The Cursed Priestess

The Question Unspoken

The Hall of Radiance emptied, save for the last embers of the gods’ departing presence. The vast crystalline chamber fell silent again, and in that hush, Garrick Helmor remained.

He stood at the edge of the dais, one gauntleted hand braced on the rail where the divine flame flickered low. His reflection wavered in the polished crystal beneath his boots: pale hair, silvered armor, the implacable face of a man who had never wavered.

Almost never.

He could not deny it: the memory of Caelan Vorrin, standing at Avelora’s side in that ruined chapel, had struck him harder than any blade.

Seven centuries had passed. Seven hundred years of watching the mortal world shift and break. Yet even now, Caelan had not abandoned her. Even now, he wore the same look in his eyes—the unshakable, ruinous devotion that Garrick had once admired…and had come to despise.

He heard footsteps approach, deliberate and heavy. Eldric Dane came to stand beside him, his gauntleted hands folded over the pommel of his sword.

“He was the purest among us,” Eldric said after a long silence. “The most faithful.”

Garrick did not look at him. “He was.”

“And now?”

Garrick’s jaw clenched. “Now he is the greatest traitor.”

Eldric inclined his head in agreement, but after a pause, he asked the question Garrick had dreaded:

“Why do you think he loves her still?”

At last, Garrick turned his gaze from the flame. His voice came low, rough. “Because he always saw something in her that we did not.”

Eldric’s expression twisted in disgust. “Weakness. A heart too soft to obey.”

“No,” Garrick said, his eyes distant. “Conviction. A belief that the laws of the gods were not the final measure of right and wrong.”

Eldric’s lip curled. “Then he was a fool from the start.”

“Perhaps,” Garrick said softly. “But he was a fool who could not bear to watch her fall alone.”

For an instant, the memory returned with perfect clarity: Avelora kneeling in the snow, her sigils black and searing, her eyes hollow as she was cast out. And Caelan—young, unblooded, voice raw—taking a step toward her even as Garrick’s command pinned him in place.

If you touch her, you will share her fate.

Caelan had not moved then. But in the centuries that followed, he had made his choice.

Garrick turned away from the dais, his cloak whispering over the crystal floor. “Prepare the summons. We will draw him out.”

Eldric’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

Garrick’s gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the hall, where the mortal realm sprawled in all its impermanence. “Caelan Vorrin has defied the Nine. He has broken his vows. But he is not without sentiment.”

He let the memory sharpen to a blade. The way Caelan had looked at Avelora, as if the gods themselves were nothing beside her.

“When he stands between us and the Cursed Priestess,” Garrick said, his voice cold as the halls of heaven, “I will ask him why.”

“And when he answers?” Eldric demanded.

Garrick looked back to the dying flame.

“Then,” he murmured, “I will end him.”