Clouded Purity - Book 2 of The Trial

Clouded Purity - Chapter 16

"Do you understand yet, Prism?" Ghayle asked.

"Understand what?"

"Love," Ghayle stated. "That's what rules you. It is what has always ruled you."

"Duty," Prism disagreed. "Duty ruled me. Duty stood in the way of love. I spent that time rationalizing every single decision by the will of the Order, instead of following my heart."

"Duty is a form of love."

"Spare me." Prism growled, tearing away from Ghayle again. "I gave up love for duty, we both know that. Just as Marhys did. You may think of her sacrifice as pure, but that is not how I see it."

"She loved me," Ghayle replied. "She stayed for me. Out of love for her mother."

"She abandoned her husband and child out of some need to be close to someone she thought was a deity. A woman sworn to protect the world, who then destroyed it," Prism said. "The one who gave up all her vows to consort with demons."

"Interesting."

"Oh no, drawing parallels again? Trying to show me how much I'm like you?" Prism asked.

"Interesting."

"Woman, you infuriate me!"

Ghayle smiled slyly. "Interesting."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"What infuriates you is me making comparisons between us, no matter how valid or vague. To think that you, the stonehearted monk, filled with his duty, is driven to anger so easily." Ghayle laughed heartily and stood before Prism, a primal fire blazing behind her eyes as she stared deep into his soul. "What is the source of your anger, Prism? Is it not because you can't stand what you see? Why not? Duty, devotion, love . . . it comes back to love, again and again. What we do for that most fickle of emotions. Why we're driven to the brink of destruction out of the instinct to preserve what we care about."

Prism bore it all with stoicism, refusing to let her goad him until she leaned in close, her lips inches from his own as she asked him once more, "Why are you so angry, Prism?"

He tried to push her away from him with all his strength, though he might as well have tried to push over an oak tree. She stood her ground and Prism threw his hands in the air and stormed away from her for several paces before turning around. "I spent my entire life keeping my emotions in check, and seeing it played before me now, I have a right to feel, in death! I have a right to mourn the life I could have lived!"

"You mourn the life you did live," Ghayle said. "You're not at peace with your choices."

"Are you at peace with yours?" Prism asked.

"Yes," Ghayle replied without hesitation. "I acted in accordance with the duty I felt toward the world. To preserve what I could of what I loved. I gave myself to the cycle, to death, so the world could be saved again. You did the same for Grim. You gave him everything you could."

"No, I didn't. I owed it to him to keep my promises."

"There is time yet for those promises."

"Death prevents me from fulfilling them," Prism said.

"Does it? Do you remember the contract you made with Selfaeth, to protect his son, even unto the sacrifice of your own life?"

"I know where you're headed with this. Please don't make me relive it," Prism begged.

"Prism, you have to understand." Ghayle gestured to the garden around them. "Death is not the end of everything. Ripples of our passing spread on throughout the ages."