She stares at me, stunned into silence. As she should be. I have just confessed to the grimmest of crimes — a selfish act and abandonment that led to death. I am as guilty as any convicted criminal and I know it in my bones.
What I have not told her — what I dare not tell her — is how like my Marigold she is with that solemn expression and that look of skeptical doubt in her eyes.
“She is mine,” the God had said directly into my mind when I questioned her.
Said it with a searing light that still fills me.
Said it like the ringing of heaven’s bells.
If she kills me now, I’m not sure I’ll feel it. I will still be soaring on the vibrant emotion of the echo of that voice. It cut me deep, cut me hard. And yet, at the same time, it warmed me as nothing else ever has. Not the embrace of another. Not the burn of ambition or the warmth of compassion. It warms me to the marrow and burns away all else.
I didn’t think I would ever hear the voice of the God again. I still can’t believe it happened. It’s a miracle more wondrous than what Hefertus weaves. And it is for her. She who is untested, untried, so unlike the rest of us that I wondered how she could even be a paladin at all.
And why did I care so strongly about that?
It pains me to recount the last few minutes. The surge of longing in my heart at the sight of her compelled me to follow. She’d been leaning forward as she strode through the monastery, her pointed nose leading the way as if she were an arrow loosed from a bow, bent on ransacking this entire place in search of the Cup. How could I not flare at the sight of that?
Then that surge turned to a burn. It heightened my sense of this woman and bid me notice her every flinch and movement. I joined her without thinking about it.
And then came the realization of what I was doing, the shame of it, the need to justify myself. It suggested to me that she might be fraudulent, that perhaps I was mistaking myself for a guilty man who was making a fool of himself when it was she who was guilty of duping us all. It’s so easy to blame another for a guilt that is your own. Easy to deflect your folly onto another.
That deflection propelled me into the need to act and I was acting before I knew what had come over me. Before I questioned it — as I should have. I have not been so foolhardy since I was a boy.
My cheeks burn with shame. And so they should.
I can see how the door has twisted both my thoughts and desires.
But I also know that it can only twist what is already there. Nothing can manufacture these things in me. If I have desire rolling through me like a tide, that is no excuse to single one person out. It’s no reason to demand they meet some sort of arbitrary standard. If I have suspicions, that’s no reason to make violent demands. And if I have shame, that is not the fault of another, it is the fault of the flaw, the fissure within my own soul.
I swallow hard. I am a mess. Where I would usually be compassionate and kind, patient and accepting, I have let myself become twisted. No, that language is too passive. I was all the ugly things that passion can be — possessive where no possession is warranted, demanding where I had no right to demand, violent in my pursuit of my own wants.
Shame burns through my chest and makes my belly churn.
She rolls her eyes at me. Such a slight gesture. I cling to the way it trivializes what has come before. It promises a chance at reconciliation.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Her words are like dawn after a night of illness. “And I don’t think you’re a murderer just because you were part of a dreadful tragedy. Get up.”
Her eyes are old in her young face.
“A dreadful tragedy?” I whisper. How she can dismiss my crime so readily? “I left her to suffer on her own.”
“And how old were you at the time?”
I feel my cheeks grow hotter. My youth does not dismiss what happened then, just as my … whatever this is now … does not dismiss what I did a moment ago. If anything, it makes it worse. I indulged myself so thoughtlessly while other boys were busy riding horses and shooting bows. Had I stayed with them and done that, a life would have been spared.
“I was fifteen,” I say quietly.
“A child,” she says.
“Not a child at all. Not once a child was fathered by me. A poor excuse for a man who let those who depended on him perish.”
She sighs and to my horror, she wanders over to the nearest bookshelf — there are ten separate bookcases, each gilded along the edges of the shelves — and runs her finger along the spines of the books. Dust is thick on these tomes, but they do not crumble as I expected.
“Oh, you’re one of those.”
“One of what?” I am loath to take to my feet again before she’s rendered judgment, but it seems like she might not bother to do even that. Behind the door, her dog gives up growling and lets out a pitiful whine.
“One of those fools who think that everything in the world depends on them and all the failures in it are their fault.” She turns to look at me a little coyly. “Am I right?”
I stiffen and clench my jaw. “I take my responsibilities seriously. I am accountable for my actions. Both in the past, and in the present. I wronged you with my accusations.”
She says nothing to that, and I have to turn awkwardly to keep her in my line of sight while maintaining my kneeling posture as she rounds the room.
She reads the spines of the books and tilts her head to the side as she regards a bed and a tufted chair, both finer than anything that existed in my father’s house. With the air of a practiced thief, she checks behind each book and turns the bedding and cushions. She sifts through trinkets on the sideboard and side tables. Her fingers dance over music boxes set with leaping goldfish, fans painted with peacocks, a bedframe thick with intricately carved songbirds.
