The light was dim in Peroth's office. A few candles were lit and stationed about the space, their tremulous tapers of light fighting valiantly against the perfidious dark. The Sin of Sloth knelt before me with his eyes fixed on my broken hand. His fingers silently worked the bandages, testing the tautness and integrity as he minded my wounds.
At the other end of the sofa, Amoroth sat in uncharacteristic silence. Peroth had tended to her injuries first and, finding nothing serious, had moved on to mine. The woman was staring into space, her eyes black with hunger and fatigue.
Half of the office was in ruin. The door and its wall had been obliterated and the floor was painted with whirling scorch marks. The fronts of Sloth's cabinets had shattered, leaving small piles of glass shards all over the place. Occasional passersby peeked through the hole ripped in the wall but took one glance at the wreckage and quickly moved on.
"This will hold until one of Mattie's daughters can take a look," Peroth said as he turned my hand within his own and his eyes followed the long strip of gauze. I winced at the unexpected pain shooting through my wrist. It was sprained along with several small bones in my hand being broken.
"Thank you," I responded as I tucked my hand into the other. I trembled from the cold pervading the manor, though neither of the Sins was visibly affected by it. Peroth watched me as he sat on the floor and leaned back upon his palms. Blood from Berour's open wounds stained his front, crimson streaks marring his chest and the sleeves of his ruined shirt.
I averted my gaze and instead looked to Amoroth. Unfortunately, she was also staring at me with strange, guarded eyes, so I was forced to direct my attention heavenward. The rafters overhead played host to a whole flock of black-feathered birds, all eerily peering below as if waiting for instruction.
"I don't understand what he wanted," I said, breaking the silence before it had a chance to mature. "Why try to scare me?"
"Not scare you, Sara," Peroth answered on an exhale. The manor seemed to breathe with him, a warm downdraft stirring the wayward strands of my hair. "Terrify you. He meant to terrify you utterly on Balthier's orders. I can guess his motives, but I'm not certain of his reasoning."
I grimaced. He'd tried to trick me into summoning Darius into danger, that much I was certain of, and the Sin of Envy had sent Berour to his doom with no assurance to his plan's success. He'd thrown Gluttony into Peroth's path like a pawn that had outlived its usefulness. Though I didn't question Peroth's right to kill the rampaging creature and was utterly grateful to him for saving my life, I despised Balthier all the more for twisting and manipulating both Berour and Peroth to his ends.
The monster didn't even have to get his own hands dirty when ruining lives. Why did that make me hate him more?
"What happens now?" I asked as I lowered my eyes from the ceiling to find Peroth still watching me. "Now that Berour's dead."
"At this precise moment, nothing at all happens. Berour is dead. The Seat of Gluttony is vacant—but like all vacated seats of power, it creates a vacuum that must be filled." He leaned back until he was looking at the ceiling as I had only moments before. "A soul from the void will be drawn to the Seat within the Realm. Given some time for maturation, the soul resonates with the vast emptiness of the Seat waiting to be filled and what part of the soul can be salvaged reforms into a Sin."
"Who will be the new Sin?"
Peroth shrugged, affecting a nonchalant attitude to try to hide how upset he was about what he had done. "Who knows? It could be anyone who's crossed paths with the Sin in the past ten years. Anyone who's dead, of course, and anyone who died with gluttonous aspirations in their heart."
Gluttonous aspirations? "What does that mean?" I asked. "Gluttonous aspirations. What, did the person have to die wanting a hamburger or something?"
Amoroth snorted as she picked at the bandage poking through her collar. "Try not to be so literal, Gaspard. Gluttony can refer to any kind of hunger—a hunger for food, for knowledge, for freedom. Gluttony is a need to consume. Greed or avarice is a desire to possess more: more money, more respect, more repute. Lust is an ardent want that needn't be sexual in nature." Amoroth rolled her eyes. "Being the Sin of Lust doesn't make me a harlot."
No, it didn't—but I had to wonder what did make Amoroth the Sin of Lust. What want had filled her so completely when she died?
