Kelda’s face is puffy, her eyes still red-rimmed and tired, but there’s the slightest hint of a smile as she watches this thing. She wiggles her fingers over the floor, and the creature tilts its head, its big, pointed ears pricked forward, and then pounces.
Dani laughs out loud, a high, bright sound, and I find myself tracing the lines of her face, the spark of happiness in her eyes. She’s always been beautiful in a different way than Orion, with an underlying sharpness to her face and an edge in every quick glance. But here, in this moment, she’s softer, lighter, her guard down for once as she scoops up the creature and drops it into Kelda’s lap.
She catches me staring and winks at me, and an embarrassed flush rises in my cheeks. “Can you believe this thing? I’ve never seen anything like it. Orion said he found it—”
“In the Aaldenberg knot,” I say, quickly looking away. “I know. When did it wake up?”
“It’s not anit, it’s aher,” Kelda says, running her fingers through the soft red-brown hairs along its back. She clutches it close to her chest, bending down to lay her cheek on its narrow chest. Like she wants—or maybe needs—to hear its tiny heartbeat and quick breaths. It—shelicks and nibbles at Kelda’s ear, making tiny squeaking sounds. “And her name is Ember.”
Dani puts her hands up, surrendering the point to Kelda. “Emberhere apparently woke up, like, an hour ago.”
Right when I was sleeping. Did I dream about it because I knew it would wake? Or did it wake because I’d dreamed it?
If Halle were here, if I’d been the one to fall into the Depths instead of her, she’d know what to say to Kelda. Something compassionate to soften the haunted look in her face. She’d know just how to hug her in a way that made Kelda feel loved and protected and not pitied.
I don’t know how to do any of that. The grief splitting my sternum is too cavernous; I can hardly breathe around it, let alone find a way to comfort anyone else.
“I… need to talk to Orion,” I say, and step out of the parlor, following the hallway to the room at the back of the house.
The Aaldenberg knot is on the table, looking exactly the same as before, and Orion sits in a chair next to it, frowning as he twirls the little flower between his fingers and stares down at the engraved tablet.
He sits up as I come into the room, his expression immediately shifting from thoughtful to concerned. “Hey, how are—”
I slash a hand through the air, cutting him off. “No.”
“Got it.” He leans back again, waving at the puzzle of items in front of him. “I was just going over this all again, trying tofigure out… Well, honestly, any of it. I keep thinking there has to be something more here than just a plant, a troublesome fuzz ball, and an extremely short and unsatisfactory message that’s possibly from a Herald but maybe not.”
He sighs, tossing the tablet onto the table with a clatter, and I pick it up, turning the polished silver rectangle over in my hands and rereading the words etched into its surface.
To whomever finds this,
Proof of life. There are answers at the gate. Find me there.
Signed, Samuel Covenant
“The Gate of Heaven.”
Orion frowns up at me. “What about it?”
I hold up the tablet, pointing out the words. “‘There are answers at the gate.’ Meaning: the Gate of Heaven.”
He humphs, skeptical. “Yeah, that was my only real guess so far, too. But it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no such thing as a literal Gate of Heaven. It’s just a concept to make the afterlife feel more real and concrete. And then they can slap it on banners and stained glass windows and preachers’ robes for show.”
He’s not wrong. If you ask a hundred people on Trinity where exactly the Gate of Heaven is, they’d all probably just point vaguely upward, into the sky. It’s just the placesomewherewhere Archangels come from and the souls of the dead are gathered from the Depths before they pass into the Heralds’ heavenly afterlife.
Except it has to be more than that. It has to be an actual,physical place that the Archangels take saints to, not some vague heavenly realm, because something there is taking us and turning us into Archangels. And I know down to my bones that whatever it is will send more after me. Now that they know a saint is out here, they’re not going to stop, which means Kelda, Orion, Dani—they’re all at risk.
My mind flicks back to Sorcha, gaunt and empty and trapped in that cage of monstrous metal, stripped of everything she used to be. I think about Gabriel Cirillo, taken away six years ago. How young he’d been. How he’d reminded me of Kelda. They would be close to the same age now, if he were still here.
Even if I do the impossible and find a way to shake the Archangels for good, what happens to the next saint? And the one after that? And the one after that? Strings of kids stretching into infinity, robbed of their lives and their futures, ground into bone and blood for the very religion that claims to venerate them.
Orion. Mama. Dani. Halle. They all stood between me and the greedy grasp of the chapels. Halle even lost her life because of it. Why did I deserve to be protected when none of the other saints were? Who will protect the ones who come after me? If they don’t have a Mama or a Halle, an Orion or a Dani, the chapels will collect them, and the Archangels will eat them up.
Unless someone stands up for them. And puts a stop to this fucking cycle once and for all.
“You said this was really old.” I shrug, putting the tablet down. “Maybe it was a real place back when he wrote it.”
Orion tucks the little purple flower into the tiny cup of water we can spare for it. “Maybe it was,” he admits. “But that does jack-all for us now.”
