“Except you,” Cassius finished.

Jellan stood frozen before them.

He also felt his bladder begin to loosen when Cassius’s eyes became what True’s were.

Except black.

“How many women was it, in the end?” he asked softly. “Do you even know?”

“It was not the Society who roused the Beast!” Jellan exclaimed. “It was Marian! The sacrifices…the terrible things they did to those girls…it was not that. It was her.”

“So, you know of the sacrifices?” Cassius asked.

Gods damn it!

If this did not get better, he might have to expose his magic to get him out of this place.

“I read it in a tome,” he only partly lied, but went on to fully do just that. “When…when we journeyed to Wodell for King True’s wedding, I remembered the reading of them. I had an idea. I went to inspect. Came upon them performing their ghastly ritual—”

“You are aware that lying will not change matters for you, no?” Mars asked.

“I do not lie!” he cried. “And I am here to help. I know what he looks like. I know where they wander.”

“As do they,” Mars pointed out, indicating the highwaymen.

Gods damn it!

He started to call upon his magic, just in case.

“They don’t know where they wander,” he pushed.

“They are good trackers. They will find out,” Cassius said.

His eyes were back to normal, as were True’s.

But even so, Jellan did not get the sense this indicated good things for him.

“I am a priest of the Go’Doan,” he stated.

“You are a priest of The Rising,” Cassius stated in return. “A priest who murdered countless women, one of them the mother of a queen, and conspired to subjugate citizens of four realms to your beliefs.”

“I cared naught about The Rising,” he spat.

After all he’d witnessed, all he’d endured, being repeatedly raped, watching the deaths, experiencing the fear, the maltreatment, something inside him snapped, and he could not control his words or emotion, even if he had tried.

But he no longer had it in him to try.

He drew upon his magic as he asked, “What man needs religion when he controls omnipotence?”

“So, it is solely for you, you sought to rise him,” Queen Ha-Lah spoke for the first time.

“I go about the unpleasant business of bringing him forth, why would I hand him over to others?” he asked snidely. “Especially for them to use it to force people to serve their paltry gods. If you have that power, you are a god.”

“And Marian?” Elena also entered the conversation. “Does she desire to control omnipotence?”