The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,30

the answer. Instead, she looked suddenly ill.

“Oh my God,” Karris said. “This is why Prisms go mad. This is why Gavin was always so wretched at Freeings.”

“What are you talking about?” Samite asked, tense.

“I knew it was hard, Sami. I thought I knew. But . . . it’s not hard.”

Samite’s face was writ with the same confusion Teia felt. Killing their own wasn’t hard? Karris had killed before; surely she knew that the physical act wasn’t so difficult most of the time, so she meant something else.

“Oh God,” the White blasphemed, though perhaps such a desperate tone made uttering the holy title a prayer rather than a curse. “Oh God.” Her pale skin went death-white. Her fingers grabbed wads of the covers and she gulped convulsively to keep from vomiting.

“What . . . ?” Samite asked.

“It’s not hard, Sami,” Karris said. “I killed that boy, and the veil lifted. This. What we’re doing. It’s not hard. Koios is right. What we’re doing is wrong. And if it’s wrong when Gav Greyling offers me his life willingly, how much worse is it when we drag women to the Prism’s knife as they scream and wail and beg us to think of their children?”

Teia felt as if a horse had kicked her. Seeing the White herself lose faith?

Oh, that was pretty bad.

And admit that the Blood Robes were right?

That was also bad.

But that wasn’t the part that Teia’s mind couldn’t hold—like cupped, imploring hands as someone emptied a full pitcher of blood into them. She couldn’t hold the name.

Gav Greyling. The young, roguish, cute idiot. The lout. He’d only just stopped his obnoxious fake flirting with her.

That asshole. He was just now becoming the friend she needed so, so badly.

He was . . .

Karris had Freed him?

Obviously he’d broken the halo. Probably out on one of the expeditions to find Gavin. And they’d brought him back, knowing what had to be done.

Karris had knifed his heart. Personally.

But after all the people Karris had had Teia kill . . . all the murders of innocent slaves and the kidnapping and murder of Marissia, all the shit she’d ordered Teia to do and to be party to, she, the White herself, was losing faith merely because she’d had to hold the knife? Once?

Now she flinches?! How dare she.

Sure, you’re only human. You’re allowed to have your doubts.

But you can’t doubt this. You’re the White. Any doubts you had should have been dealt with years ago.

If you doubt, why should anyone believe?

Among the Blackguard, Gav’s was an honorable death. A combat death. It was counted as succumbing to your wounds from battle. A hero’s death. It was giving your all, and more. It was being willing to give not just your life but even more, your sanity. Most Blackguards, if they felt the halo break, tried to die on the field. Easier that way for everyone. Safer.

But if you didn’t, what you asked in return for your sacrifice was that your friends would end you before you dishonored yourself by hurting those you loved. If possible, if you lived so long, you were accorded the honor of being Freed by your highest commanders, those you trusted with your body and your soul, the head of the Blackguard, or a High Luxiat, or the Prism himself. Nothing short of the dawn Sun Day ritual itself was too important to be interrupted for a Blackguard’s Freeing.

The people who’d put you in the place where you needed to die in order to serve them would hold the knife.

And all you asked for all your suffering and sacrifice was a steady hand on the knife and a steady look in the eye. You asked them to affirm the meaning not just of your death but of your whole life, of the oath of service you’d given and that you were upholding even after breaking the halo, when everything in you screamed to break troth. You asked them to have the basic decency to honor your sacrifice.

How could you become the White, and look into the eyes of a good man who was dying for you, and blink?

The Iron White, they called her.

It was a bitter taste in Teia’s mouth. A mock.

Teia felt the darkness all around her like dead, cold fingers touching her cheek; cold, wormy breath blowing down on her hood, wheezing. But as she drafted paryl now, she couldn’t say any more that the darkness was merely a cloak around her than you could say the air