That pause is felt, and hangs between them as Benedict considers its implications; and as Julius speaks again, his words seem to seep into Benedict's very blood as it chills from heart to fingertips. He knows with a certain instinctive certainty that, had he arrived in the south earlier, he would have been in the position to make that decision: he's already lost to a demon once, hasn't he?

"I missed," he says quietly, anxiously, "I missed my Harrowing. I was here." It got lost in the churn of Atticus' capture, his betrayal, the clumsy picking up of pieces that dragged on into months and years.

"Inconvenient," he scoffs, in what he's trying to make a laugh, but there's a total absence of warmth in his face.