It was all the explanation I needed. I picked up Eleni, holding her tightly against me to restrain her thrashing before running after the Templar. The closer I got to the Amulet, the more my mate’s body relaxed in my arms. Father Paulus picked up the medallion with great care and met me halfway. He attached it around Eleni’s neck, and she exhaled a shuddering breath, all tension fading from her face.
To my shock, her demonic features also receded, as she regained her original appearance. She blinked groggily, the dark ink that had overtaken her eyes resorbing back into the normalpupil size, once more displaying her beautiful green irises and white sclera.
The other priest cast a protective shield around us to stop any potential attack while we cared for Eleni. Aside from the trapped Elder, there technically was no one left who could attempt anything. The other cultists were all dead or dying, including the two Elders still impaled on the spears next to the one left vacant by the high priestess.
Father Paulus placed his hands over my woman’s forehead and chest before reciting and incantation. My back immediately stiffened, and my fangs instinctively descended. Unfazed, the priest—or rather Templar—completed his spell. Although my need to protect my mate urged me to attack him, at a visceral level, I understood that he was trying to help her.
“I stabilized her the best I could, but she must be made whole again,” he said, running a nervous hand through his hair. “She will not survive very long with her soul split in half like this. She might last two or three weeks at best.”
“How do we reverse it?” I demanded.
He shook his head and gave me an apologetic look. “With this extent of reaping, I honestly don’t know. I never thought she would resist this long before releasing her darkness.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? If you didn’t have a clear way of reversing what was being done to her, why the fuck would you have allowed it to begin with? Why turn on the cultists after potentially irreversible damage was done?” I demanded, anger audible in my voice.
“Because she needed to release her inner power. Eleni remained a target as long as she had not fully embraced her true nature. I have dedicated my life to protecting her. My time is counted, and greater forces are seeking to enslave her. I had hoped she would have done so of her own volition while under the protection of the Church. But she took my initial warningsabout keeping it locked away too much to heart. Even after I told her that it was finally okay to release it, now that I trusted that it wouldn’t control her, she couldn’t.”
I eyed him with continued anger and disbelief. He lifted his chin defiantly and pulled out a small blade from his robe. Without hesitation, he made a small cut in his wrist and lifted the wound before my face.
“Drink, and see my truth,” he commanded. “Eleni is a daughter to me.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. I drank his blood, his memories flooding into me with powerful clarity, all the way down to the first day he met my beloved. What her blurred past—largely influenced by the drugs the cult gave Eleni—had kept hidden from both her and me, Paulus fully revealed. For her, he had broken countless rules, plotted and manipulated to keep the Church from executing her, from culling the threat of what she might become and that fiendish people coveted.
For her, he would have faced excommunication.
I blinked and refocused on him, more troubled than I would ever admit. He glanced at Eleni who was regaining her composure, her eyes losing their glazed over appearance. She gently pushed off my chest, and I reluctantly put her back on her feet. Looking far steadier than I expected, Eleni slightly distanced herself from us—or more specifically from Paulus. Her intense gaze as she stared at him screamed with distrust. While empathy and compassion didn’t feature particularly high on my list of qualities, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the pain the Templar felt at that rejection.
“I drank his blood, which he voluntarily gave me,” I said in a gentle voice. “He loves you. Everything he did was to protect you.”
She jerked her head towards me, her eyes flicking between mine, searching. I held her gaze unwaveringly. Eleni blinked before looking back at Paulus with a troubled expression.
“Why did you allow this?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“I didn’t think it would go that far. I begged you.Carpe noctem. Esto quod es,” he said in an apologetic tone.
“Be what I am?! What I am is evil!” Eleni exclaimed. “I can feel it inside me, trying to take over. Look at what I’ve done!” she added, waving at the charred corpses and impaled Elders.
“You eradicated true evil,” Paulus said in a tone that brooked no argument, taking both of us aback. “You could not go on hiding from yourself. For the past decade, I’ve tried to convince you to embrace who you truly are. Darkness is no more evil than light. It is what you do with it that determines its nature. You are strong enough to control it instead of letting it control you. You could have killed Sister Martha and me. But you didn’t,” he added, glancing at his companion.
She removed her mask, revealing a woman in her late forties, early fifties.
“You broke the circle so that I could attack the witches and disabled the other circles protecting the cultists,” Eleni said dismissively.
“I did,” he concurred. “But an evil beast wouldn’t have cared or even taken that into consideration. Their bloodlust would have dictated for them to kill everything and everyone for the sheer pleasure of spreading chaos and destruction.”
She frowned, her eyes cast down as she weighed his words. Her hand reached for the amulet dangling around her neck.
“But I’m broken now,” she whispered. “How do we fix it? The Oracle said she would take over my body and eventually return me to it once she got an upgrade. How?”
His shoulders slouched, and he gave her another apologetic look. “The Oracle possessed unique powers inherited from theunderworld creatures that contributed to the DNA of her current vessel. That power included soul transfer. The only people who I know capable of doing something somewhat similar are necromancers. But your specific situation is unique. I’m not sure they can help.”
“My brother’s mate is a powerful necromancer,” I interjected. “We can ask her for help. She’s human. Therefore, the Covenant shouldn’t affect her ability to assist us.”
Although he smiled with gratitude, something in his eyes hinted that he wasn’t convinced.
“That would be wonderful!” Eleni said, looking at me with hope.
I smiled back, then sobered as I glanced at the countless corpses surrounding us. “We should get out of here.”
