I have to claw my voice back out of my chest, and even then it comes out ragged. “Icouldn’t. I didn’t want you to know. Either of you. I didn’t want you to look at me differently. Like I was…”
“… a killer,” Kelda finishes for me, murmuring the words.
I pause on the steps and look over at Kelda, staring into her red-rimmed hazel eyes and the tear tracks carving through the dirt on her face. She’s so strong now, her cheeks round and flushed. Halle practically shimmers with good health, even after all the events of the past few days. But somewhere in the backs of my eyes, I always see the shadows of those months when their faces were sunken and hollow, their lips cracked and parched, and I didn’t dare close my eyes or sleep because I thought I’d wake up and they’d be gone.
I don’t know how to tell her all that. How to make her understand. Words haven’t ever really been my strong suit—if they were, maybe I wouldn’t have had to fall back on my blades.
Outside there are more chapel bells now, closer, joining in the song, ringing against the dark of night.A new saint has been found.
I start moving again, my arm still around Kelda as we make it down one floor and then the next.
“I couldn’t keep a job,” I finally say, the words sounding flimsy even as they come out of my mouth. “You and Kelda were starving, and I was desperate. It got to the point where there was nothing I wouldn’t do—nothing—if it meant you both were safe and fed.”
Halle stops short on the second-floor landing, forcing me topause and turn back to her. “It was supposed to be the three of us, together, no matter what,” she says, eyes burning, voice dripping acid. “But you lied to us, Val. And worse than that, you left us. You pulled away when we needed you themost.” I’ve seen Halle angry plenty of times, but this is different. It’s spilling out of her like incandescence. “How many people have you killed?”
“Halle!” Kelda cries out, shocked, upset.
“You’ve been doing this foryears, so I have to think it’s a lot.”
Kelda shakes her head, tears welling up again. “Halle, please don’t—”
“I don’t feel like I know you at all!”
Her voice rings against the polished walls of the stairwell, and I wait until the echoes have died away before I finally straighten my shoulders and look right into her eyes.
“You can hate me,” I tell her, my voice soft and low. “You can be afraid of me. You can judge me for the decisions I made, but for the past four years, you and Kel never wanted for food or water or a soft place to sleep at night. I can’t regret that. Ican’t. If I had to, I’d make the same choices again. Every time.”
“But we didn’t haveyou. Not really.” Halle stares at me for a long, quiet moment, letting those cold, clear words land like lead in my stomach before she turns away, burying her face in her hands.
She’s right. They didn’t have me, not all of me. The Butcher, the work I did, the power I wielded and how good I was at it—that was just for me. A part of myself outside of being the eldest sibling, the provider, the responsible one tasked with keeping everyone else safe and sheltered. I wish I could say I hated being the Butcher, but there was too much freedom in it for me to hate.And I don’t know how to lay that all out on the table without losing my sisters completely.
They were already struggling to love Val, with all their flaws. How could they love the half of me that spits blood and metal and death?
If we run far and fast enough, if we can find a new home on Trinity, could I set all that aside and just be Val for them? Do I even want to? Or remember how?
There’s no room for questions like that right now. The chapel bells are ringing across Covenant, calling the Archangels to us. We have to get out of the Shipyards.
I push them forward once more, all the way down to the bottom of the stairs where I herd them away from the billiards hall and into the cavernous space at the back of the building. This was the way Dani and Orion had planned for us to get out in the original scheme, but I don’t wait for them. My time is up, and they’re probably still counting their haul from that vault room anyway, so screw them.
The warehouse is a maze of stacked crates and bulky items wrapped in rough cloth, but there’s no sign of any Gold Towners or wardens back here. When we get to the doors at the back, I leave Halle and Kelda huddled in the shadow of the closest crate and creep up to the window to get an eye on what’s happening out in the street. From this angle, everything looks empty, the only sound the echoing gongs of the chapel bells. No sign of any additional wardens or Gold Towners playing lookout on nearby rooftops or lurking in corners, waiting for us to emerge. Just the usual twisting alleys and ragged lanes of the Shipyards—and the edge of the Crater yawning in front of us, maybe fifty feet away.
I lean against the window frame, trying to map out in my head the best route to get me and my sisters out of this place as quickly and quietly as possible, but even as my brain churns, my eyes keep straying to the fathomlessly dark opening of the Crater. Something about it makes shivers prickle across my skin. Trinity sings restlessly, its melody wilder and faster than usual, spiked with jarring chords of disharmony. I tap my fingers against the sides of my thighs to the rhythm of it.
The air suddenly turns thick and still, the sounds from the street dropping away like I’ve put plugs in my ears. I freeze at the crawling sense of anticipation that creeps up my spine. It’s familiar. But, this time, it’s closer. Like it’s right on top of me.
No, that’s not it. Like it’s right underneath me… I can feel it building, back-building, surging.
I know what’s coming next.
“Val?” Kelda’s voice might as well come from a million miles away. “What’s wrong?”
Trinity’s song rises to a roar in my ears. It pulls me in and I want to give in, but I look at my sisters. And I make myself stay put.
“Get down,” I tell them just a heartbeat before a blinding blue-white flare pours out of the Depths of the Crater and engulfs us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“FOR THE POWER OF A SAINT IS NOT TRULY THEIRS, BUT THE HERALDS’. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE HELD NOR UNDERSTOOD BY MORTAL HANDS. AND IF NOT RETURNED TO THE HERALDS, A SAINT’S POWER WILL GROW AND BECOME CORRUPTED. A CANCER TO THE SAINT AND TO EVERYONE AROUND THEM.”
