I can’t believe I’m this lucky—to have Callie fighting for me, to understand it’s because she loves me. And unlucky—as a spear of pain shoots through my leg when I lever into a seat. I feel a sparkle of sweat on my brow, but I don’t waste the energy to wipe it away.
Callie is standing, looking her fill at the table as we settle. Her hair’s pulled back in a sensible ponytail. She’s ready to do battle. Well, read old books and then do battle. I’m not as surprised as I could be to hear Sean is a scholarly prat. Another difference between us. He and Callie would’ve made a perfect match, I bet, in other circumstances.
I don’t know why I thought that. I haven’t detected any interest from either of them in the other. But there’s definitely a voice inside me that keeps repeating the good son in my father’s voice and knowing it’s not me. I long for it to shut up.
Porsoth sits beside me on the right, and Callie’s mother on my left. Sean’s across from me. Saraya stands, leaning on her sword. This isn’t her scene, but she’s here. And quiet.
Mag and Jared sink down beside each other, and he drops a press of his lips to theirs.
Porsoth’s hands flutter over the books, itching to dig in. “Callie, should we wait or do you have information to share? I’m eager to hear a theory that requires this bounty.”
Isaac eyes my tutor, but doesn’t tell him hands off. Solely due to Michael’s commandment in all likelihood.
Callie takes a deep breath and exhales. “When we first met Sean, he told us he was on a Grail quest. He even used the word seeker.”
“So what?” Sean asks. “It’s a myth, or at least a very hard-to-confirm truth. I grew up obsessed with tales of it, and I thought you two might run a merry chase keeping up with me. I won’t lie—I’ve always wanted to steal the Grail, ever since I left here. But mostly my plan was misdirection.”
“To keep us busy, so you could get to know your brother without telling him who you were,” Callie says. “I figured as much. You just weren’t going about it all that well, in contrast to your other thefts.”
Saraya sucks her lip, but says nothing.
Callie continues. “But you did share your goal with Luke—that you planned to bring about paradise on Earth, supposedly inspired by Solomon Elerion and how he almost succeeded at the opposite.”
“Except for you,” my mother says, sounding proud.
“Except for all of us,” Callie says. “And Michael.” She goes on, focusing back on Sean. “In this case, you claimed it was a gift, so we believed you.”
Sean studies the table intently. He misses out on Saraya staring at him.
Callie shakes her head. “Long story short—in most Grail legends, there’s a wounded or maimed king, usually called the Fisher King. Sometimes there’s two men, a father and son, or two brothers, both wounded, one more than the other.” Callie pauses here to look pointedly at Sean and me.
I wave at her, but her words make my pulse speed. What does it mean?
Callie’s cheeks have a slight flush. “The wound is almost always in the groin—in a lot of stories it’s said to symbolize—”
“The loss of fertility,” her mother puts in eagerly. “Yes. The wasteland, the broken kingdom.”
“My fertility is fine,” I say, affronted. “It’s a thigh wound.”
“A euphemism people have been using since the very beginning,” Callie says with a grin.
“She’s got you there, brother,” Sean says.
I ignore him. “There’s a thigh wound and the Grail heals it?”
“No,” Porsoth says. “At least not directly.”
Callie holds up a hand. “Finding the Grail castle is about reading the clues, yes, but also about worthiness of seeing it. Of being in the right place and usually of someone asking the right question. A knight.”
“We have to find a place I won’t be able to see?” Worthy is not a word used to describe people like me, but I want to be. I want to be worthy of her, of her trust and love. Of a life together. “And we need some knights?”
“Sort of,” Callie says.
“I feel like I’m still missing the larger point here,” Sean says.
“Here’s my theory,” Callie says, and I can see how nervous she is in the tap of her fingers against her own right thigh, in how fast she talks when she launches into it. “Some stories have a gravity of their own. Sean comes along, and even though he’s going through the motions, he names himself a seeker and both he and his brother are facing different challenges. His brother is wounded—”
“Accidentally,” Saraya puts in.
“Not because of anything anyone did—except, yes, fire an arrow—but because of who he was and who he was with.”
Isaac lets out a low whistle. “You’re saying that the Grail legend is playing itself out. And they’re part of it now.”
Callie nods. “Don’t you see it? Right now?” She swings her hand around. “We’re at the freaking Round Table. We’re the knights.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a knight,” Mag says. “But what do we actually do? To help Luke?”
“We need to find the Holy Grail. We’ve got to play it out. Once you’re in a Grail quest, you have to follow it through. This is the only chance we have. We redeem Sean. We heal Luke. And bonus, if this works, the Grail will give us the leverage to stop Lucifer.” Callie pulls out a chair and sits in it, makes to pull a manuscript toward her. “So get looking.”
“That’s it?” Sean asks. “That’s the plan?”
Her eyebrows lift. “You have a better one?”
“No,” he says.
“That’s what I thought. Everybody dig in. We’re finding the Holy Grail or else.”
I have many conflicting feelings. My heart wants to do this, for Callie. I can’t stand the idea of her disappointment, if she’s wrong. Or the idea of this wound slowly spreading throughout my body, of me as the wasteland Callie’s mother mentioned.
As they say, what the hell? I grab a book and open it. My brain recognizes the language as French and starts decoding it for me.
There’s that word again: worthy. I do my best to put it out of my mind.
The good son, the good son, the good son repeats at the back of it.
An hour inches past, then two. The words blur in front of my eyes. My attention span is a challenge at the best of times, and using half my effort to push away the throbbing pain in my thigh is, to put it mildly, the worst.
When Sean gets up with a book and heads into the stacks, I pry my body out of my seat to follow.
“Luke?” Callie glances up from the manuscript she’s reading.
“Need to stretch my … groin,” I say and grit a smile at her so she’ll know I’m okay enough to leave for a moment.
