CHAPTER 10
THE FALSE SECURITY OF RAISING ONE’S VOICE
Celeste had definitively and unequivocally fucked things up. The blacksmith shop had blown up—blown right up—and it was all her fault. She moaned into her hands, then ran fingers down her face as she stood in the entry to the temple. Dirty puddles, dried thorns, and at least one bucket of bloody water greeted her, and even under the gentle shimmer of the arcane lights she’d finally gotten working, it all looked so shameful. Everything was truly a mess.
The villagers would find out about the smithy’s chimney, and then when they went asking after what happened, they would discover they had an evil entity besieging the town, one that Celeste had set free to do all that besieging, and she would be in trouble. Not just the get-shouted-at kind of trouble, or the locked-in-your-chamber kind of trouble, or even the beaten-until-you-stop-crying kind of trouble, but the kind that gets one burnt at a stakelike a witch.
She went for the bucket, and her leg screamed in pain, her groan devolving into a hiss, but she kept moving.
“What are you doing?” The knight was standing near the unlit brazier in the center of the temple’s main chamber, watching her with the same shrewdness he’d been intermittently casting her way all evening. There were moments when it would let up, and those were nice. It was almost like he’d changed his mind about her, especially when he offered assistance through the uneven wood, but that contemptuous look always came back.
“Cleaning up.” She couldn’t fix Briarwyke at the moment, nor could she fix the temple, but she could at least empty that stupid bucket. She lifted it, and her leg throbbed, the weight throwing her off balance.
“Aren’t you tired?” He was suddenly right behind her, and she gasped, moving too quickly and feeling the ache in her muscles.
“I can’t sleep at a time like this.”
“Well, you can’t do this either.” He grabbed the bucket out from under her. “What is this?”
“Oh, it’s just some old blood,” she moaned, ignoring his horrified look. “I didn’t draw it from anyone, I don’t even know whose it was, not that you’ll believe me.”
With a quickness, he took the bucket back out the way they’d come, holding it as far from himself as possible.
With nothing to occupy her hands, she hobbled to the broom sitting in the corner. At least she could lean on the thing while she swept up the new leaves that had fallen in through the broken windows above.
What in the Abyss could she do now? She had lit the arcane forge to draw the shadowy entity out so he could be caught—it was meant to be simple! Convincing a holy man to use his divine arcana to help was supposed to be the difficult part, and yet she’d actually accomplished that. In fact, he hadn’t put up much of a fight at all—he’d even made an oath not to hurt her despite being a stubborn and overzealous knight.
But instead, she had only managed to feed the much-more-complicated-than-she-thought darkness, and if the feeling she had gotten off of Syphon just before he left told her anything, he was getting stronger.
A hefty sigh came from the entry where the knight stood sans bucket, hands on his hips. He was staring at her, his typical suspicious disgust replaced with pity. Her insides squirmed, and she tried doubly hard to push the broom across the floor.
“You’re injured,” he said, as if it weren’t glaringly obvious to them both. “You should rest.”
“I can’t until I figure out how to catch that thing.” Celeste spied another leaf and shuffled after it.
“Perhaps sit and think about it then.” He crossed the temple in a few long strides and wrapped a hand around the broom.
She did not loosen her grip. “I can’t—moving helps me think.”
“It does?” His lip curled up on one side as an eyebrow sank. “I can’t think and do anything else at the same time.”
Celeste snorted, but before she let fly the cutting words that would tell him she was unsurprised, thought better of it. That kind of quip would only be an echo of something Delphine would cruelly say anyway. It was an admirable admittance, she supposed, and maybe he didn’t deserve derision after shielding her from so much rubble.
But things had gone so poorly! “I’m just worried the entity is going to use that arcane fire I let him get a hold of to hurt someone else.”
His befuddled look softened, and he gently tugged on the handle. “You think, I will do.” When she relented, he used the broom to point. “Sit.”
Celeste allowed herself to fall into the nearest chair, and even though it was cushioned, another stab of pain ran through her body. By the light in the temple, she could finally inspect what was vexing her and lifted the hem of her dress on one side. There was a speckling of blood beneath her skin, beginning just beside her knee where the mystery tool had whacked her from on high, and as she drew back the linen, the marks only worsened.
Skirt gathered at her hip, she pressed a finger to the fleshiest part of her thigh, and it was like being stabbed. It would be a bruise in less than a day, an ugly, blotchy thing, but at least her leg was not broken. With a whimper, she dropped the hem and collapsed back into the chair.
The knight was still standing before her, and if his grip went much tighter, the broom would snap in two. His wide eyes were locked onto her legs, now covered. She hadn’t even thought about the fact he was there, but she hadn’t shown him that much, had she? Surely he’d seen a bare leg before, his own at the very least. But then maybe holy knights weren’t supposed to see bare anything? Wonderful, now she’d offended the gods too—could she get nothing right?
A blur of maroon wings landed in her lap and broke the man of his unblinking stare. Celeste caught Plum before he tumbled right off her knees, and the wyvern nibbled gently on her fingers in greeting.
The knight mumbled something nonsensical, missing whatever dirt he attempted to sweep up, mumbled a little more, and then just stood still so he could scratch at the back of his head. He really couldn’t think and do at the same time, and that at least made Celeste quietly chuckle. But when his hand swept through that wavy, chestnut hair, and he frowned deeply at the chamber, the laughter stopped. Her fingers twitched in her lap, and Plum pounced on them.
“It spoke to you,” the knight said finally, looking up.
