened, reluctantly withholding from entering the building. "I fear that I may be entering a new prison."

"Nay," he says, tightening his hold upon her. She reassesses and abruptly snatches her hand away from the man who had cried out to God in the midst of many nights, praying that his words would be sufficient enough to stir her heart and lure her into his arms of safety, escaping the noose and drowning in his passion.

"Thou art free here," he says, desperate to reassure her, reaching for her hand. "Thou art free with me."

She refuses, for her body no longer dwells within the darkness of a cell; and under the star lit sky, in the safety of Reims, she withdraws from him and dares to find her own path. However, her actions of fleeing the infatuated Priest, which are fueled by her desire to have freedom, are greatly overpowered by his fervor and voracity, and he snatches her like a thief placing his greedy fingers upon a golden goblet.

Priest and convict wrestle in the night. Her screams are dry and her refusal distresses him, pains his aching mind and strikes the throbbing wound upon his chest. She snarls, struggles to release herself from his iron hold, feet kicking, arms flailing. And he silences her, wraps a pale hand over her lips, and manages to contain her, dragging her reluctant form into the dark building.

He yelps. Blood trickles down his knuckles, and her teeth are lined in red. She escapes him, temporarily. Her arms stretch forward, anxious to reach the door which will either damn her heart to the shadows of another prison or liberate her. It does neither.

The Priest reaches for her, tangles his bloodied fingers in her hair, and draws her back into his frail body, into the warmth she once craved in the dungeons. However, the blistering gash upon his hand is unbearable, and he releases her with a whimper, her struggling body falling to the ground. An eerie sound fills his itching ears, like that of a withered branch snapping in two, and his eyes fixate on a stream of dark blood that trickles down the slope of her forehead.

For a moment he is silent. He is still, motionless like a statue. He watches the girl and ponders her life, for he had sought to save the heathen, yet she lies unresponsive. And then she breathes, and he's home yet again. He sighs, rubbing a hand upon his aching forehead, and gathers the girl in his feeble arms, whisking her body away into the shadows of safety.

She stirs in the bed he has laid her upon. It's small and rather uncomfortable, and her head pounds as if she has been strung upside down for much too long. Groaning, she reaches for her head, fingers rustling her hair, and she clenches her teeth at the immense pain it brings her to dare touch the wound.

A bottle falls over, glass rolling against uneven stone flooring, and she whips her head to the right. It's the Priest, that dark and familiar shadow, that shallow breathing she has heard many times before in the midst of her thoughts, in the darkness of the night, in the unholy depths of the dungeons.

"Thou hast taken me to Hell," she says.

A candle falls over, the light thud catching her ears, and she whips her head to the left. He's a rather clumsy thing.

"Rest, child," he says in a faint whisper—one that enters sleeping ears, teasing their dreams and lulling their hearts. But it's anything but calm and docile to her.

She groans, "Nay, I shan't stay here." Rising from the bed, only to stumble forward upon numb feet like a babe learning to walk, she collapses. Her fingers grip his cassock as she stumbles into his outstretched arms, his hands grasping her shoulders and stabling her. He holds her, braces her fall; and she does not move away from him, this warmth she has fallen into. She slumps into him and remains motionless in his embrace, for she is weak and unable to stand. And perhaps she wishes to remain within him, to remain in the blissful memory of a fair haired man holding her in his arms—Phoebus.

"Thou smell of wine," she says, deeply inhaling and nuzzling her face into his chest, into that wound that makes him cringe in agony, reminding him of the torment she had put him through. And though he longs for her nimble fingers to remove his cassock, expose his flesh and his sufferings, and to grace his scar with her lips, this angel whose heart he craves, he quickly loses hope and withdraws into indifference at her small utterance, "Phoebus."

"Why dost thou smell of wine?" she asks, gripping him and drowning in the scent. He holds his breath, reminds himself that she is imagining him to be anything than what he truly is. And he damns her for it. However, cloaked in fear, loathing, and passion, his heart still flutters at her touch, and he wonders if she can hear it, feel it soaring, pounding upon his ribs and begging to leap out and caress her, this beautiful girl atop him.

