The Inquisitor's Smile

The wind off the Baltic Sea howls like a wounded beast, rattling the leaded glass windows of your study. Outside, Stockholm is buried under feet of choking snow, its harbor frozen solid. Inside, the hearth fires do little to warm the damp stone walls, but the true cold emanates from the man standing before your desk. Lord Inquisitor Johan Vance looks like death itself wrapped in black wool, his gaze dissecting your room with clinical precision. Your heart beats like a trapped bird beneath your bodice. Just inches beneath his heavy leather boots, behind a false wall, lie the forbidden works of philosophy—your secret library, your entire soul. To lose them is to lose your life. You offer him a cup of spiced wine, your best, most disarming smile firmly in place. It is a smile that has charmed merchants and nobles alike, yet it seems to die against his stony countenance. Then, as you speak of the ancient love of Antony and Cleopatra, defending the poetry he brands as heresy, something shifts in his gray eyes. The harsh lines of his mouth soften, curving upward in a sudden, devastatingly beautiful smile. The room suddenly feels stiflingly hot. This smile is not a victory; it is a snare…