Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel by Sarah K. L. Wilson

Author:Sarah K. L. Wilson [Wilson, Sarah K. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sparkflight Books
Published: 2023-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Poisoned Saint

I’m still caught in the swirl of emotion that comes from being near her. I have never felt this. Not with Marigold, who I thought was the love of my life, not side by side with the women I have served with, not even in dreaming desires for the other women I’ve known in pieces and scraps. I cannot justify this — not even to myself. It is not that I healed her and wore her soul for a moment, though I have no doubt it was rooted first in that. It is not that her eyes have haunting similarities to a woman I once loved, though that has not helped. It is not her dauntless courage conjoined with stunting doubt — but it is partly that.

The strangeness of how she is a single-edged sword, sharp on one side and yielding on the other, is an intoxicating brew — an exact mixing of all I love best in another human. There’s also a sense that she sees beyond the surface, as if she can claw the world away as one draws back a drape and see what lies beyond it. I see it in her eyes when she squints at the statues of the Saints and then draws back. I see it in how she watches her dog with a tilted head and how her eyes narrow when they encounter the Penitent. I want to be near the woman who scowls at false holiness and sees the value in small things. I want to guard the tiny innocence she still burns like a stub of candle at her core while outside she is hard as flint and twice as sharp.

I puff out a long breath. She’s nervous about this offering of cups, though it seems a small thing. Even if we must try every one upon these pedestals, it will only be tedious, not dangerous. But I would be a fool to discount her wariness. What does she see that I do not?

I choose a cup of ravens and owls for their eyes, so like hers, which can see to worlds beyond, and I cross to the far side of the room from her. The statues that are akin to our forms and faces — and do not think for a moment that does not make my skin crawl as if it were lined with grubs — are in a rough semi-circle and the Vagabond’s image is directly across from mine, both anchoring the ends.

I look up into staring, empty eyes just like mine. Whatever artistry depicted me here — be it glorious or depraved — has read me well. The white stone forms lines of sorrow, and the set of the shoulders is tight with determined pain. That’s me in every line. That’s my worried brow, my lips curled into the edge of a smile, my scar on the tip of my chin. A nick I received in some scuffle before I was even a man, never mind a squire.

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