He lifts a weary hand, the raw gash throbbing, and he brushes timid fingers through her hair. She moans at his touch, imagining it to be the touch of her Sun God, and she tightens her hold upon him and falls into distant memories. But the Priest, a slave at her feet, cannot help to suppress his longing anymore, and in one last attempt to silence the demon within, he speaks,

"Thou must rest lest I surrender to your imaginings of that accursed man."

She sighs, refuses to hear another word, "Am I not resting upon a bed: One that breathes with me and protects me? One that. . ." She trails off, those beautiful words never reaching his ears. And in this moment they share, Priest and convict upon the floor of safety, he questions the sleeping girl as his heart vigorously pounds at the desirable yet unholy thought of waking her and claiming her as his own. Nevertheless, he claims her lips. And until the next sunrise, it is all she can feel, his lips. They leave her shuddering, for it is all she can fathom, that burning sensation, that foul contamination that is not Phoebus.

And when dawn sheds light upon them both, these two bodies sprawled upon the floor; she wakes, scurries away from him, and seeks escape. It is short lived.

"Where art thou going?" he asks, bringing the girl to a halt, her fingers trembling as they rest upon the edge of a window.

"Thou art heedless of the kindness of sunlight, Priest," she says, fury brewing within her chest.

"Thou shalt not argue!"

"Nay! Thou promised me freedom, sunlight, life! Thou lied!" She points a finger at him, and humiliation washes over him.

"Ah—it is not enough," he says, gesturing towards the room in which they occupy: a sufficient bed lying in the corner, a wash basin atop a wooden stand, suitable clothes filling a chest, and a window that overlooks Reims, the delicious scent of hot rolls entering and enticing them both.

"Let me taste the sun," she says, desperate to move his heart, for time in the dungeons had robbed her of such freedoms and time in the makeshift home she shares with the brooding Priest is no different if not worse. "Let me feel its warmth lest I leave here and never return." Her threat rips him apart and leaves him with a gaping hole where the coldest of winds roll through him.

"Nay," he says, "Thou shall stay here. Thou will be safe."

But she has no trust in his words, and at night she evades him through the lose window pane and scampers about the desolate streets. The light of the moon guides her weary feet as she seeks freedom, that tantalizing virtue which envelopes her and whispers promises of life into her desperate ears. And then something sweet ensnares her heart, something that is longed for in the night and missed in the day—his voice.

"Phoebus!" she cries, running to the shadow of a man who had once led her to the back streets of Paris to steal a kiss in the dark.

"Stay back, fiend!" he cries, "Come here not! Begone!" He waves his hand at her as if she's a pestering stray begging for food, this raggedy, dingy creature, no longer a woman of desire, but a regrettable reminder of torment.

"Phoebus!" she cries, "Hast thou forgotten me?—Forgotten Paris? Recall those days of love, of whispers shared in the light of day, kisses given in the heat of summer. Were they not as true as the rain is true to the soil which craves it?"

"I know thee not!" he says, quickly withdrawing from her lest she cause him grief and drag him back to the tormenting pain of a dagger's point piercing his body. "Begone I say! Begone from here!" He outstretches an arm, a lone finger pointing to the void space that separates them, demanding that she return to the darkened world in which she came. And she can hardly bear it.

She nears him, shaken hands rising to calm the situation in which they drown in, but he sneers, refuses to be touched by her, this troublesome woman, and he escapes into the night. She watches, remains still, faint echoes of conversations ringing in her ears, his voice forever gone. Then she remembers to breathe, inhales deeply, the expansion of her torso striking pain within her. It's diabolical, the feeling of unrequited love. And she whimpers.

A black bird flutters in the sky and lands upon her shoulder, Betrayal, and it hisses in her ear and mocks her. Ashamed, she withdraws into the dark shadows of towering, nearby buildings and yearns to rid herself from life, yearns for the rope of twine she had been promised in Paris, for a life without Phoebus, a life without a soul to claim and share intimate feelings with, without a beating heart to surrender to at night and caress in the day, is not a life at all.

Her hope shatters into countless pieces, smaller than fragments, unable to ever be forged together again. And as the pieces lie upon the floor, they rumble about to the vibrations surging through the ground. Dark figures patrol the streets, their heavy footsteps shaking Reims and stirring her irrepressible thoughts. Muffled voices haunt her, her name slipping through their stern, dry lips, harsh shadows from their lowered visors hiding their faces. And she remembers the words of the Priest, Thou shall stay here. Thou will be safe. But the night has grown darker and her senses have left her with nothing but the immense fear of being captured and dragged back to the darkness of an unforgiving cell.

