...

Junia awoke with her heart thundering in her chest. In the hazy dark of the bunk room, she imagined she could still hear Boudica's smoky laughter. The absence of the woman's dream weight against her skin felt like a rebuke, an open-palmed slap from the reticence of her mind.

On the other side of the room, Paracelsus shifted in her bed. Junia held her breath, but the plague doctor muttered something indistinct and turned over. Her snores resumed, harsh and buzzing, and Junia sighed. Her head thumped back against the pillow. The heat of her shame fast left her, and in the cold night air she found her sheets to be of little protection. They would smell musky, and she would have to find an excuse to wash them in the morning.

It was not the first time the barbarian woman had haunted her dreams. The Heir had sent her to head an expedition into the Weald. She had been gone for four days, and each night she had prowled Junia's dreaming mind with her wild smirk and strong, powerful body.

Even the most chaste of the Light's blessed felt desire; it was a gift from the Light, a reward for humanity to bask in. Junia had learned this in the seminary. Her dreams, however, were vile, condemnable, and wicked. She did not dream of Boudica as she knew her: a wild barbarian who never faltered, whose eyes flashed with fear but refused to step back. She dreamed of hot, wet wanting, of how pliable she would be in those vast, muscular arms and how thoroughly Boudica would take her.

Her cunt ached, a needy pulsing that cried out for relief. Junia laced her fingers together. She pressed her knuckles against her lips, refusing to let her hands stray down to ease that hunger. It wasn't worthy of her, and it wasn't worthy of Boudica. Guilt gnawed at her, settling nauseous unease into her stomach. It mingled queasily with the throbbing desire of her nethers.

Sleep would not come easily. Even if it did, she could not guarantee that the lustful facsimile would leave her be. She felt foggy, hazed with guilt and lust. There was only one place for her.

Paracelsus snored again, a loud, snorting huff. Junia sat up, letting her blanket fall. The night was cold and the air bit through her nightdress. Both she and Paracelsus were private women. That, and their fire-forged camaraderie, had settled that they would share a bunk room. She was glad of that now more than ever; her cheeks were flushed and her hair a tangle from where she had thrashed against the pillow. Even if the other woman had been awake, she likely wouldn't have said anything to shame her.

Nevertheless, Junia dressed as quickly and quietly as she could. Paracelsus may have taken a herb to send her into a deep slumber – their ventures into the crypts would be reason enough for that – but Junia didn't want to risk waking her. She finger-combed her hair and pushed it beneath her bandeau. She left her armour where it was, wrapped a cloak around her habit, and slipped through the door.

She met no one as she crept to the front door, but her luck did not hold. Just as she lit a torch and opened it, she heard the familiar footsteps of Dismas as he sauntered, slightly drunkenly, from the tavern. Junia pressed herself against the wall, as if that would make her less likely to be seen. It was a foolish thought, but she felt that he would know, and that his estimation of her would decline. If she couldn't control herself, how could he trust her to heal him and the others? She knew it would not take much to delegitimize her import to a rogue such as him.

Besides, she could imagine his sly smirk as he told Audrey, and their soft muttering around a campfire while she tried to sleep. A Vestal who was not quite so pure. Oh, she could not bear it.

He stopped several paces from the door. He squinted over his scarf at her, his sharp eyes glazed with drink.

“'S cold out tonight, Junia.”

Junia swallowed thickly. She could smell the spirits rising off of him. “It is, Dismas. But I- “ she felt the lie dry her mouth, even if it was only that of omission, “ - I must visit the Abbey.”

“Missandei, Alhazred, Bigby, and Boudica, aye?” Junia tried hard not to wince at the name, remembering the dream of husky laughter as Boudica's rough hands pushed her thighs apart. Dismas continued, not noticing. “Prayin' for their safe return?”

“Y – yes,” she said, and this time the lie did catch in her throat. She shivered.

Dismas stared at her for a moment. Junia half felt like fleeing, but soon his scarred lips turned up in a smile, and even the flickering light from her torch couldn't make them look smug or sly. “Here,” he grunted, and shrugged himself out of his coat. She blinked, surprised, as he held it out to her. “It'll be warmer than the cloak you're wearin', and Light willin' I'll be passed out under a blanket by the time you're halfway to the Abbey.”

Junia took the coat in her free hand, hardly knowing what to say. It was a thick, weathered garment, heavy and warm. She knew there would be a pack of trick cards in one pocket, and a lucky penny in the other. Hardly the sort of thing for a Vestal to wear to her Abbey, and yet more welcome than any holy robe.

“Thank you,” she managed, her voice tight and small, but genuine. The coat smelled of smoke and alcohol, mingling with Dismas' own masculine scent. She carefully shifted her torch from hand to hand as she put it on, instantly feeling relief from the cold.

“'S fine,” he rumbled, teeth beginning to chatter. “Just give it back in the morning. Or afternoon.” He turned to leave, stumbled, caught himself on the wall, and huffed a laugh. His drink-heavy breath misted in the air, “Late afternoon.”

“I will. Sleep well tonight, Dismas. May you be bathed in Holy Light.”

“Bathing... that can come t'morrow. Be seein' you, Sister.” he slurred, and waved over his shoulder at her.

Junia waited until she heard the door close. Dismas' coat was a warm weight about her, blocking the cold. She burrowed her free hand into one of the pockets, finding the coin she knew would be in there. A smile touched her lips as she remembered him giving this to her. They had been deep in the crypts, surrounded by cultist witches and the living dead. Fear had gripped her heart in a vice, made her unable to do anything but babble unintelligibly as she tried to speak a prayer of healing over Reynauld. Dismas had reached over, pressed the coin to her hands, and told her that it was now hers.

Later, prayer had soothed her terror, and she had given it back to him. He'd grinned, and said he'd hold onto it until she felt she needed a little more luck. That had been when she had truly admitted that, rogue though he was, he was a good man.

Then she had wrote about him in that damnable diary of hers, the one she could never bring herself to throw away. She remembered the entry: I wonder if his hands are as clever as they seem, and how I may find out...

She drew her hand away from the coin as if burned, shame crashing back through her like a wave over a breakwater. His coat felt a hundred pounds heavier as she made her sinner's way to the Abbey, its comforting warmth now a rebuke to her lust.

Repairs had been going well for some time now. The hole in the roof was mostly fixed, and the crumbling walls had been replaced with sturdy bricks. The scent of fresh reeds and incense replaced what had once been damp and rotting wood. Junia would have been proud to see their progress if she did not have other matters on her mind. She turned from the altar down a set of rough-hewn steps.

Incense and reeds gave way to the scent of salt and blood. No matter how they were scrubbed, the thirsty stones of the Flagellation cells had long drank the blood spilled there. It was now a part of them, fused to their sediment. The scent was pungent and heavy. In the shadow of her shame, she was glad to focus on something that was neither the phantom of Boudica's body, or the warmth of Dismas' coat.

She placed her torch in a sconce and took the coat off. A chill pricked her skin as she carefully folded it away. She crammed her own clothes atop it, hardly caring if her habit and bandeau would crease or tear when removed. Clad only in her smallclothes, she was more shamefully aware of how wet between her legs she was. The cold had not sapped her of her lust.

Disgusted with herself, Junia took up one of the cattail whips, entered a cell, and knelt on the floor. She breathed in deeply and let it out slowly.

Boudica's dark eyes flashed across her inner vision. She saw the way the woman's head arched back as it had in her dream, when Junia had taken her nipple in her mouth.

The whips struck her flesh, each stripe splitting the skin in punishing admonishment. Junia cried out. She struck herself again, remembering the dream of Boudica's fingers as they slipped inside of her. She struck again, and again for the daydream of Dismas' roguish, scarred smile as he lifted up the skirt of her habit.

Again and again she struck her flesh, tears rolling down her face. She deserved to hurt, deserved to have her skin flayed open. The pain would remind her of her unworthiness. She struck wildly. The knotted tips of the whip rebounded with her strike, entering into torn skin and ripping it further. She jolted, nearly pitching forward, but caught herself and raised the whip again.

A firm pressure caught her wrist. The lash swung back, the cattails travelling with the momentum and striking nothing but air. Junia opened her eyes, a sob escaping her lips.

“You -”

“You will brutalize your flesh like that,” came the low voice of Damian, that madman who followed the creed of the Flagellant. She ought to have known that he would be down here.

He twisted her wrist until she released her grip on the whip and let him take it from her. She blinked the tears from her eyes and looked up at him as he turned the whip over in his hands. Her back sang out in stripes of pain. How long had she been down here?

“It is right that the flesh gives to the Light, but the Light does not demand the mutilation of those who do not carry the Burden.” He smiled at her. His teeth were large and white, and seemed only more so by the hole where one was missing. Even in the quiet way he spoke, she could hear the trills of his madness fluttering at the edge of his words. “Pain is the Light's song, and agony is its blessing. But you strike to maim, not to absolve. Sister, what taints your hand? Why brutalize that which you must then beg the Light to redeem?”