“You would think a thousand years would have turned all this to dust.”
“There is clearly a miracle at work here,” I agree, my eyes trawling over the fine golden and crimson brocades. “What we call magic.”
She tilts her head to the side as if she’s listening to someone other than me and then marches over to the desk and begins to take out each drawer and examine it. The desk is a thing to behold — its legs are slender and delicate, but they wrap around in a way that the eye can’t quite follow until they become four lovely maidens holding up bullfrogs larger than their heads, who, in turn, hold up the desktop. The drawers of the desk are full of parchment and bound books — more things that ought to be dust. She rummages through them with a disregard that makes me flinch. Midway through, she pauses and gives me a very long look, her gaze resting pointedly on my knees as if to draw attention to how I am still kneeling.
For one so young, she is very exacting. It is almost humorous — her blasé attitude about my crimes, combined with her fierce judgment of my penitence.
I give her an abashed smile. She is trying. I am difficult and irrational as I fight my internal battles but still, she is trying with me.
She scoffs lightly, but there is a ghost of a smile around her lips, too. Perhaps, young as she is, she is experienced enough to see that I am trying to fix the mess I’ve made of this.
“You go from penitent to charming far too easily, Sir Paladin.”
“What would you have me do, Lady? Here I am, on my knees before you.”
“I am not your God to take your confession,” she says lightly as she examines a strange bronze sphere placed on the desk.
It sits in a bracket fitted to a stand that lets her spin it on an axis. She moves it, tentatively at first and then with more force, watching it spin with a puzzled expression before she stops it and peers carefully at the surface. I wonder why she is so fixed on this one oddity when the room is spilling over with so many.
Beneath her frosty exterior, I see to her heart where doubt still rages, where fear still makes her eyes dart toward any sound, where tight intelligence is making sense —somehow — of whatever is etched onto that sphere.
“You are my fellow paladin. You can accept my apology on behalf of the God,” I say. I don’t know if I mean my apology to her or my apology for everything.
“I could have killed you. Intentionally or by accident,” she says carefully. “Why did you attack me? What if I’d spun and hit you before you pinned me, before I knew who you were?”
I wonder if she’d still have that haunted look if she could hear the God as clearly as I just did — if he told her what he told me, that she belongs to him. What a marvel that is. I am not certain that I belong to anyone or ever will. Surely, I am the God’s, too, but he has made no such clear claim of me.
“Do you think you could have?” I ask, curious. “Killed me? If the fight had been fair?”
She levels a steel stare at me. “Care to try again?”
I gust a laugh. I can’t help it. The ridiculousness of all of this is too much.
“I do not. But I will confess one more thing to you.”
“Please, no more confessions.” The look she shoots me is far, far too old for her face. She runs her fingers over the etching of the sphere and turns it slowly.
“My confession is only that this place gives me the shivers,” I say carefully, watching her to gauge her reaction. I think I see a glimmer of forgiveness there.
She looks up, eyes dancing in a way that squeezes my heart — though whether that’s my actual heart or a result of the effects of this place … well, I can’t tell. I dare not trust my own judgment right now. I’m compromised.
She is deliberate in her answer, though still teasing. “Are you telling me that you don’t enjoy being bottled up in a rabbit warren a thousand years old, the whole of which is watched over by an imprisoned, sleeping demon suspended from the ceiling like a chandelier?”
“How do you know it’s sleeping?” I’m impressed. She’s very young and it was well hidden. It took me almost to the bottom of the stairs to realize it was up there dreaming whatever dreams fiends find.
“I’m a Vagabond Paladin, Poisoned Saint. Wherever demons sleep, their nightmares are full of me.” It is her turn to look chagrined when she says, “I would have liked to cast it out.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Don’t you have that ability? Is that not your specialty?”
She snorts. “Could you heal an entire army at once?”
I consider.
“But there are nine of us down here. Surely, together …”
My words trail off and she smirks again.
“How much do you think your friend Hefertus knows about the casting out of demons? Or the puffed-up Majester?”
“Hefertus could probably order the world to rid itself of the creature and it would be gone,” I say easily.
“And with it, whatever is left of his mind.”
I incline my head. She’s right, of course.
There’s a ghost of a smile and a dare in her eyes when she speaks again. “I hope you’re planning to get off your knees because I have something to show you.”
I hesitate, gust a tiny, rueful scoff — directed at myself, of course — and this time my smile is bashful. “I’m afraid I can’t get up yet.”
“Until I forgive you?” Her eyes twinkle. “Consider it done.”
“It’s not that.” Although forgiveness … I didn’t expect it, and it’s sweet as overripe raspberries.
