“See?” Liren says. “There’s something still awake inside.”
I inch back just a little, but I can’t tear my gaze from Sorcha’s black eyes and hollowed-out face. She looks older than when she was taken—not a small child, but a person in their late teens or twenties, even. She grew and changed at some point before she was fused with this monstrosity. What happened between that moment when the Archangels whisked her away from her skyliner home and now?
What happened to you?
But also:Why didn’t your parents protect you? Why didn’tanyoneprotect you?
Somewhere underneath my shock and disgust and hatred and fear is a sickly thread of guilt, churning away at my insides. Because I had Orion. I had Mama. And even later, Dani. People who knew my secret and chose me over the chapels. Over the beliefs the Heralds tried to grind into us.
Sorcha. Gabriel. They had no one.
“If you take her out, what happens to her?” I ask.
I can feel Liren’s eyes on my face, studying me carefully before they respond in a gentle, careful voice. “I can’t say for absolute certainty. My best guess? Whatever’s left of her will slip away, and she’ll truly be gone.”
Orion is pacing a short circle in the limited amount of floor space left in the living room, his hands clasped behind his neck. “So does this mean all the Archangels, every one we see flying around and picking up new saints and all that—they have a saint inside them?”
“Holy fucking shit.” Dani looks disturbed enough to throw up, which is saying something considering the work she’s seen the Butcher do lately.
“Someone—or something—is doing this to them,” I say. “They’re taking those children and turning them into this.”They would’ve turnedmeinto this.
“There’s been hundreds of saints over the years. Why would anyone do this?” Orion stops, swinging his gaze from me to Atlas to Liren with a pleading look in his eye. Like one of us must havesomekind of reasonable answer. “What’s the purpose?”
“The purpose of what?”
I spin around to see Kelda, standing in the entryway. Her hazel eyes are still red and puffy from old tears and there are imprinted lines on her cheek from the quilt she’d been curled around. Her short black hair sticks up every which way, and she looks small and young. Younger than even her eleven years.
I step in front of her, putting my hands on her shoulders. “You’re supposed to be sleeping, smalls.”
She tilts her head to look past me at the Archangel wreckage. “I want to see it.”
My first instinct is to tell her no. To take her back upstairs to the bedroom so she won’t have to be exposed to all this and have to wrestle with the same confusing rush of feelings that are swamping me right now.
But who am I kidding? It’s far too late for that.
So I take her hand and lead her into the middle of the room. I watch her face as she takes in the body trapped inside, waiting to see hate, horror, revulsion, rage. Her eyes widen a little, new tearsglistening in the corners, and a little furrow of concern wrinkles her forehead.
Kelda reaches inside to touch one of Sorcha’s exposed fingers. “Who was she?”
“Her name was Sorcha. She was a saint like me once.”
“She looks so young.” It’s almost funny to hear Kelda say that, when she looks even younger. Kel wraps her hand around that one bony finger and looks up at me. “Are we gonna take her to the Depths and put her to rest?”
“Put her torest?” Kelda flinches at my harsh tone, and I take a breath, dropping to a knee in front of her. “Halle is gone. I’m not gonna mourn the monster responsible.”
“She didn’t choose this,” Kelda says softly. “She was just a kid who was born storm-touched.”Like you. She doesn’t say those words, but I hear the echo of them anyway. She squares her shoulders to me and juts out her chin. “She deserves to rest just as much as anyone else, and we’re the only ones left to do it.”
The determination is so strong in her that I get the feeling she’ll try to make this happen whether I agree or not.
“Okay, then,” I sigh. “Let’s do it.”
It takes close to an hour to get everything ready. Liren and Orion work together to extricate Sorcha’s body as much as possible from the Archangel’s frame. She looks even smaller and frailer outside of it, and I have to leave the room as Kelda helps Atlas wash and wrap the body in thin, light-colored cloth from Garian and Mira’s linens. Every time I stare into her fathomless, unseeingeyes, my heart squeezes with sympathy, with sadness for her, and I don’t want to feel either of those things.
I don’t want to keep carrying around the thought:That was supposed to be me.
In the deep darkness of the early-morning hours, Orion and Atlas lift Sorcha’s body onto their shoulders and carry her through the quiet, empty streets of Concord. Liren, Dani, Kelda, and I walk along behind them, Kelda’s hand tight around mine all the way to the outskirts of town.
On the edge of the Depths, the Bookers set the wrapped body on the ground, and we stand in a half circle around it as Atlas kneels down. One hand over Sorcha, one hand clutching his preacher medallion, Atlas prays:
