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Obscurity 1 Obscurity, The Prologue Free 2 Obscurity, The First Chapter Free 3 Obscurity, The Second Chapter Free 4 Obscurity, The Third Chapter Free 5 Obscurity, The Fourth Chapter Free 6 Obscurity, The Fifth Chapter Free 7 Obscurity, The Sixth Chapter Free 8 Obscurity, The Seventh Chapter Free 9 Obscurity, The Eighth Chapter Free 10 Obscurity, The Ninth Chapter Free 11 Obscurity, The Tenth Chapter Free 12 Obscurity, The Eleventh Chapter Free 13 Obscurity, The Twelfth Chapter For paid subscribers 14 Obscurity, The Thirteenth Chapter Free 15 Obscurity, The Fourteenth Chapter Free 16 Obscurity, The Fifteenth Chapter Free 17 Obscurity, The Sixteenth Chapter Free 18 Obscurity, The Seventeenth Chapter Free 19 Obscurity, The Eighteenth Chapter Free 20 Obscurity, The Nineteenth Chapter Free 21 Obscurity, The Twentieth Chapter Free 22 Obscurity, The Twenty-First Chapter Free 23 Obscurity, The Twenty-Second Chapter Free 24 Obscurity, The Twenty-Third Chapter Free 25 Obscurity, The Twenty-Fourth Chapter Free 26 Obscurity, The Twenty-Fifth Chapter Free 27 Obscurity, The Twenty-Sixth Chapter Free 28 Obscurity, The Twenty-Seventh Chapter Free 29 Obscurity, The Twenty-Eighth Chapter Free 30 Obscurity, The Twenty-Ninth Chapter Free 31 Obscurity, The Thirtieth Chapter Free 32 Obscurity, The Thirty-First Chapter Free 33 Obscurity, The Thirty-Second Chapter Free 34 Obscurity, The Thirty-Third Chapter Free 35 Obscurity, The Thirty-Fourth Chapter Free 36 Obscurity, The Thirty-Fifth Chapter Free 37 Obscurity, The Thirty-Sixth Chapter Free 38 Obscurity, The Thirty-Seventh Chapter Free 39 Obscurity, The Thirty-Eighth Chapter Free 40 Obscurity, The Thirty-Ninth Chapter Free 41 Obscurity, The Fortieth Chapter Free 42 Obscurity, The Epilogue Free

Obscurity, The Twenty-Ninth Chapter

In which the mercenary hunts the Comte.

We last read The Twenty-Eighth Chapter, in which a rose wilted. If you have recently joined us, start with The Prologue.

Rémy carried that deceased woman to the chapel where she was laid in a wooden box washed with white paint and poured over with peonies. How Séverine desired to crumple to the ground, to be held and loved and supported by the Earth solely for her existence upon it. Only that ground that held her could love her and adore her, and for that she envied the corpse her fate.

Séverine’s soul ached that the woman should die. She prayed the rosary over in her mind and on her breath as she admired those cheeks as rosy as apples and stroked that hair as lovely as silk. There would be none to mourn that most beautiful soul, for nothing was known of her and there were none to claim her. Séverine beheld those perfect fingertips as though they were hers to mourn and kissed those perfect eyelids as though they were hers to close.

There were rumors that a number of men had reached a similar fate. They were discovered in some secreted location nearby, naked in the embrace of love yet veiled with the shroud of death. The church would not honor those fine young men for the sake of their behavior, nor would their mothers claim them for the sake of their impropriety.

Their bodies were laid in a heap of one another’s arms, interred in some undisclosed and unimportant location, the truth of their love lost to moralist minds who had neither experienced a thing so profound, nor were free enough to enjoy it. Those disapproving minds adhered only to what they had been taught and never what they thought, and thus they deserved to be mourned for their miserable lives. For they outlived their children, perhaps, but they had the added misfortune of under living them.

This fate rested heavily on Séverine’s mind. How she longed then, as only adults can do, for her childhood. For a time when she would play outdoors all day and fall asleep in the meadow. When her father would carry her to her bed, unlacing each of her shoes as she slept. How many days since then, she wondered, had she gone to bed of her own volition and unlaced her shoes by an act of her own will?

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