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“W-What are you going to do?” he stammered.

The priestess turned to face the altar where the chalice of Christ glimmered in red glory.

“I will choose,” she declared.

The words echoed through the emptiness of the cathedral like the tolling of a bell.

She dropped to her knees, pressing her small hands to the stones of the floor. Salavert felt the tremor of it through his shoes. Gold flaked from his vestments, shivering to the ground.

“I want to end this,” the woman vowed.

Her voice broke against the force of her words.

An answer rasped through the hollow space around them. It smelled of dry earth and bones—of incense and the green of growing things. A strange wind stirred the folds of Salavert’s robes, chasing uncanny chills up his skin.

The wind passed, and the cathedral was deserted once more.

The woman let out a short, hard laugh like the croak of a carrion bird.

“So that is to be the way of it,” she said.

It seemed to Salavert that he could see flames burning behind her eyes.

“Wake up,” she ordered.

?

He came to himself choking as he lay at the edge of the devilish mirror. Beside him, the priestess pushed herself upright with shaking arms as the two guards watched from a distance in stoic silence.

She climbed painfully to her feet and gave a sharp command in her idolatrous language. The two men responded with a shocked exclamation, clearly doubting the evidence of their own ears—but the priestess’s look left no room for debate.

The guards grabbed Salavert by his tattered cassock and yanked him away from the mirror.

Clearly they were moving him somewhere. Perhaps they would bring him to a more prestigious place for his martyrdom.

Hehopedthat was the case. If his death took place in this devil-haunted underworld, Salavert found himself terribly afraid that God might fail to notice it.

Salavert’s captors shoved him forward. He staggered to keep upright. The men marched him up a close, winding staircase to a dim chamber carved with images of pagan idolatry. Glancing through its narrow windows, Salavertrealizedthat he stood inside the temple at the top of the city’s massive pyramid.

The priestess was the last to emerge. As she straightened, she turned to where Salavert waited between the two guards.

She drew her black knife.

Salavert swallowed another undignified shriek at his impending demise—but once again, the woman’s blade moved to her own body rather than his. She severed a leather thong at her throat and caught the weight of the black medallion in her hand.

Grabbing his wrist, the priestess forced the cursed thing into his palm.

Salavert gaped down at it. A demon grinned back at him from the medallion’s carved black surface. The stone felt cool against his palm—uncannily so, given that it had just been worn against a woman’s skin.

He knew that he should toss it aside. He was a man of God. He should not suffer such a wicked object to contaminate his holy person.

But Salavert didnottoss it aside. Instead, his fingers curled over the stone as though of their own accord.

Theywantedto hold it. They wanted to keep it close.

The priestess watched his fingers clench around the medallion. As she did, the great effort that had been bearing her up suddenly gave way. She looked younger and more vulnerable than she had before. Sorrow and exhaustion darkened her eyes.

She spoke a single word. Though he did not know the tongue, Salavert found himself entirely certain of its meaning.