Bralston winced as he heard the bottle shatter against the tree.

The lunacy, though … that was new.

His eyes had a sunken desperation to them, as though they were trying to burrow deeper into his skull. The reek of liquor and fear was apparent even from the twenty feet Bralston stood, staring from the bushes.

He looked the same, but this was not the same man Bralston remembered from Cier’Djaal.

This was not the man Bralston had seen standing beside her, the Houndmistress, with a smug chin raised high and eyes looking down upon the common man. This was not the parasite who had clung to her elbow at social functions, the insect that cowered behind her while she led the raids against the Jackals. This was not the liar’s martyr that had been mourned with her death when he had disappeared from the palace on the night she was found dead, his blood covering the halls as she soaked in her own.

This man seemed far too broken, far too weary to bear the responsibility for over fourteen hundred dead by fire, stone and knife in the riots.

But there was no doubt. Bralston had seen him before. Bralston had heard the news of his disappearance. Bralston knew this man was supposed to be dead.

But he wasn’t. This man stood here, while his mistress had bled to death. This man stood here, wearing a glove with a hidden blade, the favoured weapon of the Jackals. This man stood here, pleading the air for forgiveness, muttering familiar words, describing familiar crimes.

There was nothing to explain this beyond cold, ugly logic … or a miracle.

Miracles were created by gods.

Gods did not exist.

Bralston narrowed his eyes, levelled his finger at the man from the underbrush. At a word, the electric blue leapt to his fingertip. At another, the man would be ash; a short death, a clean death. It would be over far sooner than this man deserved. But it would be over. Fourteen hundred bodies would be accounted for.

Fourteen hundred and one, he corrected himself as he called the word to mind.

The leaves parted from across the clearing, just noisy enough to keep the word from his lips. He turned and saw her, the priestess, approaching from the underbrush. The word instantly slipped from his mind as a frown found its way to his lips.

She looked exactly the same … as someone else.

There was an emptiness in her eyes, not as consuming as the woman he had seen back in Cier’Djaal, the woman who had desperately tried to fold in on herself, but it was there. In her hazel eyes, he could see dead questions, dead dreams, dead hopes. It had all been replaced with a vague, gloomy wonder.

‘ What is the point?’

A question that he knew he could not answer, despite how much he wanted to. A question he knew this man could not answer, despite the way the priestess looked at him as she approached.

And yet … approach she did, with a barely alive question in her eyes.

To the man he was so close to incinerating.

Right before her eyes.

He knew what would happen. He knew that the emptiness in her eyes would consume her wholly, that question snuffed out and leaving nothing but a wonder without an answer. No matter whom she had chosen to place her faith in, faith was all she had left.

And he decided, lowering his finger, that fourteen hundred and two lives was too many to give this man credit for.

Bralston would wait, then. Wait until she found herself with a cause. Wait until he found himself alone. It would be a monumental task, to keep himself from killing this man, this traitor, this murderer, this liar.

But he was a Librarian.

He could wait.

Denaos was a man of many fragments, Asper decided as he whirled on her. The masks he had worn, delicate porcelain facades that guarded him, had begun to crumble in different areas. The visage of the cynic, the sarcastic, the indifferent was gone from his face.

Caught without his masks, his face quickly tried to find a new one to don.

At the jaw, there was a clench of animal fury. Around the eyes, weariness and desperation. In the furrow of his brow, worry that bordered on panic. Which of these was the face that lay beneath them all, she was not sure. Nor did she care.

This wasn’t about him.

She knew exactly why she stepped forward, however, under his wide and wary stare, before his tense and trembling form. She knew exactly why there could be no stepping back, no retreat back to contemplation and prayer.

That sort of thing never got anyone anywhere. This she knew now.

‘You don’t look well,’ she said.

‘Thanks, I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Denaos replied.

‘You didn’t sleep at all last night.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I didn’t, either.’

Not for lack of trying, she knew. Exhaustion had come to claim her several times. Her eyes had fallen shut only as long as it took to see grins in the darkness, hear her own shrieks and hear no one reply back.

I asked … I begged … it was my moment of uttermost need. I always believed that-

No, no, NO!She gritted her teeth, forced the thoughts down her throat and into her stomach. No more dwelling on it. No more fear. If you fear, you start wondering. If you wonder, you ask why. Her frown broadened into a bitter gash. If you ask, no one ever answers.

She was keenly aware of the absence of a heavy weight that had once been upon her chest. To leave her pendant, her symbol, was blasphemous, at least as much as the suggestion she made by unlacing the front of her robes. The Gods, she was aware, would not approve.

This wasn’t about them, either.

Bitterly, she hoped they were watching right now.

Though what was happening, she wasn’t so certain of anymore. Nor was Denaos, it seemed, as he backed away from her like a hound beaten, glancing about nervously, hoping for a reward and fearing a lash, too scared to sit still, too curious to run outright. That was fine, she thought; his input was not needed.

This was her decision.

His back struck the tree and his eyes stopped their fervent flutter, focusing on her as she approached him. Her legs did not tremble as she feared they might have. Resolve flooded her body, turned to iron in her blood, so heavy that, with one more step, she tripped and was sent falling into him, her arms flying out to seize him.

His body was cold, she thought as her hands slithered under his vest, his flesh clammy and sweaty beneath as she pressed against him. She had expected him to be warm. His breathing was quick, erratic and hare-like. As she leaned up, thrusting her lips at him like weapons, she hadn’t expected him to pull back, his eyes fighting against the urge to close and give in.

‘You don’t know what you’re-’ he began to whisper, silencing as she pressed a finger to his lips.

‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I know exactly.’

He pulled back again, but she was swifter. She forced her lips upon his, pried his apart with her tongue. They came loose willingly enough after a time, as she had known they would. The man was, after all, a felon. He wanted this as much as she did. His reluctance was only due to her forwardness.

She confirmed this as his tongue came out to touch hers, hers wrapping about his, searching his mouth with a purpose she wasn’t aware of. His body trembled; she pulled him all the closer. He made a soft moan; she drowned it with a chest-borne growl. She could feel him staring at her; she shut her eyes tighter. She didn’t want to look at him. She just wanted to-

She was spared thinking of an answer as she felt his arms deftly slither up between them, breaking her hold. His hands lashed out with a fury normally reserved for combat, slamming against her and knocking her back. The iron resolve left her, a rush of leaden weakness flooding her and sending her crashing to the ground.