“I mean, I don’t know, not really,” Jude amended. “But I just … I have this feeling. That this journey, finding the Prophets … there’s more to it, isn’t there? There’s something you left out.”

Anton trembled in Jude’s hands.

“I think it’s why you stayed away all that time,” Jude said. “You were trying to protect me.”

“Jude,” Anton said, sounding so miserable and lost Jude could hardly bear to go on.

But he had to.

“You were trying to spare me the pain of losing you all over again.”

Anton’s expression flickered with confusion and then crumbled.

“But I want you to know,” Jude went on, his voice shaking. “That whatever it is you think you have to do to win this, whatever reason you have for trying to sacrifice your life—we’ll find a different way.”

Anton buried his face in his hands, his shoulders hitching on a silent sob.

“It’s all right,” Jude soothed, stroking a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to bear this alone, now. I’m here and I—I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“It’s not that,” Anton choked out, his voice muffled in his hands.

Jude took Anton’s hands gently, pulling them away from his face.

“It’s not me, Jude.” Anton looked up at Jude through his tears. “I’m not the sacrifice. You are.”

In fits and starts, the story came out. Some parts Jude already knew, like how Anton had scried into the past with the Wanderer and seen what the Prophets had done to defeat the god.

But other parts, Anton had kept hidden. How the Wanderer had refused to sacrifice the one she loved. How, after they had all turned on the god and killed it, the other Prophets had taken the one the Wanderer loved and made her the Keeper of this Sacred Word, hiding it away in her very esha until they needed it again, passing down the power of the Sacred Word over the generations, to every Keeper of the Word.

To Jude.

Jude, who had the power of this Sacred Word hidden away somewhere inside him. Waiting for a Prophet to unlock its immense power. Waiting to let it consume him. Destroy him, so that the god could be destroyed again, too.

“How … how does it work?” he asked, his voice breaking. “What do I have to do?”

Anton looked at him, his eyes red-rimmed and bleak. “You don’t have to do anything, Jude—”

“Anton,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I just … I’m just trying to understand. Please.”

When Anton spoke again, his voice was flat, toneless, and so quiet it was almost a whisper. “I would—I would have to use my Grace to unlock it from your esha. But it would kill you. And then I would touch the god with the Sacred Word and it—it would destroy it.”