Virtue: A Fairy Tale Part 8

"What?" His stomach dropped, and it got harder to breathe. "She's the castimonia? She's ... chast.i.ty?"

Lily was a virtu, the exact opposite of him. He reached out for the chair next to him, and he collapsed back into it. He suddenly felt too weak to stand.

"No. Why wouldn't she tell me?"

"I don't think she knows yet." Wick lowered her wand as she studied him. His eyes were widened in shock, and he'd had the wind knocked out of him. "You really didn't know?"

"No." He shook his head and swallowed hard. "I never even suspected."

"Then what were you doing with her?" Wick asked skeptically.

"I already told you. It wasn't about that." Lux ran a hand through his hair, feeling sick and confused.

"You can't possibly care about her." Wick dismissed it before he even suggested it. "You're not capable of love."

"I don't know what I'm capable of anymore," he said resignedly.

"The fact that she's not with you is evidence that you don't care," Wick countered, but even she wasn't sure of that. Lux had been in a terrible state when she'd found him, like he'd put up a h.e.l.l of a fight.

"Ira's too powerful." He stared down at the floor. "I fought as hard as I could, but I did nothing against him."

"How could you do nothing to him, if you fought so hard?" she asked.

"I'm l.u.s.t and he's wrath!" he yelled. "I'm a lover, he's a fighter!"

"You're a demon!" Wick countered.

"I'm a minion!" Lux got to his feet.

"As if there is a great distinction!"

"There is! I'm not evil incarnate!"

"No! You just spread its message! How many girls have you bedded? Do you even know?" She stepped closer to him, unwilling to be intimidated by his larger size, and glared up at him.

"Why does it matter?" Lux wanted to meet her gaze, but he averted his eyes. His new found shame was getting on his nerves.

"It doesn't. Except that your only mission in life is to corrupt the innocent, and few are more innocent than Lily."

"I don't want to corrupt her," Lux said emphatically, meeting her eyes this time.

"Then what are you doing with her? How do you think this will all end? A sin and a virtue, living happily ever after? Do you think her master would allow it? Or yours?" Wick calmed her tone, dropping the antagonism, and simply asked him the question.

"She doesn't have a master yet," he pointed out. If Lily didn't know that she was the castimonia, she couldn't have taken the vows to serve anyone.

"Oh. Is that your plan, then? Bring her back to your master?" Wick asked icily.

"No! I don't want her anywhere near him!" Lux shouted, surprised by his own vehemence. "I'll kill him if he does anything to her. If he touches a hair on her head "

He balled his hand up into a fist and gritted his teeth to keep from las.h.i.+ng out at anything around him.

"You really care about her?" Wick wasn't sure whether she believed him. This all might be a show he was putting on, but she didn't know what he would get out of that.

"Yes." Lux thought about it a moment before finis.h.i.+ng. "More than I've ever cared about anything."

"I'll help you rescue Lily," she said finally, convinced of his intentions. "But once she's free, I'll do everything to keep you from corrupting her."

"Don't you see? I'm not corrupting her. She's taming me," Lux gestured around him. He would've elaborated further, about how he'd been unable to pursue anyone since meeting Lily, but he thought that might hurt his case.

"That's not how it works." Wick shook her head sadly. "When you mix dirt with water, the dirt doesn't get clean. The water just gets dirty."

He turned away from her so she couldn't see how her statement had rattled him. He'd only been thinking of protecting Lily, but he hadn't really thought about whether or not she'd need protection from him.

"Lie down and finish resting," Wick told him and went over to her shelves. "I need to get things together before we go, so I have something to help you fight."

"We really don't have much time. Every moment she's with Valefor..." Lux trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought.

"Then you need to be as strong as you can be if you're going to go up against Valefor." Wick shot him a look over her shoulder. "He is the most powerful daemon on Earth, isn't he?"

Lux grumbled in response and grudgingly lay down on her bed. She was right, but he hated doing nothing.

"I don't know why I'm trusting you," Wick said, mostly to herself, as she shoved vials into a small sack. "You're all master manipulators and liars, especially luxuria."

"I don't know why you speak so harshly of me. We've never met before," Lux pointed out tiredly.

"No, but I know your kind." She opened a vial and tasted a bit of the potion, checking to see whether it was still good, then recapped it and tossed it in her pouch. "There's a reason I live alone in the woods."

