Page 49 of The Dead Saint

His voice was crisp, not wanting to leave the woman across from him any room to wriggle in under his skin, to pry his eyelids back and examine his thoughts. He could feel it, the way she spoke to him, the way her attention lingered. She was searching for a way to control him.

“Your mother is dying,” she agreed. “But what would you like me to do about it?”

He sat up straight, hands clasped in front of him, staring at her now. Silence unfolded, heavy and absolute between them.

Her eyes flicked down, to the side and away from the heat of his gaze, moving across the ceiling to the sparse furnishings.

“I’ve already told you what I know, shown you how it will happen.” An edge of uneasiness colored her words, confidence wavering. “And you’ve begun the journey. Already, pieces of the Saint are in your possession. You have history books and sacred texts. You know more than many in my own order.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “And yet you came to my court and offered me your loyalty. You offered your help. So far, you haven’t given me anything more than what I’d already discovered from the others. So many of your faithful dead, so much knowledge given freely. But you claim to have more, something they did not.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he held a hand up.

“You’ve said that when the time is right, you will reveal secrets. I’m choosing to accept this answer for the moment. But each day, death moves closer. It is reaching for her, and I’m still missing relics. What good are rotting bones if I don’t know how to put them together?”

“The vessel—” Kira began.

“Will bring him back. So you keep saying. So did the others. I must believe you because I have no other choice. And your sacred texts say very little about the actual resurrection. Each member of your order that has died has been convinced they would return, that your vessel would recall him, and I would face judgment.”

She remained silent, waiting for him to finish.

“So, if I killed you now, here, in this room beneath a false sky, would the Saint be able to resurrect you?”

She swallowed, muscles in her throat moving, a muscle in her jaw tensing.

“If I burned your body, cut you into a thousand pieces, if I ground you beneath the hooves of the oxen and the weight of my city came down on you, would there be anything left that the Saint could call back?”

“I don’t know,” she said, voice subdued.

“And my mother? You’ve been unable to tell me how he would resurrect her. I had hoped to understand how everything works before she died. I had hoped you would be more helpful than you have proven yourself to be. I am out of time. You are out of time. And death is here.”

“The vessel,” the Red Priestess began again.

“The vessel has gone to find the missing pieces. I’ve seen her tattoos. I understand it’s a map, but not every piece is listed. It’s all there, laid bare on her skin, but it is incomplete.”

Kira remained frozen.

“Where are the others?”

She jerked back, denial written all over her face, poised to fall from her lips.

Lie, lie, lie.

The prince leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath him, the room held captive by this moment around them.

“Tell me about the other pieces,” he said. “Tell me what happens when those are found.”

Chapter Fourteen

Cairns—carefully stacked stone towers ranging in size from a blade of grass to as tall as man—began to appear as the distance between them and the next relic lessened. The narrow dirt road they followed seemed unused, an out-of-the-way path that few people followed. They wove through a sparse wood—huge trees reaching overhead with open glades and stretches of fields between them. This forest didn’t have the same feel as the Silvas. There was no watchfulness here, only a quiet, peaceful calm that Sorcha relished.

But the cairns unsettled her as they became a forest of their own. There were small and large stacks, some as tall as a man and others reaching well above ten feet. Others were one or two, a handful of stones gathered together—the beginning of something or the end.

“Don’t touch them,” Domenico warned. “There’s something about them?—”

“Magic?” Thompson interrupted.

Adrian glanced from one to the other, his eyes sliding over Sorcha as he turned in the saddle—a dark gaze, flaring as it touched her. But he didn’t speak, and Domenico only nodded in response.

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