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his Earth-born destiny.”
    A cold evening breeze gusted in through the window; the Patriarch turned his face into it, let the chill wind brush back his hair. “Most difficult of all was Church custom regarding the fae. Especially in this city, where sorcery is so cheap that the poor can buy visions of plentiful food more easily than the real thing ... and then they die of hunger, Reverend Vryce. Their bodies gutted by starvation, but a ghastly smile on their faces. Which is why I believe as I do—as my Church has believed, for nearly a thousand years. We won’t tame this tyrannical force by parceling it out to sorcerers, for their paltry spells and their squalid conjurations. The more we expose it to humankind’s greed, the more it stinks of our excesses. Gannon saw that very clearly, back in the Revival. He outlawed private sorcery for that very reason—and I agree with him, heart and soul. If you need an example of what the fae can do to a man, once it has hold of him ... consider the Prophet’s Fall. Or the First Sacrifice. Witness all the monsters that the fae has brought to life, using man’s fear as a template ... I swore to fight those things, Reverend Vryce. At any cost to myself. I swore that the fae would be tamed, according to the Prophet’s guidelines.
    “And then came a letter. From your Matriarch, your Holy Mother. Informing me that the west had begun an investigation into how the fae might be manipulated for Church purposes, by a chosen few trained toward that end. Sorcery! Dress it up in holy silks as you will, it still stinks. I argued with her, pleaded with her, I would have gone so far as to threaten her if I thought it would do any good ... but your Holy Mother is a headstrong woman, and her mind was made up. And now—I am watching my Church dissolve, Reverend Vryce, my dream of salvation corrupted ...” He turned back to Damien, cold eyes narrowed. “And you are the vehicle of that corruption.”
    “No one said you had to have me,” Damien snapped—and instantly regretted his lack of control. He’d been prepared for much worse than this; why was he overreacting? It was the fae that had affected him, responding to the Patriarch’s will. Why? What did he want?
    For me to lose control, he realized. For me to act in such a way that he would have no choice but to cast me out. It staggered the imagination, that a man who neither accepted nor understood the fae could Work it so well—without ever knowing that he did. How much of the man’s intolerance was rooted in his own need to deny the truth?
    “No,” the Patriarch agreed. “I could have fragmented the Church instead, given birth to a schism that might never heal ... or begun a holy war, trying to avoid that. Those options were even more distasteful, in the end, and so I agreed. Send me your sorceror, I told her. Let me see what he does. Let me see how he operates. Let me see for myself that his Working is no threat to our faith.” His expression was icy. “If you can demonstrate that to my satisfaction I’ll be a very surprised man.”
    Mustering all his self-control, Damien answered cooly, “I’ll regard that as a goal, Holiness.”
    The blue eyes fixed on him, pinpoints of azure fire. “Damien Kilcannon Vryce. Knight of King Gannon’s Order of the Golden Flame. Companion of the Earth-Star Ascendant. Reverend Father of the Church of the Unification of Human Faith on Erna. What is our calling, to you?”
    Damien stiffened. “A dream—that I would die to uphold, or kill to defend.”
    The Patriarch nodded slowly. “Yes. Well recited. The definition of your Order—first voiced in a more bloodthirsty time than this, I dare say. But you, Reverend Vryce—the man. The dreamer. What do you believe?”
    “That you’re wrong,” Damien answered quietly. “That our traditional belief system is outdated. That our ancestors perceived of the world in terms of black and white, when nearly all of it is made up of shades of gray. That