Seth let Raef lead him by the hand. Argos kept close. Even he did not seem to want to wander with the Grief so thick. It obscured the way ahead and the path behind them, leaving the three of them to float in a little island of light when the rare brazier pushed back the shades.
Raef released him when they reached their destination.
He showed no shame or fear as he stepped to the ornate door, raised the bronze knocker, and spoke calmly to the guard.
“Now we wait,” he said.
Shivering, as though the small exchange had further exhausted him, he retreated to Seth’s side.
“I wasn’t expecting to come back here,” Seth confessed.
“What were you expecting?”
“Another wrecked ship, a hole. Maybe a sewer, but not the prince’s palace.”
Raef had played the part of a wealthy noble when last he’d come here. Now he wore one boot and a stained shirt so torn that he may as well have gone without it. Despite what Seth had said, the smell was pretty bad. Then there was the hand, or rather, the lack of it, the place it should be but wasn’t.
“Stop staring at it,” Raef said. He shivered. “Please.”
“I’m sorry.”
He slung the hammer off his back, unbuckled his cloak, and settled it on Raef’s shoulders. Raef looked up at him, his eyes full of something as he hugged the wool to his body.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“I should have thought of it sooner.”
Raef smiled, and for a moment he was Pol again, the pirate who’d never seen kindness. That hadn’t been a lie, Seth decided. Raef had not had it easy since his tower had fallen. Someday, maybe, he’d hear the story and maybe Seth would tell his own, how Geldar had stolen him from Dodona’s tower as proof of heresy, but could not bring himself to slit Seth’s throat. He doubted Raef would find much love for an Inquisitor, especially after the events on Eastlight, but Geldar had contended with the Hierarch, begging for the life of a demon boy, and he had won.
Argos sat between them, head darting back and forth at every sound. Seth narrowed his eyes, but his sight could not pierce the Grief.
The door opened and the guard waved for them to hurry inside.
A thin, straight-backed porter waited for them. He wore a crisp emerald coat and polished boots despite the late hour. A badge like a coin, showing the hawk-nosed prince flanked by two crows, was pinned to his chest.
He was old, though not as old as Geldar, with gray hair cropped close to his head.
Seth recognized him. He’d come with the prince to the temple when the Hierarch had first arrived in Versinae.
“This way, Master Raef,” the porter said, waving for them to follow him into the palace’s sweeping hall.
“You know me?” Raef asked, blinking.
“Of course. Lord Cormac is not presently here, but we will send a message.”
“He’s alive?” Raef choked out the question.
“Yes,” the man said gently. “He has not stopped looking for you. He’s at the docks now, preparing another search.”
“Can you tell him that I’m here?”
Raef’s eyes glistened. He swayed on his feet, and Seth braced again to catch him.
“We have already sent runners with torches. This way, please.”
The house was lit, not as brightly as it had been during the party, but enough that Seth could see how harshly Raef contrasted to the pristine interior.
He did not feel so clean himself, not with his boots and the stink of the journey still upon him.
“I have beds prepared,” the porter said. “Unless you prefer one.”
Seth blinked.
“Uh . . .” he stammered.
“Two please,” Raef said.
“I’ll have baths brought and call for his lordship’s physician.”
Raef looked like he might protest, but bit off whatever argument he’d been forming.
“Thank you.”
With a nod, the porter left them at the doors of two rooms and marched away.
Raef let out a weary chuckle.
“What?” Seth asked.
“All that business with the mask and shaving.” Raef reached to scratch at the faint beard lining his jaw. “I could have just walked up to the gate and announced myself.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” It came out harsher than Seth intended. He did not like being confused and suspected Raef of teasing him.
“Do you remember how I told you that I found my parents? Adrian Deslis is my uncle, by way of my father, his brother Cormac.”
Seth sank a little. He’d believed he and Raef similar, the same, but this put them back on a different footing. Raef was noble, and his uncle was hardly anyone Seth admired.
Seeing his expression, Raef’s face turned gentle.
“You said you don’t know who your parents are?” he asked.
“No. I thought I was an oblate until Father Geldar told me the truth, that I’d been bred in the tower.”
Raef reached for him with his shorter arm, caught himself, and wrapped his right hand over Seth’s.
“The ledgers on Thiva have the lists for Dodona. You could find them.”
