I stopped just inside the doorway and looked at him.
The wounds on his face had been cleaned and dressed. Someone had done careful work: the edges were sealed, the skin around them no longer angry. His left eye was dark, the bruise spreading from the socket down toward his cheekbone in shades of deep purple and yellow-green. It should have made him look diminished, but somehow it didn’t. Instead, he looked like a man who’d walked through something immense and come out the other side still standing. There was no defeat whatsoever in his countenance.
He rose before I spoke. Then he turned and folded his hands at his waist and looked at me with those clear gray eyes that never seemed to blink quite enough.
“Your Grace.” His voice was unhurried. “I expected you.”
I crossed the chapel and stopped a few feet from him so that I was close enough to read him, or at least to try.
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“I know what happened last night requires explanation.” He didn’t wait for me to ask, and I appreciated that.
“Yes,” I answered.
He nodded. “I went to her in the gods’ service. You had given me charge of her soul, and I believed that sustained prayer, holy presence in close proximity, might weaken the demon’s hold upon her. I hoped I might loosen its grip on her.” He paused. “I went to minister to her, to urge the demon from within her confines. I did so not for myself, but for her.”
I said nothing but nodded.
“I prayed over her,” he continued. “I spoke scripture such as I’d been doing for some time. But when I felt moved to lay a hand on her in blessing, in only the manner of a shepherd, of a healer...” He looked at me steadily as he breathed in deeply.
“Go on.”
“The moment I made contact,itsurfaced.”
“It.”
“The demon.” His expression didn’t shift. “What I saw in that room was not the prisoner. Whatever was behind her eyes in that moment, whatever tore the ice from nothing and drove it at my face, that was not the woman you brought to me.” He let that settle before he continued. “I have seen possession before. Twice, in my years of study. This was the worst instance.”
He then described what happened next: the cold that arrived before the ice, the way the air had changed, the sound the room made as it came apart around him. A man could have fabricated those details, but the lie would have revealed itself, I was sure: a flicker of effort, a fraction of a second’s hesitation. Galahad gave me none of that.
“This proves something important,” he continued, nodding.
“What does it prove?”
“That the demon is strong enough to resist holy intervention. It is strong enough that my presence, my prayers, not only failed to weaken it, but they provoked it.” He paused. “Iprovoked it.”
“If the demon was able to resist you, what does that mean?” I asked the words, but like I’d said to Isolde, I didn’t believe in demons. But that wasn’t the point of the matter. The point of the matter was what had happened in the minutes leading up to the chaos that nearly killed Galahad.
“I believe it means that the prisoner is beyond saving. The demon may have displaced whatever soul remains within her. She may well be a vessel that has already been emptied.”
He said the words quietly, with no amount of cruelty, and sounded like a man who was delivering a verdict he’d spent the night hoping to avoid.
I kept my voice even. “Why did this happen only last night and not earlier?”
There was a pause that was less than a heartbeat. “Because it knew what I intended,” he answered. “Evil is perceptive, my lord. I believe the entity read my purpose and struck before the prayer could take hold, before I could drive it out of her.” He held my gaze. “It was not random. It was a response.”
I breathed in deeply, accepting what he said as it made sense to me.
“My lord, I wish for you to understand something.” He took one step toward me, not close enough to be threatening but close enough to be deliberate. “I am not afraid of her. Even after the events of last night, I am not afraid. In fact, I believe this is my calling: the work of expelling a demon from its host is dangerous, and the result is uncertain, but I am prepared to continue.”
“She very nearly killed you.”
He nodded. “I was able to defend myself with my own divine magic, my king. But that doesn’t change the fact that I believe I am meant to deliver the evil from her. But I can only do so if you leave her in my custody.”
I didn’t say anything because I hadn’t made that decision for myself. In fact, it seemed it was the wrong decision simply because of the fact that he’d very nearly died at her hands.
“I fear for you, my lord, more than I fear for myself.”
