Saffron shook her head. "No." The priest was wrong. He had to be wrong, not because she didn't want to think Solomon Wreath needed the help. Well, she didn't, but it was about more than that. If it was true that even someone like Solomon Wreath could need help, then everything Saffron had ever known was even more wrong than just a magic she didn't even use being dangerous.

It meant that it was okay to need help. That it was okay to be weak. If it was okay to be weak then where did that leave her? Why was the Temple like it was? Why did she have to live there for so long and accept all of what she'd been taught? None of it made any sense and she couldn't even trust that the Temple would give it meaning through the Passage. If what the priest said was true, then Saffron had even less idea what the world was about than that, and the thought frightened her a lot more than going back into the Temple. At least in the Temple she knew her place.

Out here ... she didn't. She didn't know anything, except that Solomon was strong, someone she could depend on when she'd never truly been able to depend on anything in the Temple. Now this man, this priest, was trying to take that away from her. Probably so he could start talking about God. Please. If God was real, the Temple wouldn't exist.

"No," she repeated, her voice shaking a little. "He doesn't need help. He's not weak. He's not like me."