Page 112 of The Half King
She nodded absently. Her gaze landed on the burning altar, and she tossed the cloth onto it. In the moment before the fabric ignited, she recognized a pattern of gilded threads peeking between patches of dried blood. She knew the garment. It was the robe Father Padron had worn the night he’d dispatched the titan hyena pack. She had cut the robe off of him before treating his lacerated back. She’d meant to burn all of the bloody clothes that night, but clearly she had missed one.
The robe ignited, and the blood-encrusted fabric erupted into a roaring black flame that rose to the ceiling and held there, snaking back and forth while the fabric shrank to ash.
Cold overcame her. Right down to her bones.
Now she knew why Father Padron had hidden the robe. Why he hadn’t wanted her to burn it with the rest of the clothes.
His blood burned black.
Just like hers did.
Because he wasumbra sangi, too.
If there had been any doubt regarding the identity of her father, it vanished into the smoke that thickened the air. There was no use denying it anymore. Her father was a monster.
A low voice from behind asked her, “Where did you get that?”
She whirled around with a gasp.
The monster had found her.
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“Never mind. Obviously,hegave it to you.” Father Padron stood ten paces away, holding Cole still in a magical grasp. No one else was with him. He must have responded to the alarm alone to hide his secrets from the other priests.
Secrets he would kill to protect.
Even so, Cerise didn’t run. Some irrational need for connection forced her to search his face for similarities to hers. She found them in the shape of his eyes—the left one ever so slightly higher than the right—and in the way his lips pulled a little more to one side than the other. She looked more like Mama, but her father had filled in the details.
“Now you know my shame,” he said with a bitter glare at the last ebony flames lingering above the ashes. “My blood burns black because I committed a sin so vile that twenty years of atonement can’t erase it. I broke my vow of abstinence, Cerise. The goddess won’t forgive me.”
She shook her head. He had it all wrong.
“She rejects all of my offerings,” he went on. “I gave her my blood and my pain. I prayed my throat raw. I converted the faithless and slaughtered heretics for her, and still it’s not enough.”
As Cerise pictured his lacerated back, she began to understand what had twisted him into the cold, cruel man he had become. He didn’t know that he wasumbra sangi, that he had the blood of the goddess in addition to the priesthood. No one had ever told him that the goddess had meant for him to love so he could continue her bloodline. He had always believed that the act of love was forbidden to him, and so he thought he had sinned with Mama.
And he’d been punishing himself for it ever since.
Cerise couldn’t stop a flicker of sympathy from rising inside her. Despite everything he had done, she understood him better than anyone; the Order had used lies and fear to control her, to weaken her power, to make her think that something as natural as the tides was a sin. And how ironic that the same fear Father Padron had used against her—claiming that the act of love would dull her gift—had harmed him, too. He had believed the Order’s lie, and so his own guilt and shame had compounded for twenty years. He’d woven a cloak of scars over his back and carried its burden for half of his life. That made him no less of a monster, but one born from pain instead of evil. Perhaps something tender had survived beneath the scars—a part of him that she could touch.
Perhaps she could pull him back from the darkness.
“You’re wrong about the black flame,” she said. “It’s not a sign that the goddess rejected your offerings. It’s a sign that you’re different from other priests.”
He drew back, hitching his upper lip. “Do not presume to explain the signs tome, you Sightless infant. You know nothing.”
“I know it’s not a sin for you to love,” she said. “Or for me to love, or for anyone who desires it. The goddess is passionate. She made us in her image, to be like her.”
“Be careful, Cerise. You’re sliding dangerously close to apostasy.”
“Please listen to me,” she begged. “The flame burns black because you’re not an ordinary priest. You’re descended from Shiera. That’s why you’re so powerful and why you can do things that other priests can’t. You have the blood of the goddess in your veins.”
As soon as she mentioned the goddess by name, she knew she had pushed too far beyond the limits of his faith. She should have known he wouldn’t believe her. She hadn’t believed the truth, either, when Nero had first told it to her.
Father Padron’s gaze turned so hard and cold that she cringed under its weight. “Heretic,” he hissed, hurtling a jolt of energy at her. Before she could block the attack, her lips sealed shut. “I’ll hear no more from you.”
Cerise closed her eyes and imagined his enchantment melting away. She freed her voice and shouted, “Youwilllisten! What you did all those years ago was no crime. You have to forgive yourself and stop projecting your”—two more enchantments whizzed at her, but she deflected them—“guilt onto everyone else.”