“Until I promise to keep your secret?” Her tone is wry, almost mocking. “If impregnating a young woman amounts to murder, then likely we should see more men dangling from hempen ropes.”
“It bothers me that you trivialize my sorrow.” I’m sad to lose our teasing, but on this, I must be firm.
Has she had much dealing with men like me? Or with anyone who was not possessed or desperately looking for help with someone who was? She followed a knight around begging for scraps from her childhood. I should not expect her to see the world as most do.
“It bothers me that you are so prideful that you’re still on your knees,” she shoots back. “Fine. I will keep your secret. I’ll do better, if you like. We can search for this cup together.”
“Together?” I am wary. This is … better than I hoped for. I think. It’s certainly more than I expected. It’s forgiveness and a ghost of second chances — to protect rather than harm, to help rather than hurt. I’ll take it. I’ll do what I failed to do before and keep those dancing eyes from glassing over with the varnish of death.
“Together,” she confirms, offering me a hand and pulling me to my feet.
“Your word on that?” I can’t help myself. I always have to press for certainty. It’s as much a part of how I’m constructed as my sinews and bones.
“Do you want some kind of oath, Adalbrand?”
I like how she says my name with one eyebrow lifted. I like how she seems utterly unaffected by me. Usually. I draw women like flies to a half-eaten pie and I must remind them often that I am sworn to the God — a fact, I have noted, that only seems to make them more ardent in their declarations of what they would do if only they could. I don’t begrudge them that. It’s nice to be considered desirable, even if they do rather try my vows.
I answer carefully. “An oath would be appreciated.”
She laughs and it startles me. She blows like the sea wind, hot and mellow, then cold and sharp, with barely a hint of the change before it rushes over you.
The dog whines on the other side of the door a second time and she stares at me, biting her lower lip on one side as she looks me up and down. I don’t think I’ve felt so judged since I was a new squire under uniform inspection.
“Will you help me cast out the demon if we are given the chance?” she asks, as if this is the sticking point — as if every paladin here wouldn’t lend her aid with that.
“Of course.”
I go ahead and look right back. She’s given me license now that she’s doing it to me. The wear and tatters on her clothing only serve to highlight the flawlessness of her black hair. That scar above her eyebrow and the other on her chin do the same for the perfect swoop of her cheekbones. She is contradictions. Doubtful but certain, marred but incomparable. And I must school my heart to stop cataloging them all.
“Fine, then we will make an oath.” She leans a hip against the desk, arms crossed over her chest. My gaze snags on the posture. She looks amused by me and for the first time since I arrived in this place, I feel a glimmer of light. Humor, in my opinion, is the buoyancy the heart needs to go on. “Tell me what you want to swear.”
From the other side of the door, the dog barks.
“Are you going to let him in?” I ask, smiling with her as if we are sharing a joke instead of forging something more akin to a peace treaty or maybe — just maybe — a friendship.
“Not until we’re done this.”
Well, I don’t want to be bitten again, so that’s fine with me. I’ve never met a paladin before who let a dog trail them. Perhaps there are certain rules or proprieties. Maybe I’m meant to overlook the mild mauling.
“I’ll swear to work hand in hand with you until the cup is found and returned to the church,” I offer. “That I will guard your back and join counsel with you in this and in all else. And that, if we have the chance, we will cast out that demon.”
“A dangerous oath,” she says and her eyes are still dancing, still teasing, still drawing me in.
They don’t look quite so much like Marigold’s anymore. Marigold’s never had that edge. The edge that tells me she might be cleverer than me, brighter and faster and stronger. I find it only draws me in worse, trapping me like a fly in a spider’s web.
“What if we never find the cup?”
“Would you like to add conditions for if we fail?” I offer.
“I never factor in failure,” she says, and her grin grows and then freezes, as if she realizes she’s admitted something that makes her look bad. She rallies, but her new smile is a bit weaker. “Let’s have a little confidence. Let’s assume we will find the Cup and return it.”
And I know better than to make an oath like that. I really do. If there’s no Cup of Tears here, this will bind us together for life. And then what will we do? Serve side by side like a tortoise and a wolf yoked together? I don’t even know which of us would be tortoise and which the wolf.
She smiles and shows her teeth.
Fine. She’s clearly the wolf.
I wrench my gauntlet off and offer my palm, and when she takes it in her warm one, I have to swallow. Her clasp is firm and certain.
“May it be and ever be,” she vows to me, and I return her vow with my own.
“My sword is yours and my honor until we succeed.”
When I let go of her hand, she leans over the sphere and points. “I think you’re going to be glad that you teamed up with me, Poisoned Saint. I might have found something interesting here.”
