I took in this new revelation for several minutes of silence, chewing it over along with all its implications. I might have said many things in that moment — something comforting, some tasteful insight.

Instead, because I couldn't quite get the thought out of my head I said, "So before she killed him they, uh…"

Emma fixed me with a withering look. "Do I really need to spell it out for you?"

I held up a placating hand. "It doesn't matter. You aren't your great-grandmother or great-grandfather. Their feud happened a long time ago. This just… an echo."

Emma snorted. "Doesn't much feel like an echo. You're all torn up." She nodded to my shoulder and hand.

I shrugged. "Not the first time."

Despite my words of reassurance, I knew it did matter at least some. Just as there are sacrosanct traditions concerning hospitality and the treatment of the dead, which can have dire repercussions if broken thanks to the magics placed over the land, what Emma revealed about her family's deeds couldn't simply be dismissed as a long ago crime. She'd been left a legacy of murder and betrayal, both done in the most intimate of circumstances.

She'd literally been born of that betrayal. It wasn't fair, or right, but it left a very real mark. Like a wound in the world left to fester.

And I knew well enough there were beings who could creep out of those wounds. Parasites. Something was behind Orley, something old and profane. I needed to find out what I could about Orkael.

Later. I glanced at Emma's dejected countenance, wondering how much of her ancestor showed in it. Astraea Carreon couldn't have been much older than Emma back then. Perhaps the stories of their house's vileness weren't so exaggerated.

"But I was raised by her get," Emma said through clenched teeth as though reading my thoughts. She closed her eyes then, breathing deep, and settled back into a hollow calm. "My grandmother, the daughter of Lady Astraea, told me that story for the first time when I was seven. She'd meant it as a lesson. Our world might be built on pretty ideals of romance and chivalry, but it is all paint over a cracked canvas. Our history is a bloody march of one war after another."

"We've made wonders too," I noted. "I know it can look bad, but our homeland isn't all blood and shit. I've seen some incredible things."

Emma scoffed. "Grandmother once told me this: God did not want saints, She wanted an army. She called the Orleys fools for living in a dream, and applauded her mother's ruthlessness."

She inhaled sharply through her nose, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the bench with a quiet little thump.

I closed my eyes as a vivid memory struck me, a fragment of my frequent visions. We could have lived in a dream. What's wrong with that?

I pushed her voice back down into my memories where it belonged.

Emma's eyes opened after a time and went to the stain-glass window dominating the far wall of the chapel. The storm had broken, and moonlight turned the Heir silver and carmine. The light, juxtaposed by shadows in the dim room, made God's outstretched arms softly shine, made the horned crown on Her brow a wreath of starlight.

"Bitch," Emma said without emotion. "Why should I offer Her any of my prayers, when She's the one who fashioned these curses?"

I winced. "I think you have enough to deal with without angering the Blessed Dead. You know they might be listening."

The young noble shrugged and propped an arm up on the back of the bench. "I had a warrior literally out of the depths of Hell try to kill me today. I'm not scared of a few senile ghosts."

Which brought up something else I did not understand. "You talk about Jon as though he were half a saint," I said. "How did he end up in the Iron Hell of all places?"

"Lady Nath told me it was my great-grandmother's doing. She butchered his body with profane rites and cast his soul down where the Silver Lords of the Underworld couldn't reach it, not with all their valkyries and shepherd ferrymen."

A good way to get your entire dynasty cursed. I felt a bit sick. "And you and Nath… how did that happen?"

Emma shrugged again with one shoulder. She lifted one slippered foot to rest on the bench, wrapping her arms around her knee. "Not much of a story there. I met her in the woods near the manor."

She glanced at me and added with more reluctance, "My parents had just died. I was… oh, eleven or so. We'd only been in Brenner's fief little more than a year. I thought her an elf, at first… indeed, she played the part of my faerie godmother. I began to suspect her to be more Fell than Fey after she began to help me awaken my magic. She wanted me to embrace it, and I thought that's what I wanted as well for a while. To be powerful."

"Power can be freedom," I agreed. "But it can also be a chain."

"Oh, so poetic. You need more of a beard to make that look work, O' Wise One."

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"What is it you do want?" I asked. "When all this is done, I mean."

Emma stared at me a long moment, her expression unreadable. "She didn't say anything to you?"

"Who?" I asked, confused.

"Nath, of course. Who else?" Emma tsk'd when I only gave her a blank look. "It doesn't matter. This isn't done, is it? You didn't actually kill Orley."

It was my turn to sigh. "That is true. I'm… still trying to decide what to do next. I won't depart until this is done, you have my promise on that."

Emma only frowned, fixing her gaze on the floor.

"You should get some rest," I said. "Hendry won't heal faster because you're fretting over him, and She won't intervene no matter how much you try to bargain with Her."

I nodded to the window, and the goddess in it.

Emma flushed. "I wasn't—"

"I've been sitting where you are now before," I said quietly. "More than a few times."

She snapped her mouth shut, caught between anger and embarrassment. Perhaps she didn't hate Hendry Hunting so much as she claimed. Even if she did, guilt can be a powerful motivator.

