Page 33 of Ocean of Sin and Starlight

“Love?” I ask before I grin. “No. Jorge was ten years old. The only reason I was talking to him was because I…”

I trail off and nibble on the hard crust of the bread. I don’t feel like talking about Maren right now. If I do, he’ll know why I wanted legs.

“You…”

I shake my head. “I was curious. That’s all.” I motion to the plate. “What’s the yellow smear?” I ask, peering at it.

“Butter,” he explains. “There’s a lady in the village who always brings me bread on Fridays, and she puts salt and dried kelp in the butter. I thought you might appreciate that.”

Interesting that he brought me something I might appreciate.

“That’s rather kind of her to bring you that.”

“People are often kind to the village priest,” he says. “They think they do it out of the goodness of their own hearts, but it’s so they can win favor with God. In the end, I get gifts.”

I pick up the piece of bread and bite the edge of it, chewing thoughtfully for a moment. The butter is good—it tastes like the sea—but Jorge’s bread was better.

“Can you eat this? Or can you only have blood?”

“I can eat food. There are some things in this village I still consider appetizing, but it doesn’t sustain me the way blood does.”

“And none of the villagers know the truth about you?” I ask.

He gives his head a small shake. “I think some of the soldiers suspect since they aren’t as devout. The villagers, they know I’m different, that I’m not like them deep down, but they pass it off as me being a messenger for the divine. They can excuse it, make sense of it, because God is involved.”

“But how do you manage? What…who did you…consume before I came along?”

Something like shame washes over his features, and he looks away, his eyes going to the cross. “I wasn’t always alone here. I had a friend, Abe. My oldest friend. He saved me from myself, brought me here so I could learn to be human outside of the monastery, so I could hide from those sinful parts of myself. He was my moral compass, and he killed others so I wouldn’t have to. He never had to worry about losing control.”

“When did he leave?”

“Over a month ago,” he says in a quiet voice. He sighs softly. “He would be quite disappointed in me if he knew what I was doing.”

“And what are you doing?”

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “Keeping a woman as livestock.”

I swallow uneasily. That is what I am, isn’t it? First, he saw me as an animal, a creature, and now, even with legs, his view of me hasn’t changed.

“What would Abe tell you to do?” I ask, trying to appeal to this moral compass Priest has lost sight of. Would he tell you to let me go? I think hopefully.

“Abe would tell me to kill you,” he says plainly. “Alas, he isn’t one for sentiment. He’s a doctor. He would tell me to kill you and be done with it, then continue to hunt in the villages or in the native settlements for my prey, just as he would do for me.”

Alright. Perhaps Priest needs a new compass.

“And my blood allows you not to hunt.”

His mouth twists. “Your blood gives me more vitality than I thought possible. Beyond that, I can go for weeks without another drop. By keeping you, by feeding from you every now and then, you’re saving a lot of that humanity you learned about. Jorge would be proud.”

“Don’t bring his name into this, trying to justify what you’re doing.”

He shrugs. “Fine. But I can justify it. And if you cared about human life at all, you would appreciate it.”

“Well, I don’t care about human life,” I tell him. “If you’ve forgotten already, I eat humans.”

“You did,” he points out. “Would you have eaten Jorge?”

I jerk my chin back at the question. “Of course not.”

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