“There’s no walking back what you did,” I told her. “Not even for this. I’m one life. That’s the weight I have on the scales.”
“I consider myself something of a theologian,” she said. “And yet I still lack the answer to one question. Perhaps you can answer it for me. Which matters most, when it comes to doing good – the conviction or the act?”
There was a beat of silence as the enormity of what she’d just said sunk in.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
I was not sure whether to be amazed or appalled by what she was implying. She might be the single most amoral person I knew, which was saying something considering I was acquainted with the fucking King of Death. And she was talking of redemption? No, I realized. Not redemption. The conviction or the act, she’d said. I hated to even think it, but it fit with how she’d always done things. I used stories as an arsenal, taking up and discarding what was of use to me, but her? She rode them into the storm like a warhorse. It had killed her, in the end. But before it had she’d matched an entire empire blow for blow.
“But I am,” she smiled. “I shall be the most terrifyingly heroic woman in the history of my kind. And in the end, together we will learn the answer to my question.”
“It’s not the Gods you have to convince,” I hissed. “It’s me.”
“Would you snuff me out for observing your own principles?” she asked. “I will do nothing but what you have demanded of me.”
“They won’t take you in,” I said. “You have to know that. You can’t fake being a good person.”
“I have learned much from you, darling one. I may fail, true. In my hour of judgement I may – most likely will – be unmade and cast into the deepest burning pits. But until then? Oh, what a glorious ride it will be.”
She spun away from me, presence parting in full.
“Now, my dear,” the villain said, and there was joyous laughter in her voice. “Shall we
save some innocents?”