He Stole My Life, So the Moon Gave Me Back novel · Chapter 4 of 27

Chapter 4: The Empty Chair

Deacon Orwin tore the page out of the ledger and held it up so the whole table could see Noah's name come apart at the fold.

'He is not coming back,' Orwin said. 'We are done pretending otherwise.'

Brother Cassiel reached across the table and caught Orwin's wrist before the scrap could fall into the brazier.

'That is the high priest's name.'

'It is a name on paper. The man is in a vampire fortress, and the church has three hundred mouths to feed and no altar left unguarded.'

The scriptorium smelled of wet wool and cold ink. Eleven priests sat along the long oak table, and not one of them had taken off his traveling cloak.

Idris sat at the far end, closest to the brazier, his wrists still raw where the tarred rope had been. He had not said a word since they brought him in from the fortress gate.

Orwin let the torn page drift down onto the coals. It curled, went bright at the edges, and was gone.

'We leave before dawn,' he said. 'The northern road, then the coast, then the abbey at Fenhold. Everyone who can walk.'

'And the sanctuary?' Cassiel said.

'The sanctuary is a building. Buildings burn. We have done this before.'

'We have never done this before. We have never abandoned a high priest to the court.'

Orwin turned to face him, and his voice stayed exactly where it had been, level and reasonable, the voice of a man reading out a supply list.

'The vampire court would have found him eventually. At least this way the rest of the church survives.'

Cassiel's hand was still on the table. Two winters he had taught Noah the defensive sun-rites by hand, staying after evening prayers to drill him until the boy could hold a full solar ward alone, and now his fingers had gone white on the wood.

'You vouched for him,' he said. 'Three sessions before the council. You stood up and told them his blood was genuine.'

'I was right. That is why they took him.'

Nobody at the table spoke.

Idris shifted in his chair, and eleven heads turned toward him at once, because he was the oldest thing in the room and the only one who had seen the inside of the fortress and come out of it alive.

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