The head in her lap lifts, and the pair of glowing eyes look at me, too. How long have his eyes been glowing like that, and why has no one else noticed?
“What are you saying?” she whispers, and her lips thin in condemnation.
I swallow and force myself to go on. It’s a good plan. The only one that will work.
“I will draw the demon in the ceiling into me. And then I will drink the cups these others are filling. And I think that will draw their demons into me, too.”
She steals one glance at the tumbled limbs and screaming, helpless faces caught in the swirling shadow beside us and she blanches. She scrambles away from me and backward into a defensive crouch. Her dog growls deep in his throat.
“Adalbrand?” Her eyes are filled with betrayal.
“And then, you will drown me in the fountain — in the holy water I’ve blessed.” Her eyes widen, but I’m not finished. “Drown me and cast out the demons I’ve drawn in. The God has given you the ability not just to draw them out, but to send them all from this plane.” I feel my voice faltering as I try to calmly explain how she will kill me. “There’s always the risk they’ll hop to someone else, but we both know that can’t happen if I hold on to them until I die. I think I can. That’s how it works, right? You can cast them out the long way, with many prayers to the God, as you do with humans you encounter, or you can do it the short way and dispatch the host like you do with animals.”
The dog’s growl grows louder. That’s fine. He is not my friend.
“Your proposal is that you’ll fill yourself with every demon in this place and then I’ll kill you,” she says calmly, but she’s looking at me like I’ve gone mad.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a solution. Possibly the only solution. And it’s the path of honor.”
“It’s the path of insanity,” she hisses.
But the problem is that she’s slightly adorable when she’s annoyed, and she is very annoyed right now. I smirk a little, enjoying this while I can.
“Don’t you dare smile at me,” she says, and I’m taken aback to realize there are tears in her eyes.
My smile drops. “Victoriana?”
“How did you expect me to react to your request that I murder you?” she asks frostily.
I am careful when I reply, “With relief. It solves the problem neatly and requires only one death — and that given willingly. You will not be stained by it. Nor will these other paladins. They may yet be saved.”
She’s shaking her head, looking rather furious for someone presented with an answer to all their problems. I open my mouth to try to persuade her, but I’m cut off by a voice.
“If you’re making plans down there, fellow paladins,” Sir Sorken’s voice booms out, “don’t.”
He snaps his fingers and, to my surprise, both Cleft and Suture break their frozen postures, pulling themselves up to their monstrous heights with creaks and groans. Suture flexes his unbroken arm.
“You can command them even with Sir Coriand dead,” Victoriana accuses him, scrambling to her feet. “You made me believe they were as good as dead.”
“It seems I can command them. How wonderful,” Sir Sorken says lightly.
She looks up at him for a long beat, her eyes narrowing. Her off-hand drifts down to Brindle’s round skull and settles there.
“You lied about not being his conspirator.”
She has the mystery between her teeth again and is ready to fight. I hope she remembers this is about more than this now.
Sir Sorken’s sigh is so loud that I hear it over everything else. “Do you know, I think I’ve never met a person so stubbornly pigheaded as you, Beggar. You are entirely like that demon-possessed dog you cart around everywhere with you. Holier than thou one moment, a miserable snapping wretch the next, and never, ever, ever willing to just leave a thing alone.”
I shoot a glance to Brindle, who stoops to pick up the golem’s hand in his mouth. It’s the worse for being chewed for an hour.
Sir Sorken is still speaking. “Pretense is too much trouble with you. You don’t deserve it, and frankly, you never have. Saints and Angels, girl. You killed Sir Coriand. Do you have any idea how great a mind he had? And you knocked it from his shoulders like chopping fruit, and left me stuck here pretending it made no matter instead of showing you my ire.”
He is writing furiously as he speaks, and his demon is building again. I watch as it slides a toe over the line that used to contain it. If we let this go too far, it will be able to reach us.
“So. I’m done with pretense. All of you are such fools. Who rides for a place having never researched it, with no plan and no goal? Pitiful. Coriand Parterio and I have been waiting for this opportunity for more than a decade. And we came with a plan.”
“The opportunity to kill?” Victoriana presses.
