“There you are,” Seth called, walking toward him. “I was getting worried.”
Jacen stood and brushed sand off his clothes. “I needed somewhere quiet to think.”
Seth nodded, as though this were to be expected. “I know that look.”
“What look?”
“Your priest look. As if you’re contemplating the mysteries of the universe”—Seth swept a hand dramatically overhead—“which the likes of me could never understand.” There was levity in his tone, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen it.”
They faced one another.
“You have to perform the exorcism, Jace.” There it was. Jacen’s stomach twisted.
“I don’t mean now,” Seth clarified. “I understand our predicament, believe me, though I dearly wish I didn’t. But you cannot let Neri integrate. Once this is over, you have to set him free.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Jacen said quietly.
“I know you’re looking for something to believe in. I’m only asking that you consider this with a healthy amount of skepticism.” Seth had a rein on his patience, but Jacen sensed it fraying. “And if you won’t . . . You take so much on faith. Might youalsotake it on faith that we can win the fight ahead withoutsacrificing Neri? Is that so much more difficult than to believe whatever we unleash, should he integrate, won’t destroy us all?”
When Jacen did not reply, Seth sighed. “I was afraid of that.” His brow furrowed. “What if you performed the exorcism and someone else, someone better prepared, took on the demon?”
“It wouldn’t work.” Jacen spoke gently but firmly. “Naxal would not have accepted just any host. Neri is unusually—maybe uniquely—suited to this.”
“Yes, Ysira’s demon. I’ve heard. But we seem to be confusingsuitabilitywithimmunity.Neri is not himself. Something is very wrong, Jacen, and it terrifies me.”
“If there were any other way, any other host, they’d have tried already. Exorcism requires the host’s consent. And . . . you raised him, Seth. If you were in his position, what would you do?”
Seth had the look of a man who knew he fought a losing battle, hanging on out of sheer dogged principle. He understood as well as anyone the brutal calculus at hand—all that their world stood to lose.
Jacen admitted, “I’m afraid too.” He met Seth’s eyes. “It’s not faith alone that guides me. I’ll take your words to heart.”
Seth nodded to himself, accepting where they’d landed—for the moment, at least. His expression softened. “There you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“The look’s gone now. You’re . . . a person again.”
Jacen exhaled a laugh. “I’m always a person. Even when I’m a priest.”
It was something he thought he always would be, whether his vows held or not—something he’d have been in any lifetime, with this part of him that would always wonder, and fear, and ponder the great mysteries. The part of him that looked up and saw never the stars but the void between them.
“You know what I mean.” A wan smile touched Seth’s lips. “In all honesty, sometimes you terrify me.”
Though the words were spoken lightly, Jacen sensed truth in them.
His chest tightened.
Seth was close enough that Jacen felt the heat of his body, the steadiness of his presence. He did not want it gone. So much was on his mind, so much that had changed in so little time—and yet, there remained everything he’d never said to Seth.
Perhaps he would spend all his days like this, torn between faith and love, between the ephemeral and the eternal. But as he gazed along the deepriver, into Esh’s impenetrable darkness, he realized: where there was no light, the intimate and the cosmically vast felt exactly the same.
He swallowed hard. “I never properly apologized for what I said in Ogden’s clinic. I?—”
Seth squeezed his shoulder, shutting him up. “Enoughwith the apologies. We’ve been over this.”
“No.” Before reason could return to him, Jacen caught Seth’s hand. “I need to say something.”
But what words could possibly be enough?
