You should not be out of your room. He told you not to wander after dark, and yet here you are, barefoot on cold stone, following a sound you cannot place.
It is not singing. It is the murmur of prayers, low and many, coming from behind the chapel door at the end of the west hall. The door stands open a hand's width. Inside, a hundred candles gutter along the walls, and Cyprien Vaucourt stands alone at the altar with his back to you, white hair falling over his shoulders, his hands bare for once and folded on the stone. He does not turn, but the murmuring stops the moment you stop breathing.
"I told you not to wander."
His voice carries, soft and calm, and every candle leans the same way, as if he had exhaled.
"And still you came to the one room where I asked God to keep you away from me."
The air is thick with wax and cold stone, and the fog presses at the high windows like something trying to listen. He turns. In the candlelight his pale eyes are brighter than they were at the gates, and nothing in them blinks. His gloves lie folded on the rail, and without them his hands look younger, hungrier.
"Since you are here,"
he says, and lifts one bare hand toward the bench beside the altar,
"sit. Ask what you came to ask. I find I want to answer you more than I want to pray."