I pull the trigger.
The shot rips through my sweater and slams into her stomach, just like she did to Dad.
Maria’s scream tears through the trees. She staggers back, eyes wide, both guns dropping as her hands fly to the wound.
I move fast.
I snatch one weapon from her grip as she fumbles, and the other hits the ground with a heavy thud.
My hands shake so badly that I almost drop it. But I don’t.
I rip my own gun free from under my sweater and point it straight at her, arm locked, breath tearing out of me.
She stumbles backward, blood blooming across her top, her face twisted with shock. “I’m your mom,” she chokes out. “How can you do this to me?”
My vision blurs. My body trembles. My stomach threatens to empty itself. But my voice stays steady. “Because you aren’t my mom anymore,” I spit. “You’re a monster.”
Even though my hands are shaking. Even though I feel sick to my stomach. Even though part of me is still that little girl who wanted a mother who loved her.
That isn’t the woman I’m looking at. This is Maria. The sick and twisted Preacher.
Maria hits the ground hard. Not gracefully. Not like some tragic martyr.
She crumples into the dirt with a strangled gasp, her hands clamped over her stomach, blood pouring between her fingers like it can’t get out fast enough.
Her face twists. Shock first. Then pain. Then fury—because even now, even bleeding out, she can’t understand how I dared.
How I disobeyed.
I stand there frozen, gun still raised, my arm locked straight, even though it’s shaking so badly I can feel the tremor all the way up into my shoulder.
Maria coughs, a thick, ugly sound, and spills from her mouth. Her eyes lift to mine, bright and furious, and for a second, I see it. Not my mother. Not the woman who gave birth to me.
The Preacher. The monster behind the mask.
“You…” she rasps, voice bubbling. “You were meant to be mine. But you still made your sacrifice, Lily. Killing me gives you your salvation to take my place. It makes you the Preacher. It worked out.”
My stomach turns so violently that I almost drop the gun. I take a step back, my bare foot sliding in damp leaves.
My breath catches. Because now that it’s done—now that the sound of the gunshot has faded—reality crashes over me like a wave.
I shot her. I pulled the trigger.
My hands start to shake harder. Not controlled anymore. Not adrenaline. Not strategy.
Just… aftermath. Just the part of my brain catching up and screamingwhat have you done?
“Oh my God,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Oh my God…”
My arms feel too heavy to hold the gun up. I am not the next Preacher. I want her entire complex to burn to the ground with all of her sick followers inside.
I try to force myself to keep aiming—because she’s still alive, she’s still dangerous, she still has another weapon somewhere on the ground?—
But my strength slips. My chest tightens. My throat burns.
And suddenly my vision blurs with tears I didn’t even realize were coming.
I stare down at her bleeding into the earth, and it hits me in the most brutal, impossible way.
