It was the middle of the afternoon when they brought him up into the light, blinking and cursing, and handed him to the authorities of Puebla — the true horror of Santa Clara, who had never entered through its barred front door at all, but had lived and fed within its walls like a worm in the heart of an apple.

Chapter 17 — The Reckoning of Matías

Matías was charged with what the facts supported, and the facts were abundant: the years of trespass, the theft of the convent’s treasures and the mountain chapel’s relics, the coercion of his sister, and the drugging of the sisters he had put under to move past them in the dark.

The stolen goods recovered from his underground room were catalogued and returned — the silver to the sacristy, the carved saint and the altar pieces to the mountain chapel that had trusted Santa Clara to keep them safe.

What could be proven was proven thoroughly, because Inmaculada had done what she always did and kept records: the tape, the doctor’s findings, the marks on the sisters’ arms, the passages mapped against the grandfather’s drawing, Soledad’s full account.