"Look at it this way. I haven't tried bedding you yet, and if this had been before I met Lily, I certainly would have."

Wick was a beautiful woman, despite her attempts to hide it, but the thought of being with anyone other than Lily made his stomach twist in knots. He'd never known it was even possible to feel this way.

"I'm not sure if that was meant to be a compliment, but I didn't take it that way," she replied absently.

"No, it wasn't. Merely facts." Lux stared up at the hole in ceiling. "How did that happen?"

"What?" Wick went over to the large wooden chest on the other side of the room to search through it, and she glanced up at the carnage done to her cottage. "Oh, that? Just a fight with a sorceress." Something occurred to her, and she stopped rummaging to look back at him. "You wouldn't happen to have anything to do with Scelestus, would you?"

"No, I've never personally had any business with her," Lux said, then realized that was a lie by omission. While he'd always been known for his silver tongue, he wanted to reform. "Valefor and Scelestus planned some kind of exchange, but I'm not sure of the details. All I know is that he sent me to fetch Lily from her, but instead of bringing her to him, I left her in the woods."

"Ah, yes. Leaving a young girl alone in the Necrosilvam. What a wise decision," Wick mocked him.

"I didn't know what else to do!" Lux sighed. "In retrospect, I regret it entirely. I should've stayed with her."

"There's nothing to regret. I took care of her then, and I'll take care of her now," Wick said. "She fares much better with me than she does you."

"She's still with Ira, no matter who you blame," Lux replied icily.

"Not for much longer." She found something in her chest and held it out to him. "Here. Put this on."

"What is it?" He sat up as she tossed white cloth at him.

"It's a s.h.i.+rt."

"I thought you said you didn't have a s.h.i.+rt." He slipped off his jacket and pulled on the s.h.i.+rt. It didn't have b.u.t.tons, but the collar hung open a bit, the way he liked it.

"No, I said your s.h.i.+rt was destroyed. And that's not just any s.h.i.+rt. It should protect you from magic, so your friend Ira won't decimate you if you see him." She went back to digging through the chest, hoping to find something else useful for herself.

"Well, thank you." He adjusted the s.h.i.+rt, fixing it so it laid right on him. "I know it pains you to help me."

"It really does," Wick sighed. "But I don't see that I have a choice in the matter."

"Why did you even bring me back here?" Lux got to his feet, feeling too frustrated to rest any longer. Most of the aches in his body had worn away, and the burning in his chest had disappeared almost entirely. "You hate me so much, but I've never met you. I've never done anything to you."

"You didn't have to," Wick said. "My best friend, my only friend was the castimonia, and she spent her whole life trying to spread good and fix the damage you and your brethren did. When she died, she left me to watch out for her daughter. Now Lily is involved with you, everything she stood against. She would be mortified if she knew what was happening."

"It doesn't matter if her dead mother approves of me or not," Lux pointed out. "It only matters that we find Lily. When this is all done, you can spit on my grave, for all I care. But right now, I need you to stop hating me. I know I can't do this on my own, not after the way Ira took me out. I need you, and you need me. For Lily."

"You're right." Wick pushed her hair behind her ears and took a breath. "I know I have another cloak around here. As soon as I find it, we can leave."

Lux went to the hole in her wall, staring out at the night. The moon was still swollen, s.h.i.+ning down on the Necrosilvam. When he was around, the woods were silent, but he didn't understand how anyone could live out here. The charuns were troublesome, and the trees were known for thieving. He'd never seen a purple apple tree before, and as he admired it, the branches started quivering.

Wick didn't think anything of it because the protective sphere had been going haywire since Lux arrived. He'd disturbed its balance. Then she felt a more drastic fluctuation, as if the world pulled and swayed, and Lux looked around, meaning he'd sensed it too. A gust of wind blew through the house, and an apple fell from the tree, landing on the ground with a thud.

Something was coming, and Wick got to her feet just as the front door swung open.

11.

Wick had her hand on her wand, and Lux was at her side, his stance defensive and confident. She'd expected him to cower in the corner, but when he ran to her aide, Wick started thinking that perhaps she'd underestimated him. Not that she had much time to think because someone entered her cottage.

