Page 39 of The Dead Saint

Would it matter if he knew? Sorcha decided it didn’t.

“Once in Ostos, there were two brothers who received the dead and judged them. Haran oversaw the living, Hakan oversaw the dead. If you lived a life worthy of them, you remained. But if you displeased them, you would be sent to Bram.”

“Bram?” Adrian asked.

“A devil,” Sorcha shuddered. Souls sent to Bram spent eternity in his darkness. There was no escape. Not unless the Saint came for you. “He’s not spoken of in our texts much.”

“Are you afraid of the devil, then?”

“Aren’t you?”

Adrian shrugged. “What happened to the brothers?”

“After eons together, they succumbed to the greed for power. They fought, one wanting more power than the other and Hakan—who became our Saint—was banished to our world. For a time, he appeared as a man; unchanging and living for centuries. He performed countless miracles. Trees fruiting in the dead of winter. Cities built overnight.” She paused, lowering her voice. “He resurrected the long dead.”

“And your people embraced him.” It wasn’t a question, and he did nothing to mask his contempt.

Sorcha chose to ignore it, carrying on. “The Aureum Sanctus grew around him. He promised to ensure our place in Ostos and be our sole judge. When he was killed, he became the golden Saint you saw on the temple walls back there.”

“How do you kill a god?” Adrian asked.

“Temple historians say he was killed by a sword gifted to the heretics by Bram.”

“And you believe all of this?” Adrian shot her a disbelieving look.

Sorcha shot him a hard glance, mouth pinched. “Do you want to know? Or are you just trying to keep me talking so I don’t decide to slip out of these ropes and run?”

“If you think you could get far on foot, you’re mistaken.” He tugged gently on the rope between them, and Epona adjusted her stride to get closer to Nox. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he asked, “How did oracles become important?”

“The oracles came to speak for him, an extension of himself.”

“How important are your visions, priestess?” Adrian glanced at her, dark eyes meeting her quick glance. She blushed, belly tightening.

“Important,” she said. But how important? While Kahina Kira and Rohan had always carefully cataloged her visions and dreams to add to the extensive library, others had rarely questioned her second sight. Even Ines had only asked a handful of times. The only thing that seemed to matter was that she was the vessel.

“Tell me about the Saint.” Adrian spoke softly, keeping his gaze forward as they rode. His dark hair was pulled into a knot at the back of his neck, his grip loose and easy on the reins. Behind him the mountains loomed, snowcapped peaks sharp against the blue sky, framing him and presenting a sharp contrast. “Our world is full of gods and goddesses. Even in your Golden Citadel there were temples to numerous deities. How does the Saint compare?”

Sorcha straightened, curious about the religions he’d grown up with. While the existence of other deities was taken as fact, the Aureum Sanctus embraced the belief that the Saint was the only one who truly cared for his believers. None of the other gods and goddess promised to return to their people, remaining removed—occupants of other realms who might or might not bestow their favors.

The Amor Aeternus, the sacred text that contained the secrets of the Aureum Sanctus, was rumored to have been fashioned from the Saint’s heart. Few had even seen it, let alone touched it. Eventually, Sorcha would have become one of the chosen. But to her knowledge, only Kahina Kira had studied it. It held the story of the Saint’s birth and death but also promised that one day he would be reborn. Those secret pages shared how it might be possible.

“The Saint will return,” Sorcha replied, voice flat. My blood, my body, will ensure it she thought, but kept that fact to herself. Instead she said, “He keeps his promises. What gods do you follow do the same?”

“I follow no god.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” Sorcha turned, studying his profile, waiting for his dark eyes to find her. Epona snorted, as if the horse might be aware of the uneasy desire Sorcha felt beneath her breastbone each time Adrian’s eyes found her, the intensity in them crushing her into a new shape.

“If there is something after this,” Adrian waved a hand, taking in the whole of the world—mountainous terrain, the Black Tomeis, White Snake, and the weight of his crushing past. “Do you think I’m anxious to meet it?”

Hundreds of thousands of people had died as the White Snake slithered across the continent. There would be more deaths in the coming years as the destroyed farmland failed to produce. The population that had supported and maintained the cities and kingdoms was scattered. Prince Eine had done what he could to ensure the survival of basic infrastructure, but this was war. In the end, the empire only cared about control and expansion. Each death along the way might not have happened at the tip of Adrian’s sword, but the blood was still on his hands.

If there was an afterlife—if the Saint plucked his soul from the stream of time and dropped it into eternal torment, would Adrian be met with a sea of angry dead? Sorcha couldn’t imagine living a life so full of death and knowing there would be no release, only an unending existence of horror.

Sorcha might embrace the idea of nothingness. Already, it flickered at the edges of her mind. For years she’d repeated the prayers and knelt in the temple before a relic, absorbed the rituals and practices of the Saint into herself, making it an integral part of her. She’d believed in the Saint, and continued to, but her faith had never been tested. Weakness was creeping in, fear and doubt splitting her in two.

She wore the Saint on her skin, kept him in her mind, knew his power in her bones. But her heart quickened with terror when Ines and Rohan surfaced in her memories. Those last moments in the temple haunted her. Would she truly see them again? Would the Saint pluck them from the stream and return them to this world? Living, breathing, and whole in mind? It had all been so simple, so easy to believe before Prince Eine had ripped her world apart.

“No,” he said, breaking through the whirl of questions in her head. “I do not believe there is anything after this. We’re here now, doing what we can to survive.”

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