It had not occurred to him what the future held. He’d rescued Raef. He’d found his weapon. He would return to the Bishop, but it was not as though the Hierarch would stop hunting him. The future, for the first time since he’d set out for Teshur, felt obscured.
He could say with certainty that he finally understood what Geldar had meant, about being more complete, about dreaming bigger. He wanted more than knighthood, even if he didn’t dare yet voice his hope.
“Would you—I mean, would you go with me?” he asked, saying as much as he dared.
“If I can. If I survive what’s coming.”
They’d circled each other for so long. The gods had to have a hand in it, that the two of them, probably the last of their breed, should meet over and over. They’d danced like the moon and sun, like their gods, like night and day.
The porter returned, leading servants with steaming jars. They moved in and out of the rooms, up and down the stairs like lines of ants.
“We need to make certain no one else knows we’re here,” Raef said, voice faint. He looked wan, like the last of his strength had fled.
The porter nodded.
Seth had a thousand more questions, but they would keep. They were safe enough for Raef to rest.
The servants led him inside his room. Seth opened his own door.
As promised, there was a wooden tub, full of steaming water. Stripping, he eased into it, and realized how much he needed it. He scrubbed himself clean, shedding the dead skin, salt, and the grime of travel.
Argos yipped happily.
“Did you want to join me?” Seth asked the hound. “You could probably use one too.”
Argos’s response was to curl into a ball by the hearth.
* * *
There were clothes when he awoke, simple but far nicer than anything he’d ever worn. They fit him, which was unexpected. His armor and the hammer lay untouched where he’d left them but everything else was gone.
He rose, opened the window, and found a sunbeam to pray in. It was weaker than he liked. The palace was above the city’s tall towers, but a heavy fog lay over Versinae. At least it wasn’t Grief, not entirely.
“Thank you, Father,” Seth prayed. He wasn’t certain what else to say, how to capture everything he felt.
He’d found Raef. Argos had survived. They had a moment of safety.
Seth felt he needed little else, though his stomach disagreed, growling so loudly that it woke the sleeping hound.
“Thank you,” Seth repeated.
He’d prayed to Hyperion for so long, seeing him as the Father, as the light, but in some ways it had blinded him. He’d always thought it was his blood, the flaw of his birth, but he’d never heard Hyperion’s voice, never felt the god’s hand directly on him.
Finding the hammer, feeling it had chosen him, had changed that. It felt like a gift from the god himself. Maybe it had something to do with the way he had finally mastered the fire, maybe it had been Raef’s influence, the feeling of rightness when he’d stopped trying to burn away the parts of himself that had come from Phoebe or the demons.
Perhaps the hammer meant Seth did not belong in a cadre. Perhaps he would be a different kind of knight. He felt strangely at peace with the idea. He felt at peace with Hyperion, and with himself, for the first time in so long.
Rising, Seth opened the door to see a man standing outside Raef’s room, his hand raised to knock but frozen in place, like he could not quite bring himself to it.
“He’s probably still sleeping,” Seth whispered. “He needs it.”
“Oh,” the man said. He was slender, around Raef’s height, with hair just as dark but tied into a tidy rope at the back of his head. “How bad is it?”
He looked like he could use some sleep himself.
Seth almost wished he could lie, say he did not know, but that was not Hyperion’s way.
“The Hierarch took his hand. Beyond that, he’s very tired and maybe heartbroken.”
The man squeezed his eyes shut, took in a long breath and let it out.
“You’re Cormac? The one he wanted to get a message to?”
“Yes.”
“You’re his father.”
“Yes.”
Something red and jagged slipped into Seth’s heart. They weren’t so alike, Raef and him. This was new, this jealousy. It was very different from what he felt when he thought of Kinos. Anger tempered that feeling. This was something else. He understood why people called it green with envy. It swam in his guts like too many unripe apples.
Even with the ill feelings, he could admit there was something healing, something that made him feel more alive and complete than before, like another piece of him had fallen into place.
“Tell me everything you can,” Cormac said, his stricken expression reminding Seth that he wasn’t the only one hurting on Raef’s behalf.
“I don’t know everything, just the parts I was there for and what Kinos told me.”
“Tell me those then.”
“All right.”
He followed Cormac to the palace kitchens. Servants brought food: thin, fresh bread, olives, and a soft cheese that Seth had never had before. They ate while Seth told all he could.
Sating his hunger was only part of it. Telling the story had soothed the ache, like a lengthy confession.
