Paladin's Hope (The Saint of Steel, #3)

by T. Kingfisher

His fellow broken paladin had found love against long odds. Galen did not begrudge him that, exactly. Stephen deserved love if anyone did. No, it was…envy. Envy, because Stephen had not been at Hallowbind. Envy, because Stephen deserved it, and after Hallowbind, Galen never would again. In the death throes of the Saint of Steel, the god-touched priests had died outright or killed themselves or fallen into death-like comas from which they did not wake. Galen did not know which one his mother had done. The high priest of her temple had burned it to the ground, screaming about a pyre fit for a god. The paladins though, had turned on anyone around them, each one taken by the battle-tide, trying to fight the world that had taken their god away. Stephen had been lucky. He and Shane and Istvhan had been travelling with two paladins of the Dreaming God, who had fought them off. Galen and Marcus had been less fortunate. There had been a dozen paladins meeting with local men near the town of Hallowbind. No one knew how many local men there had been. They had only found