Yet, I’d never thought I would have to use it.
She was asleep when I walked into our shared quarters, or performing sleep, which she did sometimes. I’d learned to tell the difference: real sleep made her face go slack and young-looking, made the hollows beneath her eyes seem deeper and more accusatory. Performed sleep kept a tension around her jaw, a readiness.
Tonight her sleep was real.
I stood at the foot of the pallet and watched her breathe for a long time.
Three weeks. Twelve ice baths. Nine or so sessions with the scourge. The starvation protocol had been observed almost to the letter until the king involved himself and allowed her to dine inthe Great Hall, which he had been doing more and more often. Regardless, I believed I had done as good a job with her as I was able.
But, ultimately, I had failed.
The theology was sound. I’d checked it against the original texts. The body was the vessel of corruption, and the corruption had to be met on its own ground. You could not drive out darkness with light alone. You had to go into the dark place and assert dominance over it. Brother Eamon had said so. The Book said so. Every marginal notation in cramped, frightened script said so.
My hands were steady, and my breathing was regulated. I’d prayed for four hours before coming back here to face her and the truth in what had to come next. The prayer had done what prayer was supposed to do: it had hollowed me out and filled the hollow with something clean, purposeful, and correct.
I set the lantern on the table.
The sound woke her.
She came up fast, her hand reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there, then stilling when she registered where she was, who she was, and who I was. I watched the recognition land, watched her arrange her face into the careful blankness she wore only for me.
“Galahad.” Her voice was flat as she faced me, and then she looked outside at the moon, no doubt trying to ascertain what time it was and if I’d awakened her for prayers. I had not.
“Don’t speak.” I crossed to her pallet. “What happens tonight is sacred. You will not cheapen it with speech.”
She watched me, her eyes tracking my every movement. Or, I suppose I should have saidthe demonwatched me from within her. And the demon was powerful. Not only that, but it was intelligent. It knew how to use her beauty against me, and it used that knowledge defensively, not provocatively, which was both admirable and also irrelevant. I knew what I was up against, and this would not be an easy battle. Yet, I was prepared.
“There is a rite,” I continued to explain, more to myself than to her, because what I was about to do... it was a sacrifice on my own part. I had taken a vow of celibacy, of purity, and now thatvow had to be set aside. In order to save her and order the demon out, I would have to join with her, to slake myself in the sin of her body. “In the Appendix of Abominations, specifically The Purging Rite, it addresses cases of deep spiritual contamination, cases where the corruption has threaded itself through the flesh so completely that external measures cannot reach it.”
She said nothing.
“I’ve been gentle with you, patient and methodical. What is more, I’ve exhausted all other avenues, but the contamination persists. The demon persists.” I took a breath. “The darkness that lives in your blood is stronger than I had assumed.” I pulled the chair to the side of the pallet and sat, which was deliberate: a choice that would read as controlled. “Thus, now I must sacrifice my own purity in order to drive this demon from you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“The Rite requires complete physical submission, as the corruption must be driven out through the surrender of the body’s defenses. It’s...” I stopped.
The theology had been there a moment ago; I’d rehearsed it for four hours, including every clause, every doctrinal justification, as well as the chain of reasoning that led from the Book of Abominations, page two hundred and fourteen, directly to this room, to this woman, and to this moment. This was my responsibility now, my corruption to clean, to purge.
Yet, now the theology was gone, and there was just emptiness in my mind.
She was watching my hands.
I looked down and realized my knuckles had gone white and my hands were shaking. I looked back up at her, at this demoness that required saving.
“Lie back,” I said.
She didn’t move.
“The Rite requires—”
“—I know what the Rite requires.” Her voice was very quiet, then there was nothing but silence.
I stood up from the chair. The movement wasn’t planned; it bypassed the part of me that planned things and came from somewhere lower and less disciplined. I was at the side of the pallet before I’d decided to move, and my hand was at her shoulder, and she went very still, the way prey went still, and the comparison arrived in my mind fully formed even as I refused it.
She wasn’t prey. She was a demon. And it was my duty to send the demon back to the fires from whence it had come.
“You are doing this because you want to do it, and you’ve wanted to do it from the moment I became your ward. Whatever reasons you’re wrapping around it... they’re purely to rationalize your own desire.”