His hand settled on her back, his fingers skimming the edge of one of her wounds. Junia twitched, but his fingers were gentle against her flayed skin.

“You strike yourself,” she said, blinking away her tears, “and the Light knits your flesh back together, Flagellant. I have seen it.”

“You have seen the miracle of my faith, Sister. One must not presume of the Light. One may only go where it guides. Not all can bear the Burden. Not all should.”

“I have sinned, and I must purge myself of my sin.”

“Then purge, Sister! Invoke the agonizing love of the Light, feel the bitter sting as we drive sin from our bodies, cleansing our minds!” His fingers traced the ragged edges of her wounds, the tip of his blunt nails gathering her blood. “But do not ravage yourself. That Burden is not yours to take.”

He cast the flail to one side. It clattered to the edge of the cell, leaving a smear of blood in its wake. Junia felt pain flare as Damian placed his finger right against one of her wounds.

“It falls to me to guide you back to the Light.”

She gasped, feeling the flesh knit under his touch. It was not the soothing healing of the Light's blessing, as she and Reynauld could use. Nor was it the bloody effect that Alhazred's reconstruction wrought. The wounds were simply no longer there, and the relief of their absence was like a pain itself.

Behind her, Damian shifted. He raised his hand, bringing his bloodied finger to her lips. It pressed against them, and Junia could smell the iron of her own blood. She parted her lips and let him anoint her tongue with it.

“Why do you purge, Sister?”

His finger left her lips. Junia pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she swallowed the taste down. There was power in the blood; it was as if she had been given leave to speak her darkest desires.

“My mind is a haze of lust. Desire clouds my waking moments, and I think uncouthly of the kindness of our compatriots.”

It would have been humiliating to admit to anyone else. She could imagine Reynauld's mortified silence, or the Abbot's slack, working mouth as he floundered for words. But Damian was only a madman, blessed by the Light. What did it matter if he knew?

“Desire, Sister? Or lust? Which is it? One is natural. The other a sin. Which do you feel?”

She could hear the clink of chains as he lifted his own flail. The brutal thing he struck himself with was crueller by far than the knotted rope he had cast aside. Junia tensed, awaiting a strike.

“Lust,” she said, her eyes forward. “I dream of the Hellion not as she is, but of how she would ravage me. And I do not pray for the Highwayman: I dream of his roguish charm as it eases me from my vows and into his bed. These dreams taint my waking moments, and make me unable to appreciate the two as they truly are.” She lowered her head. “And it is not just them, though Boudica haunts my dreams of late, and when faced with Dismas' kindness, I could think only of his flesh.”

“Your flesh hungers,” Damain said, his voice like dripping blood, “and so we shall feed its hunger to the Light.”

The whistle and crack of his flail seemed to take a long time, but the pain was instantaneous. Junia gasped as she felt it land on her recently healed skin, the spikes of the striking head biting into her flesh. Blood welled as the flail was drawn back, and ran in warm trickles down her back.

“Blood washes the eyes and clears the vision,” Damian intoned above her. The chains rattled in the gloom. Junia shivered, lowering her gaze.

The rattle of the chain and the heavy, meaty smack of the spiked ball were easier to bear this time. Junia only grunted, accepting the pain. Damian's strike had landed below the first, drawing blood anew from her skin.

A heady, red haze settled over Junia as her mind was framed by the pain. She straightened her back, bowing her head in supplication. Damain struck her again, beside the second bite, and she breathed a soft prayer from between her lips.

“Light guide me.”

Each rattle and thump of his flail brought pain anew to her. Her blood trickled, and then flowed, into the estuary of her lower back. It pooled over the curve of her hips and dripped onto the stone floor. The agony flared, and in the flame of that moment, she thought of Boudica. She thought of that wild grin, no doubt shared around a campfire as she sharpened her wicked glaive, ready to defend her companions. Boudica, too, knew there was power in blood.

“Pain cleaves away the basest instincts,” Damain's words floated through her haze, his madman's lilt twining through them like wine. He he struck her again, and Junia felt the cruel spikes bite into her flesh and tear it out. Blood flew like ruby droplets in the flickering torchlight. Junia breathed out her relief, wrapping her arms around herself. That aching feeling between her legs had shifted, suffusing her entire body. She thrummed with desire. It pulsed in the heart that pushed the Light-given blood through her, and made it flow from her holy wounds.

The Light had given her this body, as it had given Dismas his, and Boudica hers. The Light did not deny her the attraction she felt to either, or to others. The Light gave her the means to see and appreciate them. All it asked was that she did not shame them, nor herself. A simple request – the only one it had asked of her.