Sean is in his element. I find him running his fingers along a row of gilded leather spines, clearly seeking a certain volume.
To be fair, I haven’t seen Sean anywhere he couldn’t make seem like his element. I try to picture our circumstances exchanged, his upbringing in Hell (Porsoth would’ve been delighted by his nerdy streak), and me here (is there a delinquent guardian school?). Then I picture how kind Isaac has been to him. And it’s plain that Saraya’s antipathy comes from a deep well of feeling. He lost his mother, but I bet she did love him. Would I have been a different person if I’d grown up here instead of him? Would he be different if he’d grown up in Hell?
We’ve both had the kind of pressure only Father can exert applied to us. That’s something we do have in common.
Sean turns his head to peer at me over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“I thought we might talk.” We haven’t yet. Things moved so fast, our conversations have been brief and witnessed.
“Do we have time for that?” Sean goes back to his shelf.
“Are we getting anywhere in there? I’m the one with the mortal wound.”
He pauses. “You don’t think this will work?”
“I hope it will because Callie would like it to. And this thing hurts like you’d expect a magical wound to.” I nod down at my leg. “What about you? You planning to let yourself be forgiven? You’ve got it way easier, brother.”
Sean leans carefully back against the bookshelf. “Is that what you think?”
“It sounds like you had an idyllic childhood.”
“And you didn’t? In the palace?”
I have to laugh. “Are we arguing about which one of us is the most spoiled?”
“No,” Sean says, “it’s obviously you.”
The mirth departs. A heat of offense builds within me that the wound in my leg only makes burn hotter. “Are you provoking me on purpose?”
“No, brother,” Sean says. “Tell me how I’ve got it wrong. You grew up in the lap of supernatural luxury. You were surrounded by tailors and tutors and probably temptresses—”
He’s not wrong.
“—they let you get away with being lax at all of it. That was what the chattering class of demons said, at least. Part of our father probably thought your slacking off showed character. Then, out of nowhere, you save the damned world and become a hero. How is that fair? I became a thief.”
Fairness. That’s what he’s stuck on. He and Callie do share a lot of beliefs.
“Do you want to know what it was actually like?” I ask. I don’t wait for his answer. “Father could be displeased by anything—answering too slowly or too quickly. Refusing to practice a torture technique. And when he was displeased, sometimes the technique was demonstrated on me. Or he’d send me to live with Lilith, who loves me in her way, but it’s not a very motherly way. She’d have a parade of human lovers, mostly talented but dirtbag musicians, in and out of the house. She’d give me chores. And every now and again, we’d have a good day together. Then, Father would demand I return, a year, or three years, later. I wasn’t permitted to know other people my age, because I was to be above them. I was a failure at getting souls, and my supervisor wasn’t Porsoth, it was Rofocale. He would have happily unmade me or watched Father do it. I never knew what it was to feel something genuine that was mine, to have that feeling returned, until I met Callie. All this”—I wave between us—“all these games of his are to make me give her up and be who he always intended me to be. So, yes, I think I had it worse. You were able to walk away from his plans, the good son.” Making me the bad son.
Sean is intent, considering. “Was I? How far away have I gotten? Yes, I had more people in my life. I understood love. And I had to leave it behind. Could you do that?”
I tried once, and Callie refused to let it stand. If she were eavesdropping on this … I allow myself to see us through her eyes.
“We are ridiculous,” I say. “The pair of us. Poor-little-rich-boying each other.”
“I wasn’t rich.”
“You were, just not in money.” I sigh. “This isn’t why I came back here.”
“No?”
“No,” I say. “I wanted to say that … I don’t hate the idea of having a brother. Even if it is you.”
Why did I say that to him? I must be developing a habit of offering up my heart on a plate to people. Callie is one thing, but Sean? My wound is rotting my resolve.
“You’re not so bad,” Sean says. “I don’t hate it either.”
More than I expected. “Good. Now let’s talk about how you’re going to win Saraya back.”
Sean scoffs. “Back? We were never truly together.”
“I’ve seen how you look at her. The deference. And I don’t think the idea of creating a paradise for her was an idle one. You’d do it, if you could. I was ready to help you.”
He doesn’t deny it. “She doesn’t want me. How could she, knowing what she knows now? I did think the guardians would come—I wanted to see her. Just see her. To want more would be foolish.”
“I suspected you were a fool. You can’t just give up.” I couldn’t turn my back on Callie, not for … a kingdom. Not for anything. That’s what Father doesn’t understand. I’d sooner be unmade than disappoint her. I finally have a glimpse at a future I desire.
“It can’t work. It’s not to be. The devil’s son and the chief warrior of the guardians? Even a fairy tale would never claim it could exist.”
“Have you asked her?”
“What?” Sean raises his hands. “Asked her what?”
No, then. “Have you asked her anything?”
I should get back. Let him sit with that question. But I came back here for one more thing. “Sean, if things … don’t go well. Father says there can only be one heir. I don’t want it to be me.”
“It’s not going to be me either. Tell him yourself.”
“I have. But I think you know what I’m saying.”
I leave before he can give me a yes or no. I don’t believe I’m thinking straight, but I can hear the ticking of a clock in my ears and it reverberates with the pain in my leg. If I displease Father, if we don’t find a way out of this, I have to make sure Callie is protected. That may mean severing her connection to me.
After the past few days, I’m beginning to sense a sacrifice is in order. Mine.
I turn back. “Don’t mention this to her.”
Sean is watching me. He doesn’t agree or disagree. He pulls a book off the shelf and walks toward me, looping his free arm around me. He supports me all the way back to the round table.
Callie stops reading to watch us, the hint of a smile playing at her lips at seeing the two of us together. Little does she know.
No, I’d never give her up. Unless I have to in order to save her.