“Surely there are Clerics more powerful than a monk in the forest.”Ben huffed a laugh, harsh and too loud.“What of the Navy’s?The king’s?The bedamned Ess Noti?They seem to have their fingers in every bit of magery.I cannot believe—”
“Stop,” the word cut out of me.To have Ben of all people poking holes in my decisions?I could not stand for it.“Stop, Ben.There is no cure.”
“I do not believe you,” he retorted.“You have that expression on your face, that fucking martyr’s glower.You are trying to find a way to suffer for the good of everyone around you, which means thereisa cure, but it is too dangerous to go after.Be selfish for once, Sam.Tell me the truth.”
I snorted in disgust, more offended than I could admit.“One of us has to think of others.”
“Tell me the truth.”
My resolve weakened, and it was a testimony to the depth of my fatigue that I did not immediately mark that shift as Magni power.Benedict watched me, his eyes… not softer, but more open than I had seen in years.
“There is a cure, and it may be in Ostchen,” I admitted, looking through him now, brush paused.“But it is with the Ess Noti and therefore out of reach.Even if wecouldlearn it, you would have to be healed too.Or your corruption would eventually unravel me again.”
“I will not give up my power,” Ben stated, whatever else he thought hidden behind his eyes.
“You might retain it,” I said, holding my brother’s gaze.“What the Black Tide did is a poor imitation of Mereish practices.Perhaps they can… not undo what the Black Tide did, but correct it.”
“‘Perhaps,’” Ben repeated tonelessly.“This is why you have not had her.”
I raised my brows, taken aback by the sudden shift in topic.“Pardon me?”
Benedict smiled, small and pitying.“Mary.”He slid into a leer and pronounced each of his next words with singular intention.“You.Are.A.Fool.Once more, you have a woman on offer at this very moment, and you will not have her because of your worthless scruples.”
His words shoved under my skin like splinters.I stepped away from the horses and faced him, every slam of my pulse in my suddenly aching skull threatening to shatter my self-control.
“Ben,” I said lowly.“Every time you use your power, you lose more of yourself.You lose the potential of goodness.You forget more of what it is like to be human, to feel and love and care.My corruption will drive me mad and set me adrift in the Dark Water.But yours will make you into a monster.Lirr was a shadow compared to what you will become.”
At my mention of ‘goodness’ a snarl had tightened Benedict’s lips, but now he grinned, vicious and unforgiving.“Have you considered that is what I want?”
Gooseflesh rose on my arms and neck.“What if a day comes,” I asked very slowly, “when you are so far gone, so lost, that I am theone you hurt?Kill?Torture?What if you see your daughter on the street—in whose veins runs your own blood—and she is nothing but meat and bones in your eyes?”
That struck a chord.Benedict’s lips pinned shut, his nostrils flaring, and his gaze locked to mine.I felt his power ripple across the room, bringing with it feelings of terror and remorse andrun, run, run.The horses shifted, tossing their heads and tugging on their tethers.
I weathered it.
Ben did not speak again, and that, I knew, was as much of an answer as I would get.He had heard me.There was nothing more I could do.
“Saint, I am starving,” he said abruptly, standing up and striding out the door.“I am off to find some food.”
I bit back a protest.The ache in my head had transformed into hammering, and I closed my eyes, fingers pressed to my temples.
I had grown so used to sloshing through floodwaters in sodden boots that when the Dark Water began to swell around my ankles, I hardly noticed.The Other condensed, overwhelming what little senses I had left beyond pain.A few lights flickered—Grant’s subtle indigo-grey in the inn, a creature with an orange glow somewhere off in the night.Mary’s and Ben’s were still hidden, but I felt no consolation.
The billowing light of another Sooth burned on the horizon.His light was forest green edged with purple, bruised and battered.And his focus was wholly, exclusively, on me.
Inis Hae.
I fumbled a hand into my pocket.The coin was not there.Had I lost in in our flight?Had it fallen on the floor?
Panic threatened to smother me, raging free before Olsa’s training surged.I began to separate my mind, edging part of myself back into the human world and slowly, tediously, drawing the rest back on a fragile thread.
I came back to myself, crouched with my back to one of the stables’ squared posts.My headache had dulled but was still there, aching and warning.Warning me that, in the Other, Hae was watching.
My fingers finally touched the coin, crammed low in a forgotten pocket.As soon as I nestled it into the warmth of my palm, the headache ebbed and my sense of Hae faded.
But only dread came in its place.
***