"It can be forced, the selection," Peroth said as he canted his head and glanced at Amoroth as he read her distress. "Channel enough energy into the weeping rift left open by an empty Seat, and you can—potentially—alter its frequency and force it to...." He rolled his hand as if searching for the right word. "Chime. You can elevate the channels and discover the precise chaos of the Sin's untaken Seat. Like...throwing pots and pans into a very large garbage disposal, one at a time, until you create that absolute bedlam that is a Sin's Seat and push a particular soul to that frequency.
"But, I digress. You asked what happens now, and I do not know. You asked who will be the new Sin of Gluttony, and I do not know. All I know is Berour is dead and, in the coming months, a new Sin will rise and one of us must be there to ease their transition. Given that we'll undoubtedly still be locked in standoff with Balthier by the time our new brother arises...."
The Sin's voice trailed. Where he left off, Amoroth continued.
"Balthier will be the only one available to sponsor the poor arse," she muttered, lip curling.
I fidgeted. "Wait, you have sponsors?"
The thinnest simper blunted the edge of Peroth's grim mood. Red flushed Amoroth's cheeks as she silently lamented her admission. "Perhaps not in the sense that you understand it. When new Sins are born—as we call it—they are not born with knowledge of what they are. They are...wild, untried, and often uncooperative. They require guidance. We developed the system after Tehgrair was taken from us and we had to deal with Vaanid. Berour's 'sponsor' was the fourth-born Sin of Greed named Xavier Cross. Danyel's sponsor, if you can believe it, is Darius."
My brow jumped, but I was otherwise unaffected. "Actually, that would explain some things." Like why Danyel was such a needy attention-grabber who didn't quite know his place. I imagine Darius was quite neglectful.
Peroth chuckled, though the sound was thick and broke like uneven rocks shifting underfoot. "And, of course, I'm Amoroth's."
Amoroth's face reddened more.
He rose from the floor and, ignoring the unsettled state of his attire, went to the sideboard. The crystal decanters clinked together with unintended force, and when the Sin selected one of the darker liquors, the amber liquid reached the tumbler's limit and sloshed over the rim. Peroth hardly seemed to notice. A slight tremor gripped his strong hands.
It seemed even half-mad, immortal creatures were capable of experiencing grief.
"No matter who replaces him, Berour is gone. That cannot be changed. The fifth-born Sin of Gluttony is dead. Dead by my hand." Peroth lifted his glass to his lips and downed the contents. "Off to bigger and better things, I pray, my poor deranged brother."
Amoroth was once more silent, her eyes downcast upon the floor and its frayed rug. Bloody footprints littered the rug, their dark forms faded into overlapping brown and black curves like so many butterflies trapped in the woven strands.
Yes, Berour was dead. He had been sacrificed as a pawn in Balthier's incomparable game—but I felt a certain amount of guilt for my role in his death. More so, I felt guilty for the sorrow staining Peroth's eyes and for the blood on Amoroth's face. I felt guilty for their shared despondency, and guilty for the fate of the new creature who hadn't yet been brought forth. He—or she—was going to be Balthier's next tool, trapped with him outside the ward.
I was corrosive. I continued to live, and the Sins were dying. Darius was beyond the ward in constant danger of ambush by his brother or Balthier. Berour had lost his life. Twice Amoroth had almost had her heart ripped out. Peroth's house was under attack, and now he'd been forced to kill to save my life, compromising his own sense of morals.
The more I considered it, the more treacherous the nature of my thoughts became. I hated giving in to such fits of melancholy, but I couldn't divest myself of the sadness and the despondency. I was a breathing disaster. I was a hurricane ravaging all that crossed my vicinity.
"Balthier might have been right," I whispered to my wounded hands. "Maybe I'm the villain in all of this, the catalyst for so much death and ruin. Do I desperately cling to life at the expense of others?"
Peroth cleared his throat as he poured two more glasses. "Amor, would you excuse us for a minute?"
The woman sucked air through her teeth but rose. "Fine. I'm going to bed—right after I find something stronger than your bloody cognac to drink."
