“It’s important,” Sir Owalan gasps.
“Has someone died?” I’m instantly tense. My hand is on my pommel before I realize it.
Owalan shakes his head, puffing for air.
“Tea is important,” Sir Sorken says firmly. “Shall I have the golems pour you a cup? I think you could use it, hmm?”
“No tea,” Sir Owalan gasps. “We might have found the Cup of Tears. But we need all of you if we are to attain to it.”
Chapter Twenty
Vagabond Paladin
Now things will grow interesting, tiny trapped treat.
The demon had been crowing since we discovered we were all trapped. The idea that we were sealed inside what seemed to him to be a huge stew pot delighted him and made him even more unbearable than he already was. I felt far more conflicted. Was it deeply troubling to be trapped in what might be my grave? Look, I was too young not to feel distress. Whatever made the aging Engineers so casual about it wasn’t in my blood. But I was also too distracted to take it as seriously as I ought.
Adalbrand stood up for me back there. He chose to take my penalty with me.
I had known I wasn’t guilty. But even so … what if the God had judged me? What if he’d taken that moment to judge me for Sir Branson’s death or the demon’s continued life?
Am I making you fall from grace just by existing? Now that’s a sizzling thought!
What if Adalbrand had died with me because of my secret? Because of my crimes?
I shot a glance at him. Again. My eyes kept finding him like lodestones to iron.
Mine, too. By the ages, he’s a pretty one. It’s the eyes, I think. I adore a salty sorrow.
He’d taken my side. He’d stood with me. I’d only had one friend who’d ever done that and he had been slain by my own hand.
All is well and all will be well, and even my death will be well. Stop fretting so much on it. I’m perfectly content here in Brindle. He was always a good doggy.
I had thought that I was driven only by freedom and the wind and the hope that perhaps faith would find me. It turned out I was driven by something else. A deep, roiling need to belong to someone. To be their ally or friend or kin. It bit down deep and branched out wide, a tree growing a hundred years in a single gasp.
My gaze snapped back to him a second time. When his gaze met mine, it crinkled warmly around the eyes. Warmth. Friendship.
One day when I was about thirteen, I wandered too far and slipped into a stream in spring. Soaked and lost, it had been hours before I found Sir Branson again. I was cold right through and the fire that day had been like the face of the God.
This warmth is just like that.
I stumble my way through a brittle thanks. It’s not enough. Can anything be enough for someone willing to stand by me? I drag my attention immediately to the Engineers, afraid he will see all I’m hiding. That I want his nearness like I want the fire.
That’s how romance always goes. Either you find a kindred spirit or you find someone who needs saving.
And am I his kindred spirit, then? I hate my traitor heart and how it leaps with hope.
You’re the one who needs saving.
I force myself from the thought and force myself to talk to the Engineers about the journals instead.
A desire like mine for Adalbrand feels like selfishness. I’d rather go back to familiar territory. I’ve been rejected by these other paladins just like my Aspect always must be. Not surprising and certainly not threatening.
They tried to kill you. They tried to eat your bones and sup on your pain. And you call them holy? You call them brothers? Why are you not gibbering in a corner or bathed in their blood?
Revenge was the God’s own possession and it was not mine to execute. I must be wary. I must be wise. But fear could make your bones age before their time. It could cloud the mind and pause the hands and still the breath, and I dared not allow any of that. Besides, you could not ask people to be other than what they were. There was no point to that.
I was on a ship once. A ship of exploration sent out to find the rim of the ice along the sea or possibly a new continent. The ship was mired in doldrums and there was no way out and the fun I had with the men on the sea keeps me warmer at night than the fires of hell.
