The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,232

sorry,” she said. “I swear I’ll do my best not to let that happen.”

“You’d do your best regardless, and I’ll die when Orholam allows it, and no sooner. I’m glad to aid you, and honored to call you friend.”

“Friend?” she asked.

“Is it such a high bar to clear?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that. I suppose . . . I mean, you have been a friend to me, far better than I deserve.”

“Oh, I disagree,” he said.

“And I’ve been no friend to you,” Teia said. “Our entire relationship is based on me taking.”

He shrugged. “I don’t see it that way.”

“I didn’t tell you what happened,” she said. “With Aglaia.”

Ah. Maybe she did have unfinished business.

“I took the lack of an answer as an answer.”

So he thought she’d succumbed, that she’d tortured that evil bitch. “I didn’t torture her. I didn’t even speak to her.”

“Did you kill her hard or easy?”

“Quick. I’m not sure there is easy. But it was instant. It was your words that inspired me, if you must know. Sort of.”

Quentin took in a big breath. His eyes softened. “Well, then! I’m so proud of you, Adrasteia. Doing the right—”

“Don’t be,” she interrupted. “I didn’t do the right thing. It was what you said about repentance. Or, actually, damnation.”

“Hmm?”

“I was afraid if I tortured her, she might repent. Orholam is merciful, and I wanted to be sure I sent her straight to hell. I wanted her to suffer, but I could only spare a few minutes in that room, nervous of being interrupted. I wanted her to suffer forever, burn forever in whatever hell there is for her kind. I killed her fast so she wouldn’t have any second chance to avoid that hell, if hell there is. So tell me, Quentin, tell me that I’m kind and good. Tell me that I deserve a friend.”

A lump rose in her throat and she swallowed hard on it.

The compassion in his eyes didn’t even waver. He shook his head. “I’m a murderer, Adrasteia. I killed an innocent! You expect me to reject you because you killed a bad woman too eagerly?”

Teia furrowed her brow. “Hadn’t really thought of it that way.”

“Even my hypocrisy knows some bounds,” he said with a grin. “Besides,” he said, “it doesn’t work. Some people think they can force Orholam’s hand. You know, like they can enjoy their sins for their whole life, then make a deathbed confession. That kind of thing. As if the Giver of Justice, the creator of the very concept, could be so easily fooled or manipulated. Do you think that you could, by plucking Aglaia out of time at this moment or that, really change her soul’s destination? Do you think you’re so powerful? Really? That matter is between her and Orholam. You have many powers, but that’s not one of them! Granted, trying to send someone to hell is a serious matter. But you’re not her judge. Being her executioner is quite enough weight for you to bear.”

“You make it sound as if it all makes sense,” Teia said. “As if it all works out.”

“It does.”

“All evidence to the contrary?”

“I never said we get to see it all work out.”

“Then maybe it’s time for us to finish that other discussion,” Teia said. “Because I think I have an answer,” Teia said. “You said when we approach the big questions, we need to know if we’re approaching them rationally or emotionally. But the truth is we always approach them emotionally. There’s always one answer we want. Though which answer that is varies from person to person.”

“You’re certain you’re ready to talk about evil now?”

“Seems like before I do my best to kill people might be better for it than afterward.”

He answered that with silence, and she actually took the time to think about it. Ready, really? She was and she wasn’t. And her heart needed the words now, like a thirsty tongue needs water, even if it be a trickle licked off a stone and not a full glass.

“Ready enough to hear. Maybe not to accept,” she admitted.

“Then you know your own heart better than most,” Quentin said.

“Very well, then. I’m a smart man, but often not a wise one, which can make for an impoverished theology or at least a poor application of it. But here’s the best I’ve got. Why is there evil if Orholam loves us and has the power to stop it? My answer is that we are the apprentice painters, working under the master’s watchful eye.