Eldred was many things, but sneaky wasn’t one of them. Varajas, from his vantage point, was able to see Eldred walking into Sidaine’s torture house, and he was ready when Eldred came back out.

Ready with an “I told you so,” ready to hear Eldred’s apology for not listening. Ready to swallow his own pride and apologize for yelling so that, now that Eldred had seen, they could work together to bring justice.

He was ready for all those things until he saw the look on Eldred’s face.

Not disgust. Not anger. If anything, Eldred wore a look of satisfaction, with perhaps an edge of poorly contained glee.

“You already knew.”

Varajas had said the words on instinct, throwing out the accusation, not because he believed it, but because he wanted to see Eldred’s reaction. The look on Eldred’s face, though—the contempt he couldn’t mask fast enough, the fury, the guilt—that confirmed it.

Eldred had known. And Eldred had ignored it, or…even worse…

“Were you helping her?”

They were in the street, just outside the estate’s main gate. Whatever magic Sidaine had cast over the place seemed to extend here. No one else was moving close, even in the crowded city street. No one seemed to even see them here.

Eldred had tamped down the fury and guilt, but contempt still glinted in his eyes as he looked Varajas up and down. “You should have done as you were told.”

Varajas shook his head, unsure what exactly he was denying. Eldred’s words. Eldred’s acts. Everything. “This is blasphemy. This is against everything we’re supposed to be.”

“That is blasphemy,” Eldred snarled, stabbing his finger back to point at the wizards in the yard behind him. “Them. Their magic. Everything they do.”

The naked hatred in Eldred’s voice was like poison. How had Varajas never noticed it before? How had Eldred managed to hide such venom?

This was so far outside the scope of anything Varajas had been trained for. All he had was the guidance of his own conscience, which was screaming. “This is wrong. I’ll say so in front of the High Father. I’ll say so in front of the Archwizards. I’ll say so in front of the Queen herself if I have to.”

“You will say nothing to anyone.”

Varajas had had enough of this man and his hate. “I don’t recognize your authority over me. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“As you like.” Eldred drew his swords in a fluid motion and was spinning towards Varajas in the space of a breath.

Varajas’s body responded with reflexes that had been drilled into him before his mind had made sense of the fact that Brother Eldred was attacking him. Blocking and deflecting with his own swords, he only hesitated the briefest moment to ask himself if he was willing to draw the blood of a fellow priest.

The answer was yes. If Eldred had sided with this evil, then Varajas would do what he had to. Whatever he had to.

Decision made, he tightened his grip on his swords and grimly settled in to fight.