I stowed all of my newly acquired items in my Soul Vault—thank the Good Lord Almighty for Fae Tether—then we dragged our tired asses out of the cave. We didn’t talk much as we navigated the warren of passageways back to the surface. Other than Renholm. The stupid murder parrot talked enough for the rest of us combined, rambling on and on and on about our new “seat of power” and how much more awesome the Greenbriar Court was than the Oblivion Court and how jealous Jeff was going to be. The other half of the Glamor Affinity Scale I’d fed him after the fight probably had something to do with it.

We exited the mines outside of the town limits—hoofing it out through the same decrepit entrance Marcus Pekkala had probably been heading for the other night. The sun had fallen below the horizon, only the barest hint of purple still staining the sky. Arturo was silent as he stared up at the stars.

He took a deep breath, savoring the evening air, fragrant with the scent of wildflowers. He chuckled and shook his shaggy head.

“I must confess, there was a moment down there where I wasn’t certain we would ever see the stars again or taste fresh air. I haven’t had a battle like that since, well…” The priest trailed off. “It doesn’t matter,” he finally finished weakly.

“Yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit on that one, Padre,” I said. “I’ve given you a lot of leeway and haven’t pushed you to share much about your past with me. I’m thinking it’s time we put the kibosh on that. If I’m gonna fight with you at my back—put my life into your hands—I deserve to know as much about you as you know about me, and you’re keeping stuff from me. You know spells.” I stuck a finger into the air. “You fight like the love child of a Kung-Fu monk and a bona fide grizzly bear.” Another finger joined the first.

“Your face and hands are covered in old wounds. You shrug off hits that would break a normal man. And I ain’t gonna pretend I didn’t see you siphoning up Essence from your kills, just like me.” By the time I was done all five fingers were standing at attention. “You say you’re not a Vigil—which might be true—but you ain’t a run-of-the-mill priest either.” I crossed my arms and fixed him with my hardest NCO glower. “It’s time you told me what you are and how you learned to fight like that.”

He sighed and dropped his gaze, studying the dirt.

“Aye,” he replied softly. “I suppose I owe you that much, honored Vigil. Let’s chat as we walk—it’s late and my belly could use a good meal and a strong ale.”

Even though I’d siphoned off a buttload of Essence from the Stone Spider Matriarch, I was still weary to the bone, and I could see that mirrored in Arturo. He moved slowly, his steps heavy. We moved at a leisurely pace, the priest clearly trying to figure out what to tell me.

“I wasn’t always a priest,” he said eventually, “but you already figured that much out. I started life in the courts, if you can believe it. The third son of a prominent noble family in the capital province of Kidri. Not that that means anything to you.”

“Sounds promising,” I replied, absently scanning the side of the road for signs of life. “So how did the third son of a prominent noble family end up as a drunk priest all the way out in Ironmoor, huh?”

“A single bad choice,” he replied quietly. “One that ruined my life and stained my family’s honor. Cost us everything. In truth, my father was more than just a noble, he was the Esteemed Margrave of Brezneik—he was one part general one part politician, and responsible for the city defense. He earned that post, in part, because he was a Scion of Raguel.”

Arturo had mentioned something briefly about Scions, but so much had happened over the past few days that it was all a little fuzzy in my head.

“Remind me about what exactly a Scion of Raguel is?” I prodded.

“Right. Of course. I continually forget how little of our world and our ways you know. If you recall, I mentioned that there are those who have the True Gift, aside from Vigils. The Scions of Raguel is a colloquial term for the offspring of Vigils—those who bear the gifts of Raguel, at any rate. Steelborn and Sorcerers. My father was a bear of a man, larger even than me, and was renowned for his physical abilities in battle. Of all my brothers, only I inherited his talents as a Steelborn. And not only that, but I could learn to use the True Gift as the Magi do.”

Cal whistled. “Damn, dude, you won the genetic lottery,” the specter said, walking beside us.

“Yeah, which is why I’m even more confused about why you ended up here,” I said, shooting the priest a weary look.

Arturo shrugged. “Your confusion is warranted. I’m not sure how things work on your world—it seems so different than ours—but despite winning the genetic lottery as you say, I was born third. My eldest brother was destined to take over the margraviate, a fact I do not begrudge him in the least. Though he was born without my physical abilities, I never had the disposition for politics, nor the desire to fight from afar. My second brother was trained from the time he could walk to lead our armies. As for me… Well, my father ran out of bloody steam by the time I popped out.

“I was physically gifted, blessed with the traits of the Steelborn, and double blessed with my abilities to learn magecraft through study. My mother was far more interested in court functions and lavish parties than in child-rearing, and since my father was busy with my two older, very capable brothers, my upbringing was entrusted to the Templars of the Queen’s Banner. They were a knightly order that only trained the Steelborn Scions of Raguel. I also took endless lessons with Golden Chalice—a group of scholarly magi.”

“So, you’re basically a Vigil,” I said, deadpan.

He offered me a sad grin and shook his head.