Amoroth disappeared into the Realm with a burst of ashen air. The smell of cinders and brimstone stirred sudden wistfulness in me that I wasn't prepared for. It was the same scent that always clung to Darius's clothes and I always smelled it whenever the Sin of Pride leaned into my personal space.
The click of ice in a glass sounding by my ear stirred me. "You're far too arrogant," Sloth said as he lowered a filled glass into my hands. I was surprised by how cold it was—then realized the entire manor was still submerged in a wintry frost but for the area heated by the power roiling inside Peroth's flesh. "I'd wager Darius finds it an endearing trait. Nevertheless, you're too arrogant for your own good. You claim accountability for this whole...fiasco, and yet you fail to realize we're all fully capable of taking responsibility for our actions.
"You didn't force my hand in this matter, Sara. I made a choice. I could have let Berour kill you, but I chose not to. Instead, I killed him. That was my choice—just as it was Balthier's choice to send him into the manor and it was Darius's choice to take your contract and to prolong it. You don't hold the power to disregard and overwhelm those decisions. They are ours, and we will take them to our graves."
Peroth leaned upon the desk and drank his cognac as his tarnished eyes closed.
I held my own glass in my working hand, the distinct aroma rising off the amber liquid to burn in my nose. The quiet minutes continued and culminated like so many droplets of rain water upon a window.
His words did nothing to mitigate my culpability. I was indirectly the reason Balthier haunted Peroth's doorstep. I was the reason Berour was dead.
"Peroth," I said as I trailed my fingertips through the condensation. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I get Darius or you or even Amoroth killed. You claim responsibility for your actions, so let me claim responsibility for mine."
I sighed and, growing frustrated, took a swig from the glass. The cognac burned in my throat as I coughed and sputtered.
"Peroth, the house gives me visions, and I don't know what to do with them anymore. I'm trying to understand them, trying to understand what they're leading me to, but I just can't wrap my mind around it."
The muscles in my jaw worked as I set the glass on the floor by feet, wincing as I bent my broken hand. Peroth stilled with his glass hovering near his parted lips as he opened his eyes. The gold color was vivid and lupine, a complex mix of wise and dangerous.
"Visions?"
"Memories," I quietly admitted. "Your memories." I wondered how he would react to this information. Peroth didn't strike me as a man who responded well to such an invasion of privacy. "I saw you flee from the Dreaming. I saw the Isle fall."
Glass shattered. I started when the tumbler in Peroth's hand was smashed by his punishing grip and honeyed liquid dripped from his trembling fist.
"You weren't supposed to see that. No one was ever supposed to see that."
"I know," I rushed to say, holding my hands up in surrender. "I know that. But the manor led me to the visions—the memories. You yourself told me Crow's End bends to the wishes of its residents and responds to our deepest wants and desires. My deepest desire is to see Darius survive this nightmare."
Peroth lifted his bleeding hand to his mouth as he sucked the shards from his skin. He spat glass and blood between his teeth as he responded. "If Crow's End is showing you my memories, then it wants you to learn from my mistakes. What else could you possibly glean from the recollections of a fool like me?"
Scarlet painted his lips and chin before the Sin wiped it away on his wrinkled sleeve. Was Peroth correct? Was Crow's End trying to teach me a lesson by showing me a mistake in Peroth's past? But what mistake was it? What lesson would save Darius's life?
The Sin of Sloth turned his back to me and placed his bloody hands upon the desk's edge. When he lowered his head, Tehgrair moved beneath his skin, the shade's desiccated bones rising above his body before cascading in a mist of black ink. His energy swelled and once more began to prowl like an unleashed wolf breaking free of its cage.
"Go," Peroth said, catching me by surprise. "I want to be alone now, Sara. You should go rest."
I stood as I tucked my hair behind my ear. "Okay," I agreed, feeling the exhaustion sink into my muscles anew. A headache waited in the extremities of my mind. My construct had stretched my silver-lined soul to its limits and I needed to sleep. I reached out to the Sin, but I allowed my hand to fall short and my fingertips just barely touched the outside of his shirt.
"I'm...sorry, Peroth. I'm sorry for everything."
He didn't respond.