Late.
The village had gone quiet hours ago, and the shrine was the only building still showing light. James and Finn stood in the shadow between two houses across the muddy lane, and neither of them spoke because there was nothing to say that the situation had not already said.
The man walking toward the shrine had been marked three days ago. James had watched it happen during the evening blessing — the Saintess pressing her palm flat against his chest, the brief glow under her fingers, the way the man had looked afterward like something had been taken and he had not noticed yet. Since then, he had been quieter than before. Ate less. Stopped responding when his wife spoke to him from the other side of a room.
Now he was walking toward the shrine in bare feet and sleeping clothes, and his eyes were open and his face was slack, and he did not shiver in the cold.
Finn shifted his weight forward.
James put a hand up.
Finn went still, jaw tight, but he waited.