For Cormac’s part, he looked pained, weighed down by what Seth had unburdened onto him.
“It is nearly noon,” Seth said when he had finished. “I should pray. You are welcome to join me.”
Cormac shook his head.
“I don’t think Hyperion and I are going to be right for a long while.”
Raef might be half-demon, but his father might be the source of his temper.
“Hyperion did not wrong him.”
“Tell that to the Hierarch. After all, isn’t he the god’s voice in this world?”
Seth had no answer for that, because it was true. He found his way back to his room.
Argos wasn’t there.
Seth shouldn’t have left the hound alone. The servants would not know what to do with him.
Noticing that Raef’s door was open to a crack, Seth peeked inside to find Argos curled at the foot of Raef’s bed.
Argos lifted his head slightly, acknowledging his master, then settled back in place. Raef did not stir, though Seth could see the steady rise and fall of his pale, too-thin chest. He had a little dark hair there, and no scars, not like Seth’s. The only clear injury was the arm that ended shorter than the other.
“I’m so sorry,” Seth whispered.
He’d promised not to stare. He pulled the door closed and returned to his own room.
He preferred the open sky for prayers, but the window would do. At least the sky had cleared. The light was brighter, and he could see the temple’s dome, rising over the city, just a little higher than the palace. Seth stripped and sat. Eyes closed, he focused on the light, on its warmth.
“Father,” he prayed.
But he did not know what else to say.
He’d found Raef. He’d been chosen by Argos.
But he’d also killed to save his own life, and could not regret it, could not ask for forgiveness.
He’d completed his pilgrimage, become a full knight, and yet he felt incomplete.
Seth conjured the flames, let them roll through him. But he did not smolder. He did not steam.
He had changed.
He felt it more than heard it, but the message was clear.
His penance was complete.
Seth lifted his face, closed his eyes, and felt the light. The fire did not roil inside him. It did not fight for escape. It filled him, warmed him. It was part of him. The darkness was there too, a contrast, a complement.
He did not call it, but the flame gathered in his palm and took shape.
A long blade glimmered in his hand, so bright that the glow shone through his closed eyelids. It whirled and twisted, flattening, spinning into a shield.
Seth opened his eyes. The light vanished.
A sword and shield of fire. No knight he knew could conjure that.
“Father,” Seth prayed in wonder. “What am I?”
No answer. He was alone.
“No,” he said, smiling, feeling the warmth within him. It did not burn. It did not singe his skin. He was not alone. Never truly.
Seth had lost his faith in the Hierarch but not in Hyperion. He had not lost his god’s love.
He had Geldar and the Bishop. He had Argos.
He had—
“Seth?” a voice asked from behind him.
Raef leaned against the doorway. Still pale, he was at least clean. He wore a pair of soft sleeping pants and a loose shirt of gray linen with a pattern of leaves woven at the hems. He was barefoot, and there was something about that, about its vulnerability, that pained him.
“You’re awake.”
Raef nodded, and even that seemed to take some of his strength.
“Thank you,” he said. “For coming for me.”
“You got yourself out of the box.”
“Thank you anyway. I never would have found my way out.”
“You need to lie down.” Seth nodded to the bed.
“Yeah,” Raef agreed. He moved that way, felt at the bed like he didn’t trust it, then climbed into the bedding that Seth had left bunched in hills and valleys.
Seth put a blanket over him, but Raef did not notice. He was already asleep again.
From there it was visitors. Cormac had chairs brought. They sat together, watching over him. The physician arrived, a large woman with curling red hair in a purple gown. She shooed them out. Even Argos obeyed. The harried-looking man carrying her bag shot them an apologetic look as he closed the door behind them.
When she opened it again, she left a confused looking Raef behind.
“Barbarous,” she spat, eyeing Seth and Cormac like they’d made the cut. “But it’s clean. He needs food and sleep. That is all.”
Cormac nodded as she shuffled away, her assistant scurrying after her.
Raef lay propped against the headboard.
Cormac’s eyes remained focused on Raef’s left arm.
“It’s all right, you two,” Raef said, turning between them, holding it up and laying it to rest on his chest. “This is who I am now.”
Seth did not quite believe him. He was a good liar, but his eyes darted that way now and again.
“Sit,” Raef said. “Both of you.”
Cormac took a chair. Seth dared the edge of the bed.
“I know what I have to do,” Raef said, looking between them, meeting their eyes. “And neither of you will like it.”