Something dark had come over me in those tunnels. I wasn’t sure if it was the sudden release of so much hatred and revenge or if it was the need for more, but when I made it to the surface, I abandoned Quaid and found myself walking in to the old church at the center of town. If any early-morning joggers had stopped to talk to me, I didn’t notice them. If there were a priest at the door as I walked inside, I didn’t notice him either. I wasn’t sure what I was even doing here. I just needed some place to go that wasn’t a reminder of Morgana and all she had done to me.
As I sat beneath the arched ceilings, splashes of light beaming down on me through the stained-glass windows as morning settled into place, I felt a sense of calm that I’d not felt in years. It left me free to wander my thoughts without judgement, without incident, as though reflecting on them in this place would give me a kind of protection from the horror I didn’t otherwise have.
If I thought back to Morgana, a girl I fell in love with once—before I ever knew Ara—I couldn’t make any connections between that sassy, sexy woman and the damaged creature I just saw in the cells. Though my heart knew it, my mind never wanted to admit that she was the same person I once loved. The same person that hexed me, nearly cost me my marriage. The same person I beat bloody. The same person that killed my child.
All of those different personas mixed together sometimes until none of it made sense. Until I wasn’t sure if I should hate her, love her, pity her, or do to her what she just did to herself.
And now it didn’t matter. Her own father saw enough of the monster to kill her. Not only to kill her, but see to it that she would never arise. I could no longer blame myself for what happened to our child. It was clear to me now: I didn’t bring this upon myself by beating Morgana. It started long ago when her father placed her in the care of her grandmother and then killed his own wife in order to resurrect her immortal. None of this was my fault, and the man that started it had, finally, ended it.
The sun changed positions in the sky many times before I came up from my thoughts, and when I did, it was in front of a face I’d not seen in years.
“Father Sean.”
“Why if it isn’t our young David Knight,” he said, the word ‘young’ sounding more like ‘yoong’. It seemed the Irishman in him hadn’t withered in all these years.
“How are you, Father?” I said. “It must be, what—”
“Fifty years since I seen ya face,” he said. “And what brings ye to the good Lord’s house on this fine rainy day?”
“I…” I was unsure. I hadn’t set foot in a church since the days when I first met Ara. At some point in all we’d been through, I’d lost my faith in God. Completely. Wasn’t even sure I believed now.
“Ah, you’ve been t’rou a mighty rough trot, haven’t ya?”
I had to laugh. “I certainly have, Father.”
“And I hear ye all be finding this Morgana gar’l again this morn’n? S’that what’s got your panties in a twist?”
I laughed again. He hadn’t changed a bit. Not in all these years. “It has. I must admit.” But somehow, it all seemed a lot less consuming in his presence.
“Ah, I see.” He sat back, facing the front of the church, the cold wooden pew creaking as he moved. “Word’s got out, ye know?”
“What word?”
“The young queen. Er”—he grinned—“S’cuse me, former queen, has decided to let the gar’l live, resurrection, they’re sayin’.”
“What?” I growled, simmering myself down with a stern reminder from the good Father about where I currently was. “She’s resurrecting her?”
“Do you not agree then?”
“No.” I stood up, but a firm Irishman’s hand came down on my shoulder.
“Sit down, son. There’s things need sortin’ in your ’art here and running off to fight wi’ yur missus ain’t gon’ solve none today.”
I sat down. Reluctantly.
“Now you listen here. That Morgana gar’l, evil as she was, had a heart hurting bad as I seen any. Spent time in here wi’ me, talking things t’rou.”
“She did?”
“Before it all went to Hell,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “And let me put it to you like this, David. If that sweet wife’a yours deserve a fresh start, why on God’s good earth don’t the other sister?”
“Because she killed my baby, Father,” I said; how could he not understand?
“And am I not right in rememb’rin’ you did just the same to yur own brother?”
Oh God. It hit me so suddenly and with so much force that my skin crawled. He was right. So right I couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe. I hated Morgana. Wanted the flesh peeled from her face. But I was no different to her.
“There now.” He patted my knee as he stood up. “You sit ’ere a while and think on that then.”
I didn’t see him walk away. I didn’t even hear the door close, but I did feel empty and incredibly alone once he was gone. I sat with no words in my mouth, no breath in my chest, and rolled my face up to look at the cross on the wall—two forgiving eyes staring back down at me without judgement.
And there was nothing more to be said.
I got up and left the church, reaching the steps to the manor as it turned dark, with no recollection of how I got here.
“David!” Ara ran for me as she passed the Great Hall, the concern dropping from her sooty face when she saw me. “Where have you been?”
“Walking,” I said, but my voice was colder than I intended. Cold enough that as she went to throw her arms around me, she stopped. She was black with soot from head to toe and reeked of death, but I drew her in anyway and kissed her head, just glad to finally feel her form, the solidity, against me again. After seeing Morgana burn, it had brought a few memories too close to home for me—things I’d locked away so deeply since Ara’s return that I was sure now that they were only a nightmare.
“You’re angry at me,” she stated, though it sounded more like a question. “You heard, didn’t you?”
“Shhh,” I whispered into her hair. “I did. And it’s okay.”
“Are we talking about the same thing?” She looked up at me through round, fearful eyes.
I smiled in reply.
“But… how?” She almost couldn’t believe it. I could see the lengthy argument she had prepared just wither away inside her without a place to go. “I thought you’d be mad.”
“Let’s just say I got some insights from an old friend—someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time.”
She just smiled, throwing her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so worried—”
“We’re both okay.” I hugged her delicate little frame tight, breathing her in. And then I coughed, choking on the fumes in her clothes. “God, Ara. You need a shower.”
She laughed, pulling back. “Yes. And I desperately need some food.”
“Why? Watching old witchy-poo cook made you hungry, did it?”
“David!” She gasped, her face lighting up though as she slapped me playfully. And as we walked back to our room, saying nothing, but comfortable that way, I realized that things would just move on now. We wouldn’t think about Morgana again. She would be raised from the dead and she would get on with her life, and Ara would walk beside me in our new life, freed by the remorse that Morgana showed before her death, while I would be freed by the knowledge that one could ask for forgiveness and that it could be given, as it had been with me so long ago when I took an infant’s life. This day had burned a hole in me earlier but now, it seemed, that hole had been filled with something I couldn’t touch. Filled with something I couldn’t understand. But it didn’t matter, because for the first time in my life, I felt cleansed. Felt like I could accept the forgiveness Jason offered me long ago. And in that, I saw myself as remarkably and perfectly human.