Cardinal: Relic

Not much—a subtle curl, as if beckoning someone unseen. A dry, rustling whisper emerged from the reliquary’s air holes. Alistair leaned closer. The whisper formed words in Church Latin, the accent archaic but unmistakably human.

The Cardinal’s Relic Draft

Alistair’s training screamed trick —ventriloquism, a hidden speaker. But the mummified tissue of the finger had shifted, bending at a joint that should have been fused for six hundred years. relic cardinal