“I think our commander fancied us as such sometimes, but the differences between our powers are legion. Besides, the Citadel of Custodians is beholden to no man. No king or queen. No nation. And they are respected everywhere they set foot. The Templars of the Banner, on the other hand, are the sword arm of High Queen Palander. We are sworn to the Kelkadian crown and fought foreign mercenaries and smugglers more than we ever hunted Mortka. As the noble son of the Margrave and a Steelborn with a talent for magecraft, I was the golden child of the Bannermen. Quickly moved up the ranks until I was leading squads of regular knights.”

He sounded wistful, almost happy, while talking about it.

“I’ll admit, I fought more than my fair share of battles and skirmishes against Mortka. Earned my scars the honest way,” he said with a toothy grin. “Made enough progress that eventually I was put in charge of stomping out a group of smugglers called the Bloodletters. The finest crooks, thugs, and sell-swords in all the world. The Templar Bannerman I replaced was suspected of having a disquietingly close relationship with the Bloodletters.”

“Your bosses thought he was on the take?” I asked.

“Just so,” Arturo replied. “But not me. I was a zealot and the pride of the Bannermen. I came in and put the screws to the Bloodletters. Shut down their brothels. Closed the inns and taverns they controlled. Locked up low-level fences. Some suggested that there was a necessary degree of diplomacy needed to handle the smugglers, but I believed only in the diplomacy of the sword and rod. I should’ve listened to their counsel, but I was young and headstrong and certain I was right.”

I winced, knowing exactly where this story was going.

“The Bloodletters were far cleverer than I and used my zeal and overinflated sense of ego against me—turned it into the very instrument of my inevitable fall from grace.” He fell quiet for a moment. Pensive. His gaze distant and hazy. We called it the thousand-yard stare and only people who’d seen some real shit got that look.

“One of my informants got word about a shipment coming in through the Haligars, a mountain range east of Brezneik.” He flicked his wrist off in the distance. “Weapons. Drugs. Even arcane Rjuhella relics, left over from the Hundred Years’ War. A loss like that would’ve broken their back and made my career. A feather for my cap.”

“It was too good to be true,” I said, already feeling a knot form in the pit of my stomach. A group with Alpha company had the same thing happen to them during the initial push into Fallujah. Their CO had gotten a hot tip about an insurgent hideout and weapon cache, brimming to the gills with persons of interest. It was the kind of tip you couldn’t pass up. The kind that could make your career—earn you a bronze star if you were an ambitious captain.

“Indeed, it was,” Arturo said, hunching in on himself as we walked. “It was a fate-cursed mission. I guided a platoon of men into the Haligars. I only brought the best of the best with me. Mean bastards, and every one of them could drink me under the table. They were also my friends. But we didn’t find a wagon train of illicit goods. Instead we found a group of mercenaries waiting for us. Only seven of them. Five were Steelborn, the other two full-blooded Sorcerers.”

He shuddered and fell silent, but I already knew what had happened. The same thing that happened to the boys from Alpha. The same thing that happened to me back in that dusty alley in Fallujah.

“They set upon us in a narrow pass, raining arrows and spells down upon our heads. I was the only Steelborn, and though I had command of some of the finest Knight Templars I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, we didn’t stand a chance. We rallied, of course, but not even the Templars can stand against the inhuman strength and speed of the Steelborn. Like Vigils, Steelborn can heal even from grievous wounds. And the Sorcerers wielded deadly magics that slew us at a distance. They killed my party to the man. All save for me.”

I looked a question at him. Why’d they let you live?

He sighed and reached beneath his armor, pulling out a golden chain with a signet medallion dangling from the end.

“The sign of my house. As I said, my father was the Esteemed Margrave of Brezneik. Killing me would’ve forced my father’s hand and started a war that they never could’ve won. They used me as an object lesson. They stripped me naked and nailed me to a tree outside of the city gates. A warning to let the Bloodletters be.” He looked up into the trees. The night sky was pricked with pinpoints of light. “It was also a ploy to humiliate both the Bannermen and my noble household.”

“Did it work?” I asked softly.

He grimaced and nodded.

“I honestly wasn’t sure who was more mortified by my failure. My father, the Bannermen, or myself. For many months I dreamed about dying,” he muttered. “Better men than me died in those hills—I should’ve died with them. The fact that I’d survived was worse in its way. My father called me a coward, and I believed his words. The guilt ate at me. I couldn’t live with myself, but neither could I take my own life.

“I tried, but every time I took the blade to my wrists, I would see the faces of my friends glimmering in the steel. I was done as a Templar. There was no place for me at my father’s side. No redemption to be had, so I took the easy way out. Left and joined the Church. The Arbitrators were only too happy to have someone with my pedigree in their ranks.”

He stopped talking, but I could hear the pain even in his silence. I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, reassuring him that I was there. Present. But I didn’t speak. There are moments, particularly when you talk with someone who has known great pain, when your only job is to bear witness. You don’t speak. You don’t attempt to console them or fix shit. Because sometimes there are no words that reach those places that have been stripped of sense. To watch your friends die around you in battle is a pain worse than death.

To survive them was its own form of torture. I looked at Cal, who walked silently beside us. He knew. We both did.