The thin man came inside with an overly casual stride. His clothes looked even finer than Lux's, all silks and leather. Gaudy rings ordained his hands, along with a heavy chain around his neck. His features were refined and delicate, bordering on feminine but still attractive. He kept his blond short and perfectly styled, and his dark eyes went over the room with contempt.

"You didn't have to clean up on my account," he said. He ran his finger along the counter, and when it came up covered in dust, he wiped his finger off with disgust.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Wick demanded. She hadn't raised her wand yet, and she didn't want to waste her energy if she didn't need to. Her other hand dropped into her pouch, digging for something to frighten him away.

"Avaritia, what are you doing?" Lux asked when the man didn't answer.

"Avaritia?" Wick questioned, looking at Lux out of the corner of her eye. He was another peccati, but Lux hadn't relaxed since he came in, so she wasn't sure if it was good that Lux knew him. "Greed?"

"Right." Avaritia smiled at her, flas.h.i.+ng perfect white teeth. "It's a good thing you're smart, because you're horrible at housekeeping. And you're not much to look at either."

"Why are you here?" Wick asked, ignoring his jabs.

"I came to see how Lux was slumming it." Avaritia turned his attention to Lux. "This really is quite repugnant, even for you. You can't possibly be intimate with that woman ... can you?" He wrinkled his nose and nodded at Wick, who rolled her eyes.

"What I do doesn't concern you," Lux said flatly. "I don't have anything you want. You have no reason to be here."

"Oh, I know you don't have anything! That's why I'm here!" Avaritia gestured to the mess and laughed, but it was a joyless sound. "I've been hearing all about your terrible fall from grace, as it were, and I had to see it for myself. Disasters are so much better up close."

"What have you heard?" Lux narrowed his eyes at him.

"That you've completely lost your mind. You've forsaken our master in exchange for the castimonia, although Gula thinks she might have put a spell on you so it's not your fault." He picked absently at his manicured nails.

"You know she's the castimonia?" Lux sounded shocked, and Wick looked over at him. It was starting to seem less and less like he'd lied to her.

"You didn't?" Avaritia smirked at him. "Oh my. You're even dumber than I thought. What on Earth did you possibly want with that wretched girl?"

"Nothing you would understand." Lux lowered his voice, and before Avaritia could comment on that, he rushed to continue. "Have you come to escort me back to Valefor?"

"No. I've never been much of an errand boy, though I certainly did a better job than you," Avaritia winked at him. "Valefor is much too busy with the girl to worry about you. But don't worry. He has plans for you at a later time."

"Of course," Lux sighed. "So what are you doing here?"

"I already told you." Picking up a rag, Avaritia wiped at a spot on the counter. Once he was convinced it was clean, he leaned back against it. "I'm here to poke at you when you're down."

"You've always been so thoughtful," Lux sneered at him.

Wick gripped a vial in her hand. So far, Avaritia didn't seem threatening. Lux didn't appear concerned, only annoyed. Just the same, she didn't want to take chances with either of them. The cottage smelled too much of brimstone, and Wick sneezed.

"You're allergic to clean then?" Avaritia asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Are you two old friends?" Wick ignored him and wiped at her nose with her sleeve, making him wrinkle his face in disgust.

"We go way back," Lux said carefully. He didn't want to alienate Avaritia, not yet anyway, but he wouldn't call him a friend. It was hard for peccati to be friends, especially when they're as conniving and sniveling as Avaritia.

"Yes, I suppose we do," Avaritia mused, picking at his nails again.

"What does Valefor want with Lily?" Lux asked. He'd yet to have deciphered that himself, and if Avaritia had been hearing things, he'd probably heard that, too.

"Who?" Avaritia asked, being willfully dumb.

"Lily. The castimonia," Lux clarified, even though he knew he didn't need to.

"Oh. I wasn't aware that it had a name," Avaritia shrugged, and Lux clenched his teeth to keep from hitting him. "Valefor wants her because she is the castimonia, of course."

"She's not yet, not really," Wick was quick to amend. "She hasn't taken her vows yet."

"Precisely!" Avaritia pointed at her, as if she'd won something. "See! I knew you were smart."

"I don't understand." Lux shook his head. "If she's not a true virtu, why does he want her?"

"He wants her to take her vows to him," Avaritia explained as if they were both small children. "If she serves him, a daemon, and not an irin, he's won. We've won."