Laila touched the strap of the girl’s dress. Immediately, the taste of blood filled her mouth. The force of the girl’s last moments of life shrieked through her thoughts like a thunderstorm—
“Please! Please don’t!” screamed the girl. “My father, Moshe Horowitz, is a moneylender. He can pay whatever ransom you name, I swear it, please—”
“Hush, my dear,” said an older man.
Laila’s skin prickled. The man’s voice was kind, like someone soothing a child in a temper tantrum. But Laila felt the pressure of the knife as if it was pushed to her own throat. She tasted the ghost of blood in her mouth, the same iron-tang the girl must have felt when she realized what was happening and bit down too hard on her own tongue.
“It’s not about money. It’s about immortality… we are the made creatures that have surpassed our creator, why should we not become His equals? The sacrifice of your blood shall pave the way, and you shall be an instrument of the divine.”
“Why me?” whimpered the girl. “Why—”
“There now, my flower,” said the man. “I picked you because no one will look for you.”
Laila clutched her throat, gasping for breath.
For a moment it had actually felt as if… she touched the skin of her neck and looked at her fingertips, wondering if they would come away red… but they didn’t. It was just a memory from long ago, strong enough that it grabbed hold of her whole person. Laila forced herself not to cry. If she wept now, she wouldn’t stop.
Though the ice blossoms kept her warm, Laila couldn’t stopshivering. When Enrique had shared his findings about the symbols on the girls, he had told them he believed they were meant to be sacrifices… and he was right. She couldn’t get the sound of the man’s voice out of her head. He had to be the patriarch of the Fallen House, and yet she hated how sickeninglykindhe sounded. Nothing at all like the flat affect of the doctor when he’d descended upon them inside the catacombs.
Laila gripped the edge of the ice slab, her stomach heaving. Months ago, she remembered hearing Roux-Joubert’s confession:
The doctor’s papa is a bad man.
They had all assumed it meant the doctor’s father had once been the patriarch the Fallen House. It had sounded so silly. “A bad man.” Like something a child would say. But the girls, their mouths, the ice… they didn’t fit in the scope of words like “bad.” Laila had always thought that the Fallen House’s exile was about power. They wanted to access the power of God by rebuilding the Tower of Babel, but all they achieved was exile. And yet, he had sacrificed these girls, cut off their hands, and forwhat? She needed to find out.
Heart pounding, Laila reached for the next girl. Then the next, and the next. She read them in a daze, the same words knifing into her thoughts over and over:
You shall be an instrument of the divine.
No one will look for you.
The patriarch had grabbed the girls too dark to be visible in the world’s eyes; whose languages fell on deaf ears; whose very homes at the edge of society pushed them too far into the shadows for notice. A part of Laila hoped he was still alive, if only so she could show him what vengeance meant.
When she reached the last girl, her hands shook violently. Shefelt as though she had been stabbed and strangled, dragged through the snow by her hair and thrown into the dark and kept there for hours. In her head, she heard what sounded like the slosh of water. On the soles of her feet, she felt the slide of freezing metal. Always, she tasted blood and tears. And at the very back of her thoughts curled a terrible dissonance. What decided that they should die while she—born dead, as it were—would walk between their bodies? Laila wanted to believe in gods and inscrutable stars, destinies as subtle as spider silk caught in a shaft of sunlight and, beautiful above all,reason. But between these walls of ice, only randomness stared back at her.
Laila forced herself to turn to the last girl. Her hair, dark and threaded with ice, fanned out behind her neck. Though her skin had long since paled and turned mottled from the cold, Laila could tell she was dark-skinned. Like her. Laila steeled herself as she reached out and heard the girl’s last moments:
“My family will curse you,” spat the girl. “You will die in your filth. You will be slaughtered like a pig! I will be a ghost and rip you to shreds—”
The patriarch of the Fallen House gagged her mouth.
“Such a sharp tongue for a pretty face,” he said, as if scolding her. “Now, my dear, if you please… hold still.”
He raised the knife to her face and began to cut.
“You were to be my last attempt,” he said, talking over the muffled sound of her screaming. “I thought the others would be instruments of the divine, but it would seem as though my greatest treasure wants a particular sort of blood… picky, picky.” He sighed. “I thought you might be the one to see it, to read it, but you’ve disappointed me.”
Laila winced, her eyes rolling back at the ghost of the girl’s pain.
“I know one of you is out there, and I will find you… and you will be my instrument.”
Laila pushed back from the last slab, a terrible numbing sensation creeping through her body. It happened when she read too much, as if there wasn’t enough left of her to be in the present. Her mouth felt dry, and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. All those girls had been killed as a sacrifice that hadn’t even worked. They were dead for nothing.
Laila slid to the ground, her face in her hands, her back pressed to the ice slab. She didn’t feel the cold. She felt nothing but the aching thud of each heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”
Moments, or maybe hours later came the urgent footfall of someone outside the morgue. Her back was to the door, and she didn’t turn right away. It was probably an attendant come to tell her the physician, priest, or police officer would take it from here. She would look like a fool to them, standing and weeping, her hands shaking. But instead, she heard:
