Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
KINGSTON
The church was empty when I came in. It's still empty now.
Thirty, forty, maybe fifty minutes later—I don't know. My legs have gone numb. My forehead aches where I've been pressing it against the pew.
We were so close.
That's all I can think. We were so close. We are so close. To have to throw it all away…
I lift my head, my temples pounding. Lanz and Callahan.
I never would have suspected. I must be as dense as my father says I am, as wrapped up in my work and short-sighted.
How could I miss something like that going on right under my nose at Camlann House?
I’m here to pray for guidance, clarity, perhaps some forgiveness, and yet for what feels like the fiftieth time, I'm rewinding memories of the past months in my head, trying to piece together what I clearly didn’t see.
I'm not angry. I don't think I can be angry. Lanz is maybe my oldest friend, and I've never seen Callahan do anything even remotely wrong.
Regardless. It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. Because on principle…
On principle, I know what I have to do.
But we were so close.
How close, I don't know, but closer than we've ever been.
I stare up at the stained glass, breathe in the faintly incense-scented air.
I should have discipline, I know. The thought that wants to form—and I should stop it. To sin in thought is to sin in deed. I know this. I know this. I focus on the Last Supper scene, the yellow triangle of glass. But the dam inside me breaks.
What's the harm? What's a few more weeks? Would it even matter? Would it even count against us in the long run? As long as we can stay together through Lent, until we defeat Moroslav and the Russians at St. Ignaty’s, then we could still do it. No one would know. How would they know?
"Stop," I say out loud. To myself? To God? I don't know. I exhale shakily, and my sword hand goes to the pendant at the front of my scapular, rubbing it like it's a good luck charm, and not something that should be a physical weight to echo the spiritual weight on my conscience, a reminder.
I have to do it. I'm going to do it. My integrity is all I have.
They know that they broke the vow. They know that this was the consequence.
I squeeze the pendant harder, the corners biting into my fingers.
I can't choose to do what is easy over what is right.
If there's one thing the Consistory has taught me, that the weeks of training and the prior at arms and my father in his office with the disciplina in his hand have made clear, it's that what is easy and what is right will rarely be the same in my life.
But I've never been so unsure about what is right.
Except it isn't for me to say, is it? It never has been. That's the point. Not whether I can exercise judgment, but whether I can execute on what has already been judged to be the way forward.
I let go of the pendant and get to my feet.
And yet.
If this were the right thing to do, I would imagine it wouldn’t feel so much like heartbreak.
When I step into the aisle, I nearly jump back.
There's someone else in here. It's Kai, striding down the aisle, an inscrutable expression on his face. I tense my fist instinctively. Does he know too? Is he coming to demand why I haven't reported yet?
I take a step forward, then another. "Kai," I say quickly. "If you're coming to tell me, then I already—“
"I fucked Gwenna," Kai says simply.
I freeze. I am frozen.
"What?" I shake my head. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm out," he says, shrugging. "I'm done. I quit."