"Befriend me, Pandemonium," she whispers, "for he loves me no more, and my home is far from this place."

The night carries on, endless as it seems, but soon the sun rises and she basks in its beauty and warmth: warmth, like that of a hug from a dear friend, a chaste kiss from a lover, or awe from faithful admirers. She remembers him, the Priest, odd and mysterious; he was the only giver of warmth. And she longs for it, for soon the sun will sink back into the horizon and she will be left alone with sinister, murmuring voices of cold, armored soldiers who seek her soul, a soul she now dreams of keeping as long as her wounds are able to heal.

And she returns to him, seeks out that crooked building.

"It is not enough," says the Priest from within the building, eyes scanning the streets below, mind racing with thoughts, wondering if she will ever return. A shaking hand traces Biblical verses into the fog that smothers the window in which she had escaped the night before:

Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa;

Vulnerasti cor meum in uno oculorum tuorum,

et in uno crine colli tui.

. . .

Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse;

thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes,

with one chain of thy neck.

He grips his cassock, fingers grazing upon a wound underneath. And he agonizes over the thought of never seeing the beautiful gypsy girl again. He wallows in despair, torturing his aching mind with visions of her fingers entwined with another's, a lover; dares to wonder what can be worse, a lover embracing her and leading her to his bed, or the executioner leading her to the gibbet.

He nearly chokes on the impure thoughts, gasps for air, and finds that the feeling of being strangled is no different than striving to earn her affections, strangled by her refutation. And though he had more than often tantalized his soul with beautiful yet unholy thoughts of the girl beckoning him into her arms, he hangs his head and recalls her words of freedom. Regret gnaws at his heart: if only he had let her have the sun, given her what she craved, she'd have never escaped. However, he also drowns in the imaginings of what could have blossomed between them had she stayed. Nevertheless, he blames his stubborn heart.

"Oh, but it will never be enough," he says, "I am but dirt beneath her feet, her dancing feet that trample upon my mind and leave me numb."

And he soon craves his own freedom, and he begs for liberation from her taunting form, from the regret, betrayal, and loathing he succumbs to in her absence.

"The angel, all I ever yearned for, has left me. Never again shall her presence grace my soul, this soul which longs for her heart, this soul which would joyfully take her place, creep beneath Lucifer's claw for one last kiss, this soul which will forever more sing her song, worship her form. Oh, God have mercy on me for what I am to do! Have mercy. Oh, God! Sing my sorrows so that I may never be forgotten, though she has forgotten me."

The darkened building, crooked in appearance and ominous to venture near, beckons her to draw near should she request the warmth of the tortured man who lingers inside. And she does. She opens the door that she once imagined to be the gates to Hell, and she peers into the room she was once carried into by the arms of a troubled Priest, a gash upon her head distressing his mind. However, as her eyes trail up the contorted body that lies upon the floor in a pool of blood, a shimmering dagger clutched in a wounded hand, she stifles a scream and soon her own mind is distressed.

Standing still before the grotesque scene, she becomes deathly silent; only her shallow breathing can be heard. The sunlight pours in through the window and illuminates foreign words, their shadow falling upon the body of the man who wrote them with a trembling finger. And like a phantom gracing the dark halls of an abandoned home, she glides to the window, careful not to disturb the pool of blood that slowly eases towards her feet. For a long moment, she stands before the glass motionless and silent, not a thought in her mind. She reaches for them, those words, silently traces them, and mouths what she doesn't understand:

Averte oculos tuos a me,

Quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt.

. . .

Turn away thine eyes from me,

for they have overcome me.

Tears swell in her eyes for the first time since she had been convicted of a crime in Paris in which she had no knowledge of, because she had felt the pain of unrequited love from a man she had once deemed gallant; and though she had yearned for him to return her affections, she had simultaneously rejected the deep affections of another—one who had been willingly to risk his life in order to lead her to safety, one who had been willing to sell his soul to the Reaper if necessary, one who she now longed to see alive yet again.

A/N: If you liked it, tell me what you think! :) Reviews are appreciated.