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Xan reaches Jemel and snatches the flask from his hand. “I…” he begins, then stops.

“What?”

“It’s not water.”

Jemel pauses. “What is it then?”

Xan’s broad chest is heaving, like he is on the edge of panic. “It has foribunda in it.”

“Foribunda?” Jemel frowns. “The love potion?”

Xan nods.

“Why do you have a flask of foribunda?” Jemel says.

Xan looks awkward for a moment. When he doesn’t reply, Jemel says, “Did you find it in the garden? Did you think it might be useful to rescue Trysta?”

“Yes,” says Xan. “I thought, perhaps, if we needed to distract the guards.”

“Oh.” Jemel looks at the flask, letting it move thoughtfully in his hands. “You know sometimes Brides of Zai take this.”

“Why would Brides of Zai take foribunda?”

“You remember I told you that my mother was likely executed. Brides of Zai are chaste, but sometimes there are rituals or festivals where all must couple. It would be great misfortune for any Bride who was present at such a ritual to remain chaste as Zai wills. Usually they stay away from such rites, but sometimes if they find themselves present at such an event, they take foribunda. So they can make love without being guilty of sin.”

“Why would it be no sin if the Bride had taken foribunda?” Xan looks incredulous as Jemel has noticed he often does when Jemel speaks to him about the ways of the Faith.

“It takes away the will, so the sins are not the sins of the person. It cannot be a sin of the body. Like when, like when someone sees my face.” Jemel looks at the flask again; at Xan’s big fingers curled around it. “It would be no sin.”

“And what are these old rites where all must couple? That does not sound like something your God would allow.”

“Zai allows some of the old Artemian festivals.”

Xan raises an eyebrow. “So you speak of the Feast of Surrus?”

“Yes.”

“The Faith of your demon God is full of hypocrisy.”

Jemel cannot help but agree. He knows this is true. How does Zai hold him so tightly? He must find a way to break through this. And perhaps this is the way. Sent to him by another power. A true one. He points to the flask in Xan’s hand. “If I drank that, and you took me, it would be no sin. For either of us.”

Xan scoffs. “No sin? If I take you, it will be all my own sinful desire, priest.”

This statement makes Jemel shudder. He looks up at Xan standing over him. He wants, but it's all twisted. Yet here in Xan’s hand is a simple solution.

No, not simple. He knows that. Some of the Brides who take foribunda suffer afterwards. Some of them go mad with guilt and take their lives. Doroth Zain had denounced the practice. “I think it would make this easier for me.”

“Baraboo, I will not take you unless you wish it with a true heart.”

“But I do. I do wish it but I cannot allow myself. This way. Surely it is fate that you have this, now, when we are alone.”

Xan stares at Jemel shrewdly. The gaze feels like a blade in Jemel’s heart. If Xan were to refuse this, he feels it would ruin him. To offer this. His vow. His Faith. To offer to take foribunda and lose himself to desire. And to be refused.

But he knows Xan is an honourable man. A man who has risked so much to be here in Attar — probably thought it might result in his instant imprisonment — for the chance to gain some justice for a people who had been treated so cruelly. And what Jemel is offering is not an honourable thing.

Not because it is a sin. Jemel knows in his heart it is no sin. But the manner of it. Jemel is using Xan, despite the mutual desire they feel — and Jemel is, at least, sure of that. But Jemel is not acting from that desire, but because he must shed himself of his obedience to Zai. He needs to.

Eventually Xan gives one of his distinctive shrugs and says, “It is your choice, Baraboo. If you truly wish to sin and taking that potion would make it easier on your heart for me to bed you, take it.” He holds the flask out to Jemel.