“That means you may be trapped here.”
“Yes.”
The word came out steadier than I felt.
Father William made a soft sound behind me. Not quite a prayer. Not quite pity.
I kept looking at the psalter. An old book. That was all it looked like now. Vellum. Ink. Gold leaf. Binding. A thing I would once have known how to describe in a catalog entry.
Condition: stable.
Decoration: illuminated.
Provenance: uncertain.
Function: unknown.
Cruel, I thought suddenly.
Then immediately felt ridiculous for resenting an object.
“You cannot teach me,” Aldwin said at last.
“No.”
“And there is no proof it can be used again.”
I took a deep breath. “No.”
He nodded once, as though a decision had been made somewhere inside him.
“For now,” he said, “I’ll stop trying.”
“For now?”
His expression hardened slightly, grief tucking itself back behind armor. “I said what I can honestly give.”
That was probably the best I was going to get. “Then for now,” I said, “thank you.”
He looked at the psalter one final time. Whatever hope had brought him into the chapel before dawn was gone from his face now, replaced by something heavier and older as he turned and left without another word, his boots echoing sharply against the stone floor.
Father William watched him go. When the sound faded, he stepped fully into the chapel.
“You handled that better than I expected,” he said.
“I didn’t handle it well at all.” My voice sounded strange to my ears.
He came to stand beside me at the lectern. The psalter remained still between us. Ordinary,
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
That almost undid me. “For which part?”
“For the uncertainty.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
Father William folded his hands inside his sleeves. “Perhaps it did not answer because the hour was wrong.”