Adopting her usual air of careless disdain, Emma shrugged. "Very well. This place reeks of tallow and dust anyway."

She stood, adjusted her skirts, and walked out. Her steps were just a touch too brisk.

I turned my eyes back to the window and the deity in it. After a while I said aloud, "Did you really weave these curses?"

But of course She didn't answer.

Scoffing, I stood to follow Emma out and find my own rest. I noticed a shadow seated near the door, candle-light dying on his gray garments. Ser Kross still wore his armor and cloak, still stained with ash and burn marks from the fighting. His flint eyes stared at me.

"How much of that did you hear?" I asked him, stopping near where he sat.

"Not much," the knight-exorcist said. "And I knew much of it already, to be honest. I did research on the history of House Carreon when I was assigned to this mission. It is good of you to not cast more doubt on her mind. She's had people treating her like a devil child her whole life, even when her family still resided in their home country."

I shrugged. "Just speaking my mind." I sat down next to him, settling in again and wincing. I kept finding new bruises every few minutes.

"I do apologize," he said. "For back at the manor, what I suggested concerning the girl. It wasn't my place."

I made a dismissive gesture. "Honestly Kross, after talking to her more I half think she'd let the priests cut her Art out of her. She seems to hate it more than half as much as everyone else."

"Still, it wasn't my place to suggest it. I gave you the wrong impression. I would not do such a thing to a child, not unless there were no other choice."

I wasn't sure I believed him. I'd heard things about the Priory. Still, it wasn't an argument I cared to have then. "So will he live? Hendry, I mean."

"He is a strong lad," Kross said. "And Lord Brenner's clericon has some power. I think it's that village healer who will end up making the difference, though. He had some training in the continent, and their medicine is far more advanced than anything you have here in Urn. Your land is too reliant on the Auratic Arts."

"You're from Edaea?" I asked, not missing his use of your rather than our.

Kross didn't answer at once. I got the distinct impression he hadn't meant to reveal that detail. Spreading out his hands he said, "Lives can take winding roads. But no, I wasn't born in this land."

I turned my gaze to the window again. After a minute I felt the man's eye on me. I shifted, uncomfortable, because he'd been nearby earlier that day — near enough to hear what I'd said to Jon Orley, and the title I'd revealed to the Scorchknight.

Maybe he wouldn't know what it meant. There are many executioners in the land, and my role was an old one, its story mostly only known to the Sidhe.

But he did know other things, which was why I needed to talk to him.

"What do you know about the Iron Hell?" I asked. "About Orkael?"

Even saying the name made something deep in my core shiver in apprehension. My powers, or something more human? An instinct that told me not to touch this thing, or even risk drawing its notice.

Too late for that, I thought. I needed answers.

"Some things," the paladin said after a while. "We will speak on it more when we are more rested, and not in this holy place."

He gestured to the chapel. I nodded. "Very well."

Kross looked at the window again, and a strange expression touched his gaunt features. "You know," he said, "I have often found that speaking of one's troubles in places like this can be a sort of… unburdening. It was the same when you listened to the young lady, yes?"

Kross nodded to where Emma and I had been sitting. "She had troubles on her soul, and needed someone to hear them… God, the gods, a stranger who'd move on before long, didn't matter. She only needed to know the words would go somewhere else, away from her. I've been used for the same purpose many times."

I laughed. "Are you asking me to give confession, father?"

"I am offering to hear it, if you wish."

I closed my eyes, fighting down the bile I felt rising up in my throat. Still, a bit of that poison came out in my next words despite my efforts. "You want to hear my sins? You really want their weight on your mind?"

"I have born many sins," Kross said quietly. "Those of others, and my own."

He sat leaning forward, hands clasped over his knees, calm and immovable as marble. The very image of the Soldier of Faith, humble and slow to anger, devout and steady. A far cry from the gilded champions I remembered, both from my time in a House guard and with the Table.

Still, he had something about him — a gravitas. Maybe just his invisible seraph, but I didn't think it was all that.

I wondered if he'd still be comfortable sitting so near, if he'd still want to play the fatherly confidant if he knew the full breadth of my sins.

Well, why not? Why should I care what he thought of me?

I did care. I'd once wanted to be him, or near enough.

My eyes went to the stained glass, to the Golden Queen who'd probably happily throw me into the fire with the rest of the wicked. After all, I'd gotten Her regent killed, and I still dreamed about—

No. Kross wouldn't have my dreams from me, those were mine alone. But the rest of it?

I leaned back and regarded him coolly. "It is sacrilege for you to share anything I say to you outside of this room."

I didn't make it a question.

Kross bowed his head. "Yes."

Well, that angel on his shoulder would probably already know the worst bits. It too was Onsolain. Maybe it had already whispered into the holy knight's ear, telling him who I was and what I'd done.

Part of me wanted to talk, to unburden myself as he put it. May as well be honest, and stop making excuses.

"Fine then." I threw one arm casually over the back of the bench. "I'm game. You want to know who I am, Ser Kross? You want to know what I've done? Then I'll tell you."

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