There was joy, then, fierce, pious joy, in giving the Light a piece of that experience, and revelling in the pain.

She laughed, exultant, as the feeling rushed through her, quaking her to her core. Damian lashed her once more, and she cried out as if in the throes of passion, arching back as the sensation took over her.

“Each wound is a prayer heard,” he said, his hand on her back, pushing her forward. Junia moved easily, the agony of her back singing in pleasure as she bent further down, her forehead to the bloody stone.

Damain's hand smeared through her blood, his fingers dipping into her wounds. Junia moaned at the touch. It was an intimacy she hadn't before fathomed. Desire thrummed though her with each string of pain that he plucked. The sensation sharpened, rising to the forefront of her mind.

Salt – he had smeared salt across her back, pressing it against her strikes with his own hands. She gasped, almost whimpered, as the agony rose to a new crescendo, throbbing through her body in deeper, more insistent pulses.

“First the sacred wound, then the purifying salt,” He said, his lips against her ear. Junia shivered. Damian's hand retracted. She could hear, through her daze, the sound of him scooping more salt into his palm. This time he sprinkled it across her from on high. It fell like flakes of snow, each kiss on her flesh a spike of punishment.

His hand returned, pressing the crystals into her wounds, soaking them in her blood. When Junia moved, some of the piles slipped from her skin, landing on the stone in pink, bloody bundles. She watched them blissfully, gasping.

When Damian's finger pressed against her lips, she opened her mouth and tasted the salt and iron of her purification. Her eyes closed and she moaned, wrapping her lips around his finger and sucking the anointed proof of her penance from his skin.

She shuddered, her body tightening, twitching, and then releasing. His finger fell from her slack lips as she gasped a wordless prayer. Her body felt like it was floating, one with the pain and above it.

Damian knelt behind her, guiding her up. Junia gasped as she collapsed back into his arms. He held her not as a lover would, but as support in her supplication. She fought to steady her breath and wind down from that towering spiral of sensation.

“Forward to the Light,” she said, and felt his rumbled “Amen,” in response.

She lay in his arms for a time, her fingers tracing the bloody smears on his wrists and palms. His heart was a steady beat to anchor herself to, and Junia focused on the sound of it. It married well with the agony of her back, where his firm muscles pressed the salt flush to her open wounds.

“Thank you,” she said, after a time.

“You are a sister of battle. Pious, and unrelenting. The Light will not abandon you when you are in need, and I am guided by the Light.”

The bliss of the pain eked away and reality trickled in. It wasn't a horrific feeling, but what had been divine in the moment was uncomfortable now. She shifted in his grip, and Damian immediately let go, framing her with his arms as she used them to get to her feet. Her back was a sheet of agony, and when she moved, the salt felt in pink clumps to the ground. She could still taste it on her tongue. It would linger, she was sure, a long time after she had washed the residue from her body.

“I must bathe. Then, I am going to pray for the safe return of our fellows.”

“A barbarian, an abomination, a heretic, and a Lightless soldier,” he said, hauling himself to his feet. “Yes, they are in need of your prayers, lest the wickedness of this land swallow them whole. Shall I sponge you with vinegar?”

His eyes, barely visible beneath his hood, glittered with sanguine fervour. Junia bit back a gasp of pain as she moved: the salt packing her wounds shifted with her, gritting agony from blood afresh. Perhaps if she had still been in that bliss of sacrifice, she would have agreed. For now, she shook her head.

“No. I will cleanse with water, so I do not drag the scent of my absolution to the pews.”

He grunted. For a moment – just a moment – she thought she saw approval set into the lines of his face.

“Forget not the holy stitch, Sister. The Light does not ask for more than a body can bare.”

“I won't, Flagellant. May you be bathed in Holy Light.”

He knelt to her blessing, one ragged, sanguine man with his tattered skirts soaking in the blood and salt of her absolution. She held up her hand to bless him, one sinning nun, her back awash in agony, painted in that very blood and salt.

They parted ways. Junia cleansed herself, wincing and even allowing herself to sob, as she washed her wounds clean. She dried herself, adorned her habit and bandeau, and carried Dismas' coat with her to the main body of the church. As she ascended the stairs, she could hear the rapture of Damian's prayers, and the clattering song of his flail as the meaty thud of it striking his flesh punctuated his exultations.

She prayed, then, long into the night. When her mind strayed to Boudica, it was to wish for her safety, and, perhaps, the courage to speak with her when she returned.