The things pressing against it.
What they might want when they finally got through.
“Harder,” I said.
He gave it to me harder.
“Deeper.”
He gave me that too.
I put the rest of it away for later. For Vaelen. For the dark hours when I could think clearly again.
“Cum,” I said. “Fill me up with it.”
He shuddered and groaned. Then he did exactly as he was told.
.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
-GUIN-
The candles had burned low by the time Galahad began reciting Drenath’s prayer.
“Drenath sees what the flesh conceals,” he began. “What hides in bone and blood and marrow.”
I sat on the stone floor beneath the window, my knees and head bent. I kept my eyes on my hands. Outside, the last light was going. The courtyard torches had just been lit, and I could hear the distant clang of the changing guard.
“The demon does not announce itself,” Galahad continued. “It does not wear horns or carry flame. It wears the face of the innocent. It wears beauty as its first deception.”
Then he stopped reciting and turned to face me.
“Look at me.”
In surprise, I looked up at him.
His unsettling eyes moved over my face with that careful, clinical attention that had started to feel worse than contempt. Contempt I understood; contempt was something I could handle. But this was something else.
“The demon will not emerge of its own volition,” he said. “It must be drawn out.”
That was new.
“Drawn out,” I repeated, frowning as I shook my head.
“Forced out, if necessary.” He stood up and squared to the corner. “I have been too patient with you. Mercy without rigor is indulgence, and indulgence serves no one, only the demon.”
“I don’t have a demon.”
“Yes.” He almost smiled. “That is precisely what the demon would say.”
The scourge was hanging on the wall beside his door. Knotted leather, three tails, each one tipped with something small and dark I hadn’t let myself look at too closely. I’d watched him take it down for himself twice now. Watched him in the darkest hours of the night when he thought I was asleep. I’d heard the rhythm of it.
He crossed the room and took it off the wall.
My body moved before my mind caught up. I was on my feet and backing toward the far corner, my hands already up as if I could ward him away with them alone.
“No.”
